Best 41 Real Estate Agents In Pimpama [2025]

Pimpama Suburb Overview

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Pimpama is a suburb in the northern Gold Coast. It is located on the Pacific Motorway 30 km north of Surfers Paradise. The township of Pimpama is presently the last remaining rural town on the Pacific Motorway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. However with the urban development of the region, Pimpama’s population is set to boom in the next 10 years, almost definitely consuming the township.

From about 1868 Pimpama was the terminus of Cobb & Co Coach services from Brisbane. As a result of this, two hotels were built on either side of Hotham Creek, neither of which remain today. The route was extended to Nerang in 1882.

The first sawmill in South East Queensland was built at Pimpama in 1863 by Jesse Daniells. Arrowroot cultivation was an early crop grown widely in the area.

Laurel Hill Farmhouse, a single-storeyed timber farm house with attic, was erected in 1883-84 for Pimpama arrowroot grower and manufacturer, William Doherty. The builder was Alexander Fortune of Coomera. At the time, Laurel Hill Farmhouse was considered the finest residence in Pimpama district, and in 1897 was photographed by the Queensland Lands Department as an example of a successful Queensland selector’s home.

Much of the Pimpama district had been taken up in the 1850s by William Duckett White of Beau Desert Station, who leased 20,000 acres between the Logan and Coomera Rivers, including upper Hotham Creek, as Pimpama run. A small settlement was established on Pimpama River c1860, but the site was abandoned within a few years in preference to Hotham Creek. Much of Pimpama run was thrown open for selection from April 1869, and White forfeited his remaining leasehold on Pimpama from 1 January 1870. The private subdivision and sale in February 1870 of town and farm lots at the junction of the Pimpama River and Hotham Creek, consolidated Pimpama township and initiated a small farming community of predominantly Irish settlers.

In the 1860s, farmers along the Pimpama River experimented firstly with cotton growing, then with sugar, both of which initially were dependent on South Pacific Islands labour. By December 1876 the principal Pimpama sugar plantations had ceased production, and were devoted either to cattle or arrowroot, but some smaller farms in the district continued with sugar growing for several decades.

The Pimpama selectors of the 1870s, searching for a new commercial crop, discovered that the climate, soil, and abundance of pure water in the Pimpama district were ideal for the cultivation and manufacture of arrowroot. Arrowroot gave about the same return as maize or potatoes, but was more frost, drought and flood resistant. The first commercial arrowroot in Pimpama was grown in the late 1860s, and the Lahey family, who moved to Pimpama in 1870 and eventually took up Sunnyside, adjoining William Doherty on Hotham Creek, went into arrowroot cultivation on a large scale, inventing a mechanical processing method which revolutionised the production of arrowroot, and marketing arrowroot under their own brand. By 1884, arrowroot was widely grown in the Pimpama and Coomera districts, and a number of new manufacturing plants were being established.

Most of the selections along upper Hotham Creek were surveyed in 1871, but not proclaimed for selection until August 1874. In the interim, many farmers were ‘squatting’ on these selections, with no guarantee that they would ultimately secure the land as leasehold.

Irish-born settlers William Doherty and his wife Eliza Fannon had arrived in Queensland by September 1867. It appears that they were resident in Brisbane until November 1869 at least, but had moved to the Pimpama district by August 1870, when William Doherty signed a local petition calling for a provisional school to be established in the area. It is not known where in Pimpama the Doherty family lived at this period, but William Doherty worked on a number of local sugar plantations and farms before taking up his own selections in the mid-1870s.

In October 1874, Doherty selected portion 21, parish of Pimpama. The block already contained some improvements, including a slab barn and a small humpy, and about 12 acres of scrub cleared and partly under cultivation, for which Doherty paid

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