Peachester

Peachester is a rural village on the eastern slopes of the Conondale Range, 25 km west of Caloundra. The Stanley River has a U-shaped course through Peachester, flowing east and then west until emptying into Lake Somerset. It is thought that Peachester was named after peach trees found growing beside a crossing on the Stanley River. The name was given when a town was surveyed at the crossing in 1888.

A year after the town survey a public hall was built, and in 1892 the Peachester school started in the hall. There was ample unfelled timber to supply Grigor's sawmill (1899) and a case factory for fruit growers in the 1920s and the post World War II years. Dairying, however, was the main farm industry, and three-quarters of the 50 or more farms listed in the post office directory in 1949 were dairy. Most of the others were fruit growers.

Between the 1930s and 1950s Peachester was well-known as the home of Inigo Jones, long-range weather forecaster. Jones' family settled just north of Peachester in 1892, at Crohamhurst, and Jones opened his weather observatory in 1935. He worked there until his death in 1954.

During the 1970s dairy farms were sold up and in many cases turned over to rural/residential living. Peachester has a general store, a Uniting Church (the Church of England was lost in a cyclone in 1963), two recreation reserves, the public hall and the primary school. Its cemetery is north of the Stanley River, in Crohamhurst.

Peachester's census populations have been: