Samsonvale

Samsonvale is a rural/residential suburb of the former Pine Rivers Shire, 30 km north of central Brisbane. Mount Samson (690m) is at an eastern point of the D'Aguilar Range, about four km north-east of Mount Glorious. Mount Samson is shown on surveyor Robert Dixon's map of the Moreton Bay district, but the origin of its name is apparently unrecorded.

In 1845 William Joyner in partnership with W. Mason purchased the Samsonvale pastoral run (1844), so-called because of its proximity to Mount Samson. Joyner died in 1847 and his widow married the proprietor of the adjoining Whiteside property, John Griffin, in 1852. The properties were merged and run successfully, enabling the owners to build a two-storey homestead, Samsonvale House (1865-1949). Much of the Samsonvale property was resumed in the 1880s for closer-settlement, although there had been settlement in the previous decade requiring the opening of the Mount Samson, Kibble and Samson Creek primary schools (1875, 1876, and 1880).

Farming was varied: bananas, vegetable-growing, citrus, dairying, pigs and poultry. Timber was cut for building and for firewood. A hall was built in 1890. The post office directory (1902) recorded 35 farmers, the Samsonvale Dairy Company (1892) and a Presbyterian Church (1884-1973). The 1949 directory indicated that the vast majority of farmers were in the dairy industry, the other few being in fruit-growing and poultry. The public hall by then had been rebuilt, and there was a local station (1919) on the Dayboro train line.

The second of two water storages for the Pine Rivers district was constructed in the early 1970s. Lake Samsonvale (1976) inundated the site of the public hall and much of the best farm land in Samsonvale. Whiteside hugs the north-east shore of the lake. Samsonvale's census populations have been: