Preface
The village of Mudgeeraba snuggles into the foothills of Tallai Mountain in the far south-east corner of Queensland. It is a quiet place, comparatively speaking, well away from the hustle and bustle of the Gold Coast glitter strip but close enough to take advantage of all the facilities that the local region has to offer.
I chose to make Mudgeeraba my home back in 1987, anticipating a laid-back and relaxed lifestyle. Hooked by the quaintness of the village as it was then, I became curious about its history. What were the stories behind all the old buildings and streets that bore people’s names? Who had lived here before me?
I tried to find a publication that would provide some in-depth material on the history of the village. Finding none, I set about researching the subject myself. I trekked up to Brisbane to the State Archives and John Oxley Library, more times than I can remember. One contact led to another, and another. I knocked on doors of people I had never met before, and was welcomed into their homes with cups of tea and scones. Selflessly, they provided me with a wealth of first-hand recollections, information and anecdotes, and entrusted me with their treasured family photos, to be reproduced for inclusion in my book. After many months of poring over old Government records and door-knocking, and lots of help from these descendants of those first pioneering families, Dairies & Daydreams: The Mudgeeraba Story was born in 1989.
I was fascinated by Mudgeeraba, the stories, and the families that were woven into the fabric of its history. In 1990 the Mudgeeraba Uniting Church celebrated its centenary and I compiled a small booklet to help the church commemorate the event. Two years later, in 1992, Mudgeeraba State School also celebrated 100 years of local education. Armed with my research skills and a list of contacts, again I knocked on doors and borrowed stories and family photos, and the resulting book Bush School & Golden Rules detailed the history of five local schools – Mudgeeraba, Bonogin, Upper Mudgeeraba, Austinville and Neranwood – for posterity.
This book – From Paddocks to Pavements: the Mudgeeraba Story – is a blend of all the information contained in those three previously written publications, plus additional information that I have either researched or was later supplied to me.
But time marches on and over three decades since the publication of my first Mudgeeraba book, the village has changed. Gone are the little side streets on the main centre of town, replaced by the Village Green (still boasting the Poinciana trees that were planted by Arthur Sprenger back in the 1930s). Gone also are the days where locals all bought their fuel from the hardware store, and Franklin’s butchery fronted the main road. Besides the alleyways of shops that radiate from Railway Street, now the village boasts the Mudgeeraba Market Shopping Centre, another shopping centre in Bell Place, plus another in Worongary, providing plenty of variety for local shoppers. The Boomerang Farm is no longer a boomerang farm, but a golf course, and where bushland once separated the village from the coastal strip, the planned suburb of Robina has emerged.
Today, as in the past, the ambience of Mudgeeraba promotes a certain element of parochialism. We are proud of our village, our community and our way of life. We pride ourselves on our rural atmosphere, relatively uncluttered by unnecessary commercialism. Many bands of dedicated people continually struggle to promote and maintain the lifestyle the residents find so attractive. Groups such as Rotary, Lions, P & C organisations, Mudgeeraba Show Society, hall committee, Neighbourhood Watch groups, Scouts, Girl Guides and church committees and so on, are all pulling together towards this end.
There is also great historical significance in many of our street names, and Franklin Drive, Berrigans[i] Road, Hardys Road and Lavers Road, for example, honour our pioneering families. It is to these people that I dedicate this book – to the pioneers who braved the unknown to settle this land.
[i] This is a corruption of Berigan, one of Mudgeeraba’s pioneering families.