Mudgeeraba

Mudgeeraba is a town and suburb in the City of Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.

Mudgeeraba is a town and suburb in the City of Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census, Mudgeeraba had a population of 13,624 people.Mudgeeraba's essential character remains one of a nineteenth-century village, and contains important evidence of its earlier form and building. Most older houses are situated on large blocks of 0.5 acres (2,000 m2) to 2 acres (8,100 m2), alongside much larger farming properties situated in the area.

It is thought that the name of the town was derived from an Indigenous Australian expression meaning, "place of infant's excrement", "place where someone told lies" or "place of sticky soil". Another theory is that the name means "low-lying ground".Mudgeeraba is remnant of the type of township that characterises the rural hinterland of the Gold Coast. Subdivision of land was conventional and buildings were traditionally rural or rural commercial. The Schmidt Farmhouse is typical of farms of that period in the district.

Mudgeeraba, like other areas in the region, was an early centre for farming, timber getting and cattle grazing by the mid-1870s.Mudgeraba Provisional School opened on 24 October 1887. On 1 January 1909 it became Mudgeraba State School. In 1915 it was renamed Mudgeraba Upper State School. By 1925 the spelling had changed to Mudgeeraba Upper State School. It closed on 6 November 1955.Mudgeraba Lower Provisional Schoolopened on 31 March 1892. In 1914 it became Mudgeraba Lower State School. In 1915 it was renamed Mudgeraba State School. By 1925 the spelling had changed to Mudgeeraba State School.Mudgeeraba rose to some prominence with the coming of the railway from Brisbane to Tweed Heads in 1903. The station of the South Coast railway line was located near the present-day motorway entrance. In 1890, the Queensland State Government indicated that the railway station would be positioned as close to the township, located on Coach Road, as possible. Following the decision was made to position the railway station at some distance to the town, early residents acquired land nearby. Once the railway line was in operation the centre of the town was relocated to its present position. The railway was closed in 1961. The modern day Pacific Motorway largely follows the route of the former railway. The new Gold Coast railway opened on a different alignment from Brisbane to neighbouring Robina in 1998. Robina station is about 1.8 kilometres (1.1 mi) further than the old Mudgeeraba railway station.

In the early 1930s during the Great Depression, the Upper Mudgeeraba Creek banks were the location of unemployment relief camps set up under the Income Tax Acts, 1930. The creek water helped sustain vegetable gardens for the residents, housed in timber and corrugated iron huts. One aspect of the relief scheme put in place by the Queensland Government was to establish small banana plantations. In Upper Mudgeeraba, 300 acres (120 ha) divided into 50 blocks were made available to successful applicants to farm.Mudgeeraba Special School opened on 1 January 1981.Somerset College opened in 1983.Mudgeeraba Creek State School opened on 29 January 1996.Following the closure of All Saints' Anglican Church in the Chirn Park neighbourhood in Southport on 2 November 1997, the church building was relocated to become the Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd at 4 Tarrant Drive, Mudgeeraba.The Gold Coast City Council opened a public library at the Old Post Office Heritage Centre in Railway Street in 2004. However it did not attract a lot of patronage and it was decided to merge it into the Robina Library with the Mudgeeraba branch closing on 25 January 2017. The Gold Coast City Council operates a fortnightly mobile library service which visits Railway Street beside Mudgeeraba Pool.At the 2011 census, the suburb recorded a population of 13,204.In the 2016 census, Mudgeeraba had a population of 13,624 people.