Location
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History
The area now called Crestmead was originally taken up by Swedish settlers in 1885.
The first group arrived on the Chybassa in January 1885. Mâns Stjernqvist, a farm labourer, his wife Nilla and their seven children travelled with Per Swensen and Mâns Trulsen, also farm labourers.
The Chybassa's second voyage to Brisbane in October 1885 bought two Swensen families – Mattis and Johanna and their eight children, and Mattis's brother Suva, wife Johanna, and their three children. The two families travelled together, and the youngest child, Godfrey Chybassa, was born on the journey. The Swensens also travelled with Peter and Johanna Abrahamsen and their four young children.
A survey office plan dated June 1886 notes that the region occupied by these Swedish settlers, in the vicinity of Bayliss and Green Roads, had poor sandy soil and was thickly and heavily timbered with oak, gum, and stringybark. The area was criss-crossed with timber-getters' tracks. There was only one house, located between Green Road and Hubner Road.
Mâns Stjernqvist took up land, which is now the Crestmead industrial estate, in December 1885. His eldest son Nils apparently worked as a wheelwright for the mail coaches that frequented the area at the time.
In 1886, Peter Abrahamsen, Suva Swensen and Mattis Swensen took up leases together. They grew oats, maize, potatoes and turnips, and grazed cattle and horses. Mâns Trulson took up land to the east of Stjernqvist in January 1887. He had a slab house with a shingle roof in the vicinity of the current location of St Francis College, Crestmead. When his selection was inspected in 1892, he had three acres stumped and ploughed. Peter Abrahamsen's wife Johanna died in December 1887, leaving him with four young children. He remarried in 1898, to Inger Andersen, widow of Anders Andersen.
John and George Hubner were later residents of the area who took up agricultural farm selections around 1893. Later they forfeited and reselected adjoining parcels of land as agricultural homestead selections.
John Hubner established a flourishing estate on his property, which straddling Lindenthal Road at Park Ridge. However, he had difficulty making a payment on his lease in 1903. He wrote to the government stating that he had a six-roomed sawn timber cottage with a veranda, detached kitchen, underground cellar and fireplace. His property included a toilet, fowl house and three acres of garden. He had 400 fruit trees including apples, plums, peach and oranges. He also had pineapples and bananas planted, and a cow yard and calf pen. Presumably the severe drought of that time had led to his difficulty in paying his lease. Many people left the area during this drought. Student numbers at the Browns Plains school fell and the school was closed.
The area remained in use for grazing and timber getting for many years to come. Urban subdivisions began in the late 1970s. In 1981, an industrial estate opened on the property originally owned by Mans Stjernqvist. One of the housing estates was known as Crestmead.
Despite Beaudesert Shire allocating the unofficial placename of Hubner, Crestmead was eventually gazetted in 1987. The Crestmead State School was called Hubner during construction. It was officially named Crestmead when it opened in 1984.