The suburb takes its name from its railway station. Wolston House was opened in 1852. Still intact today the building is the only surviving early Brisbane River settlement. The building was planned to be demolished however the National Trust of Queensland intervened to save the building. Major conservation work was undertaken. The Wolston railway station was opened on 8 October 1874, taking its name from Wolston House. However, the name caused confusion with the Wilston railway station, so it was renamed on 8 July 1927 to Wacol railway station. Wacol is a coined word from weigh coal, as the principal purpose of the station was coal handling. A portion of Wacol comes from the Wolston Estate, consisting of 54 farms on an area of 3000 acres, offered for auction at Centennial Hall, Brisbane, on 16 October 1901. Wolston Estate is the property of M. B. Goggs, whose father obtained the land forty years previously in the 1860s and after whom Goggs Road is named. Only three of the farms sold at the original auction. In 1879, the local government area of Yeerongpilly Division was created. In 1891, parts of Yeerongpilly Division were excised to create Sherwood Division becoming a Shire in 1903 which contained the area of Wolston Estate. In 1925, the Shire of Sherwood was amalgamated into the City of Brisbane. The suburb played host to the American military during World War II, who constructed Camp Columbia in 1942; after the war, control of the facility was transferred to the Australian government for use as a migrant reception and training centre. In the Wacol had a population of 2,957 people.
In the, Wacol recorded a population of 2,957 people; 19.3% female and 80.7% male. The median age of the Wacol population was 35 years, 2 years below the Australian median. There is a marked over-representation of people aged between 20 and 40 years in Wacol, where they account for 54.1% of the population, compared to the national figure of 27.7%. The young and old are under-represented: children aged under 15 years made up 3.6% of the population and people aged 65 years and over made up 5.2% of the population. 76.5% of people living in Wacol were born in Australia, compared to the national average of 69.8%; the next most common countries of birth were New Zealand 5.2%, Indonesia 2.9%, England 2.7%, Vietnam 1.2%, Fiji 0.6%. 19.5% of people spoke only English at home; the next most popular languages were 1% Vietnamese, 0.5% Spanish, 0.3% Serbian, 0.3% Italian, 0.3% Mandarin.
The Ipswich Motorway crosses the suburb. A major upgrade of the road was completed in 2010. The Logan Motorway connects to the Ipswich Motorway in the south of the suburb. Wacol railway station and Gailes railway station provides access to regular Queensland Rail City network services to Brisbane, Ipswich and Rosewood via Ipswich. In the, 11.2% of employed people traveled to work on public transport and 66.3% by car.
