Coalstoun Lakes, Queensland


Coalstoun Lakes is a rural town and locality in the North Burnett Region, Queensland, Australia.

History

The lakes were named by local pioneer, Nugent Wade Brown, in 1894.
Coalstoun Lakes Post Office opened on 1 July 1927 and closed in 1976.
Coalstoun Lakes State School opened on 25 July 1910.
In the 2011 census, Coalstoun Lakes had a population of 423 people.

Name origin

The meaning of the name is not positively known but it has been speculated that Coalstoun is the corruption of an Aboriginal word Goanalganai.
That origin is unlikely because the name 'Coalstoun' is a corruption of the word 'Colstoun', which was the ancestral home of the Brown family in Scotland. Colstoun is located south of Edinburgh and remains in the Brown family. Nugent Wade Brown's father, John Brown, emigrated to the Colony of New South Wales and established a property named Colstoun near what is now Gresford in the Hunter Valley in 1838.
According to Queensland Department of National Parks, Sport and Racing "The lakes were named after Coalstoun in Scotland by Wade Brun, manager of nearby Ban Ban Station." There is no doubt that Nugent Wade Brown and Wade Brun were the same person. His wife, Margaret Campbell-Antill, was an aunt of Major-General John Macquarie Antill.

Geography

The Isis Highway passes through the locality from north-east to south, also passing through the town. The Coalstoun Lakes National Park is in the north-east of the locality.

Heritage listings

Coalstoun Lakes has a number of heritage-listed sites, including: