Mutdapilly

An aboriginal name meaning 'dirty sticky gully', referring to the black soil. 'Pilly' means gully.

In the publication Memories of Mutdapilly it says that Captain Logan in his journal described the area saying 'the country is superior to yesterdays, we came to a large swamp, Mutdapilly Ten Mile Swamp which was several miles in extent, skirted it for some miles and then crossied it again, came back on the Brisbane River running North crossed it and proceeded up the bank'. 

In the 1840s and 1850s what is now the Mutdapilly district was part of a station running sheep and cattle. The few white people in the vicinity were employed mainly as shepherds. In the early 1860s the area was opened up for closer settlement and families arrived to farm their small holdings. Because of the disruption caused to the cotton industry by the American Civil War cotton growing was a profitable operation on these farms. Dairying and maize growing were also carried on. As more land was taken up some of the early pioneers of this area, then known as the Ipswich Reserve District, - namely Joseph Denman, Jonathan Pampling, Robert McLaughlin, James Theaker, Hedley Dean, and Mrs Collins became concerned about the education of their children, and desiring that they should be taught to read, write, and count, formed themselves into a committee and requested the government to erect a school in this locality. Mr. Denman offered to give the land. Their request was granted and a school and residence were erected. The aboriginal name for the area was “Mutdapilly” because of the presence of a large swamp in the vicinity, but apparently this fact escaped recognition by the powers-that-be and the school was named Normanby School after the third Governor of Queensland.