Pialba
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Located on Hervey Bay's southern shore, 30 kilometres north-northeast of Maryborough, 64 kilometres southeast of Bundaberg, and 243 kilometres north of Brisbane in Badtjala Country, the coastal town of Pialba served as the City of Hervey Bay's administrative centre and continued to fill the role after local government amalgamations created the Fraser Coast Region in 2008.
Originally named Polson, Pialba was the first settled area in the district after timber-getter Boyle Martin, his wife Sarah, and their infant son rowed from Maryborough to Hervey Bay in 1863. Other timber-getters who rafted logs down the Mary River then dragged them by bullock to Urangan established a sawmill in the area, while Martin went on to become a pioneer of sugar growing in the district in the late seventies and early eighties, establishing a small sugarl mill on his property at Scrub Hill, although the the venture was not successful.
After a rudimentary village with a hotel and stores merged in the 1870s, Maryborough residents took up allotments along the foreshore and its status as Maryborough's coastal watering place, accelerated when a railway opened in 1896.
In March 1931 the town's name was formally changed from Polson to a corruption of Gubbi Gubbi words with three possible meanings:
A fighting place, from bai/ya fight and ba - place. (F.J. Watson. Vocabularies of four representative tribes of South Eastern Queensland. Brisbane, 1944, p.111)
place of the black and white butcher bird, from baril - black and white butcher bird, and ba - place (information attributed to Edward Armitage).
bagillba from bagill - mullet and ba - place (J.G. Steele. Aboriginal pathways. Brisbane, 1983, p.204.)
Sources:
Fraser Coast Regional Council: Boyle Martin Landing Site Boyle Martin Landing Site https://www.frasercoast.qld.gov.au/Services/Parks-and-Playgrounds/Parks-and-Gardens/Parks-and-Gardens-records/Boyle-Martin-Landing-Site
Queensland Place Names Database: Pialba https://www.qld.gov.au/environment/land/title/place-names/queensland-place-names-search (Requires search )
Queensland Places: Pialba https://queenslandplaces.com.au/pialba
Wikipedia: Pialba nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pialba
