IThe Koobenpul and the first industries
The Koobenpul lived along the mainland coastal strip that stretched between Talwarrapin (Redland Bay) and the Mairwar (Brisbane River) river mouth, which includes the area now known as Ormiston. Canoe trees still stand along Hilliards Creek, and so does a bora ring, both from before settlement. Ormiston was originally part of the township of Cleveland. James Maskell set up a brickworks on Hilliards Creek's eastern bank in 1852, and Thomas Blacket Stephens owned a fellmongery (wool scour) until the early 1860s.
Louis Hope and the Ormiston name
Captain Louis Hope, a Scottish aristocrat who helped found the Queensland sugar industry, bought land around Ormiston in 1853. Between 1858 and 1865 he built Ormiston House as the centre of a sugar estate of 325 acres. The property was first called Woojanness, then renamed Ormiston after the family's ancestral village in Scotland. Hope ran the plantation until 1875. In 1875 he lost a dispute about access to his sugar mill and chose to dismantle it. The house has served as a museum since the 1960s.
The railway gives the area its name
For many years the land around Ormiston House was still known as Cleveland. The railway arrived in 1889, and the new station and its surroundings took the name Ormiston too. On 13 April 1872 Cleveland West State School opened, and around 1900 the school became Ormiston State School.
Hilliards Creek roughly aligns with Ormiston's western border. The Cleveland railway line cuts through the southern half of the locality, and Ormiston railway station serves the area. Empire Point, on the coast, sits next to Tolston Terrace.