Kerry

Kerry is a rural locality between Beaudesert and the Lamington National Park. The centre of the locality is where the Albert River is crossed by the Kerry Road, but for census purposes the population is counted in an area about 20 km from north to south, ending at the boundary of the national park.

The origin of the name is unrecorded, but it probably dates from early European exploration as there are a Mount Kerry and the Parish of Kerry.

Kerry Road was the first track to the Lamington National Park ranges, and it was along there that the O'Reilly family carried their farm equipment and belongings, beyond the farm selections along the Albert River valley. The Kerry primary school opened in 1884 and the Kerry Bridge Hotel was first recorded in the 1905 edition of the post office directory.

The Lamington National Park was declared in 1915 and Bernard O'Reilly's National Park guest house opened in 1926. Access to the guest house was by the Kerry Road or by Laheys Road, a timber-cutter's route from Canungra. (Laheys Road was declared a tourist road in 1941 and was the forerunner of the main access route, Lamington National Park Road.) The Kerry village had the Bridge Hotel, the primary school (1884-1943) and a little over forty farms (1949) of whom about half were recorded as having dairy herds. (The O'Reillys had given up dairying when the milk, bumped along on packhorses, turned into butter.)

Kerry's census populations have been: