Greenslopes

Greenslopes, a residential suburb, is five km south-east of central Brisbane. It includes the locality of Stones Corner and the part of Thompson Estate east of the South East Freeway. The suburb was named after a 19 hectare estate acquired by Frederick Wecker in 1857 in Old Cleveland Road, east of Stones Corner, between Pembroke Road and Kirkland Avenue (formerly Wecker Street).

The Greenslopes district was originally confined to the area south-east of Stones Corner. The part between Logan Road and the Ekibin (Creek) parklands was Dunellan, and the Greenslopes primary school was known as Dunellan from its opening in 1890 until rebuilt in 1924. East of the Greenslopes hospital was Mt Pleasant with the Mt Pleasant store at the corner of Logan Road and Plimsoll Street.

Greenslopes and Dunellan Estate were positioned between the Ipswich Road and Old Cleveland Road tramlines. In 1914 a branch line was opened from Stones Corner along Logan Road and Chatsworth Road, ending at Upper Cornwall Street, and from there the area was known as Greenslopes. Housing followed, including war service homes on the Dunellan Estate. By the outbreak of World War II most of Greenslopes' residential areas were built on, although there was a 30 acre site at the foot of Mt Stephens that was unused.

During the 1920s a scattering of shops and tradespeople opened along Logan Road, and by the late 1920s their number had doubled. Places of assembly in Logan Road included the Mt Pleasant Mission near Birdwood Road, the Hollywood Theatre (1926) near Chatswood Road and the school of arts. Schools were confined to the State primary, but there were Catholic schools in neighbouring Coorparoo.

The unused site near Mt Stephens was chosen in 1940 for a military base hospital. Specialist hospital architects, the Melbourne firm of Stephenson and Turner, were commissioned, and construction and fitting out of two blocks was completed by 1944. A multi-storey wing was built in 1980 and after the hospital was privatised in 1995 a further wing was added. Greenslopes was Australia's largest private hospital, with over 500 beds.

Greenslopes was a mature suburb by the early postwar years. The Logan Road shops provided the main shopping centre until activity was concentrated at the Greenslopes Shopping Mall (1986) near the old Mt Pleasant site. The mall has a supermarket and 36 other shops. The connection to Ipswich Road, Annerley, and the Buranda Plaza was lessened in 1977 when the South East Freeway was constructed through Thompson Estate and the Ekibin Creek (Burnett Swamp) corridor. These things, however, hardly affected the rise of house prices in Greenslopes, which was ranked with Norman Park and Morningside as the ring of suburbs predicted to be in demand in the 2000s.

Greenslopes' census populations have been: