Ebbw Vale

Ebbw Vale, a former coal and clay-products area, is a small residential suburb 6 km north-east of central Ipswich. It was named after the Ebbw Vale colliery, opened by John Jones in 1877, the name being of Welsh origin. Ebbw Vale, Monmouthshire, was a coal-mining centre, as well as having iron-processing industries and limestone deposits.

Ebbw Vale is on the Brisbane to Ipswich railway line. A siding was built for a colliery in 1889 and when a station was opened there it was named St Helens (1909). In the following year it was changed to Ebbw Vale, and it became one of East Ipswich's important industrial localities. Brittains Bricks and Pipes was opened in Ebbw Vale in about 1880, remaining there until 1900 when it was moved to Darra. The Dinmore Pottery was opened in the 1880s on the site of the Ebbw Vale colliery, and in 1887 the Whitwood colliery, near the siding, and the Reliance Pottery in Cairns Road were opened. The pottery site has revealed a rich fossil field and complex geological remains. Much later (1911) the Ebbw Vale Brick Co north of the railway station was opened, diversifying into clay pipes and sanitary ware.

Housing south of the railway station extends along Brisbane Road, but no school has been located there. A reserve has a local war memorial (1918) recording the names of 22 enlisted men, and in 2004 it was given a heritage listing. The reserve, donated by Whitwood colliery c1889, is an early soccer venue where the local St Helen's club played. High Street on Ebbw Vale's western border has several notable timber houses.

In 2009 a rare and endangered native olive, the cooneana olive bush (notelaea ipsviciensis), was observed growing around Ebbw Vale and Dinmore. The first two specimens, discovered in 1976 in the grounds of the Cooneana Homestead, were destroyed by dumping of mining debris before they could be studied or described further, and the species was subsequently presumed extinct until rediscovery in the 1980s.

Ebbw Vale's census populations have been: