Tarragindi, a residential suburb, is six km south of central Brisbane. It includes the localities of Ekibin and Wellers Hill.

The area was originally known as Sandy Creek, a watercourse with headwaters at Toohey Mountain and flowing northward through the Tarragindi Recreation Reserve to join Ekibin Creek just beyond Sexton Street.

In 1890 William Grimes settled at Sandy Creek on land either side of Andrew Avenue, north-west of the Tarragindi Hill reservoir. The Grimes household employed a Pacific Islander, Tarragindi, and when told that 'Tarragindi' meant camp on a hill, Grimes gave that name to his new house. Tarragindi Hill was a bus destination name in the 1920s, and the name was formally adopted in 1931.

Tarragindi was a rural area until the interwar years. A Congregational chapel was built in the early 1900s, but there was no school, other church building or public hall. The Ipswich Road electric tram reached Yeronga Park in 1915, but there was ample undeveloped land between Ipswich Road and Tarragindi to absorb any demand for house lots. An early murmur of development was the formation of the Sandy Creek Progress Association (c1919) which sponsored fund-raising for a public hall. The Tarragindi Memorial Hall at Fernvale Road and Andrew Avenue was built in 1932, and the Association also lobbied for a district primary school. In the 1920s land was provided for soldier settlement poultry farmers.

A sign of advancing suburbanisation came with the building of a service reservoir on Tarragindi Hill in 1922. Four years later a primary school was opened at Weillers Hill (changed to Wellers Hill in 1950).

Immediately after World War II Tarragindi was an outlying suburb. The Ipswich Road tram had been extended to the Salisbury munitions works in 1940 and all of Tarragindi could be reached from a tram stop. The area became known as a shanty town where people could run up shelters during the postwar housing shortage. Later there were War Service and Housing Commission estates.

The school expanded in the 1950s and church congregations which had met in the hall or private houses raised money for new buildings: Methodist (1950), Catholic (1955), Baptist (1956), Presbyterian (1957) and Anglican (1959). Post Offices at Tarragindi and Wellers Hill were opened in 1957 and 1964. Service reservoirs were built at Wellers Hill in the 1970s, by when nearly all of the district was fully urbanised.

Commuting to town could be done by train from Yeerongpilly, by bus or by car along the Southeast Freeway (1977). Alternatively the freeway could be travelled to Mount Gravatt or the Nathan campus of Griffith University (1980).

Tarragindi, a suburb of the 1950s-60s, is bounded on its east by the freeway which looks across a series of hills and valleys with houses, public parks and the occasional high-gabled church. There are local shops along Toohey Road. Tarragindi's census populations have been:

Census DatePopulation
19546813
196612,540
197114,037
1976111,058
19819817
20019083
20069441
20119965
1With part of census area joined to Holland Park West.

Juliet O'Brien et al, A history of Wellers Hill, Tarragindi and Ekibin 1850-1976, Wellers Hill, Wellers Hill Parents and Citizens Association, 1976

Ekibin entry

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