Grovely

Grovely is a suburban locality on the south side of Kedron Brook, 9 km north-west of central Brisbane. The Grovely railway station is on the Ferny Grove line.

In 1864 John Nicholson acquired a farm allotment generally bounded by today's Church Road, Kedron Brook and Kedron Avenue, Mitchelton. He named his property Groveley Lodge, presumably after Groveley Wood near his previous home in England. An Anglican church was built on a hill on Nicholson's land in 1869, near the western end of today's Grovely Terrace. The church, at first known as Upper Kedron, was named St Matthews in 1909. Its cemetery's first burial was in 1869. The primary school, with an entrance on Samford Road, Michelton, was opened in 1916 with the spelling 'Groveley'. In 1923 the school's name was changed to Michelton. 

In 1918 the Catholic Order of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer – the Redemptorists – acquired Groveley Lodge for a monastery. It was on the west side of Church Road. A larger three-storey brick monastery was built in 1928. The Redemptorists ran a dairy herd and leased out a site on Dawson Parade for market gardening. There were several other dairy and poultry farms in the area in the early postwar years.

In 1945 'Little India' flourished at the Grovely military camp where Indian officers and men, released from Japanese prison camps in Papua New Guinea by Australian forces, underwent convalescence before being repatriated to India. Many were taught modern farming methods by experts from the Department of Agriculture who set up a training farm.

In 1950 the Queensland Housing Commission began a housing estate at Grovely. A second Grovely primary school, in Dawson Parade, opened in 1956 and the Catholic St Williams school opened the following year. Grovely's country railway station was discarded and a new building was constructed in 1951. (It, too, has since been replaced, and moved to a museum site at Samford.)

Grovely's western neighbour was Keperra, and by the mid-1970s Grovely had become a locality in the suburb of Keperra. The Redemptorists' market garden was sold in 1973, and later became the site for Brisbane Institute of TAFE, Grovely Campus. Their monastery site became the Oxford Park retirement village (1993). Oxford Park is a locality in Mitchelton, the eastern neighbouring suburb, which incidentally encompasses Grovely Terrace and the 1869 Anglican church.

Grovely's census population in 1921 was 133. Later census records put Grovely's population in Keperra, Mitchelton or both.