Calamvale (4116)
Located 18 km south of Brisbane, adjoining Karawatha Forest, Calamvale (4116) was named for one of its earliest landowners, James Calam whose original land and homestead was sold to the McGuires in 1984 and redeveloped into the Calamvale Hotel at about the time Calamvale was becoming rapidly urbanised.
Calamvale is well serviced by about four shopping centres, all with major retailers, supermarkets and restaurants. There are three schools and colleges including a special school, a police station and four churches. Although Calamvale has no train stations, adjoining suburbs do. Calamvale also has ready access to Brisbane and surrounding suburbs via a network of some nine bus routes and major arterial roads.
Despite being well urbanised, Calamvale is characterised by its Golden Pond Wetlands system draining into Calamvale Creek which provides a protected habitat for various wildfowl, eels and turtles, and was specially designed by environment engineers from Griffith University to purify the stormwater runoff as it is collected and progresses down the creek through a series of sediment basins, pollutant traps, and melaleuca wetlands with a chain of lagoons.
Because it is primarily residential with modern detached homes on large acreage blocks surrounded by protected environmental parklands, and it is readily accessible to Brisbane, Calamvale is an affluent suburb populated by young professionals with families and a medium to high average household income. In 2011, 15200 people lived in Calamvale, their average age is 31 years. Most were born overseas in China, Taiwan, New Zealand, India or Hong Kong such that Mandarin, Korean, Cantonese, Hindi, and Vietnamese were spoken alongside English at home.
