Coorparoo

"Back Yard in Coorparoo" - Lindsay Colborne

I lived in Coorparoo in this house for a while, and so I'm wondering what the name "Coorparoo" actually means. I know it's an Indigenous word, but that's all I know. I've just now gone to Wikipedia and discovered... that it may mean "place of the biting mosquito" or "call of the dingo" or maybe it's the name of a creek that runs off Norman Creek... I don't know. I think that particular creek, which runs past where my father and mother grew up, is now a large cement drain - very practical in the floods. This site reckons that Coorparoo means "a ground dove", and that the name resembles the note of a cooing bird. But that site also reckons that Mt Cootha means "Dark Honey" and I always thought it meant "One Tree" because there used to be one very big tree that towered above all the others before it was chopped it down. - Well obviously... I can imagine the conversation of the first settlers... "Wow!!! Look at that wonderful big tree that towers above all the rest!" - "Yeah. Let's chop it down and burn it!"

Thompson Estate is what Annerly used to be called before WWII, and according to my Dad it's roughly between Ekibin Creek and Buranda. Ekibin Creek I now know is the name of the creek that is now a big flood-proofed cement waterway which flows off Norman Creek and is the creek that the Indigenous people may of called Coorparoo. Thompson Estate is a stones throw from Coorparoo and interestingly enough, if you did need to actually throw a stone from Thompson Estate to Coorparoo, you would have to throw it over the inbetween suburb of Stones Corner. Both my Mum and my Dad are from the area and they know only one story about the name of Coorparoo. In the 20's 30's and 40's when they were growing up there, they knew Coorparoo as coming from the Indigenous word for the cooing sound of the Indian Dove. My Dad explains it like this... "Cooooorpaaaaaroooooooo" he says, like the Dove would coo it.