Tarampa, a small rural township in the Brisbane Valley, is 45 km west of central Brisbane.

In the early 1860s the Tarampa Agricultural Reserve was declared for closer-settlement, and it was occupied almost exclusively by German settlers. Baptist and Apostolic churches were opened in the early years of the next decade. The farms were used for cropping and dairying and a local creamery was opened in the 1890s. A butter factory at Lowood, five km north-east, took over from the creamery in 1903. An affiliation with Lowood (also German settled) further developed with the Lowood Agricultural Society's showground (1906) on part of the Tarampa Estate. Intensively farmed holdings raised Tarampa's population to just over 500 in 1911. The town's businesses were few, comprising a storekeeper, a hotel, a butcher, a builder and a blacksmith; only the publican had a non-German name.

A population movement out of Tarampa began in the 1910s, and by the early 1950s it was around 200. The decline in dairying reduced it further.

Tarampa has a general store, hotel, primary school (1880) and the Apostolic Church of God and a Lutheran church. Its census populations have been:

Census DatePopulation
1911503
1921341
1933263
1961175
2011325

Ruth Kerr, Confidence and tradition: a history of the Esk Shire, Esk, Council of the Shire of Esk, 1988

Headwords: 

Copyright © Centre for the Government of Queensland, 2018. All rights reserved.

UQ Logo