Wooloowin, a residential suburb, is 6km north of central Brisbane. Until the 1970s Wooloowin also included the site of Kedron High School and the QUT Kedron Park campus, but that is now in neighbouring Kedron.

Wooloowin is on Lutwyche Road which was the main thoroughfare of the Windsor Shire (1887-1925), and Wooloowin occupied the shire’s far north-east corner. It was thus an outlying district, despite the opening of the Sandgate railway line in 1882 with stations at Wooloowin and Eagle Junction. The name ‘Wooloowin’ apparently began with the naming of the station.

Most of the houses in Wooloowin are interwar Queenslanders, built on large allotments. The area was home to a suburban middle class, and aspirations for post-primary education were satisfied in 1956 with the opening of the Kedron State High School on the former racecourse next to Kedron Brook. Forty years later Wooloowin’s housing market occupied a highly desirable niche: it was close to Lutwyche Road and Toombul shopping centres, had bus and rail public transport and about 70% of its dwellings were free standing (Queenslanders). Town houses and units were mostly east of the railway line. In 2002 Wooloowin’s median house price rise was the highest in Brisbane and proximity to higher priced Ascot and Wilston was part of the reason. Queenslander houses were demolished or moved away, to be replaced by dual dwellings, a cause of concern to heritage-minded residents.