Japoonvale
Rural settlement south-west of Innisfail thought to take its name from an Aboriginal word describing eels. The area was settled for cane growing in the early 1900s with the crop processed at Goondi mill. Timber and other crops from the South Johnstone area were taken by tramway to the Maria Creek wharf at Kurrimine Beach. When the South Johnstone mill opened in 1916, the tramway was extended, joining Japoonvale to the mill.
Jarvisfield
Rural locality south-east of Ayr towards the mouth of the Burdekin River, named after the Jarvisfield pastoral run (taken up in 1862). By the early 1880s, the former run had been cut up for farm selections, which supplied the Kalamia and Pioneer sugar mills. Growers in the area were advocating a new mill to process their crop, but were outmanoeuvred by John Drysdale, whose Inkerman mill opened in 1916. Jarvisfield farmers joined with the Haughton Sugar Co Ltd to relocate the Invicta mill works from Bundaberg to Giru in 1921, with cane from Jarvisfield and Rita Island processed there.
In the Depression year of 1933, the census recorded 689 residents in Jarvisfield, 61% of them male, with most of them occupants of a camp for unemployed men on the unused site for the proposed Jarvisfield sugar mill.
Jensen
Rural/residential district west of Townsville bounded on the north by the Bruce Highway and on the west by Alice River. The area was developed in the late 1960s as Cordelia Estate, renamed in 1991 by the Queensland Place Names Committee after Niels Jensen (1849-1928), a farmer on the Ross River plains.
Johnstone
River, named by George Dalrymple in 1873 after his colleague, Robert Johnstone, a sub-inspector of native police.
Shire, local government area south of Cairns amalgamated with Cardwell Shire in 2008 to form Cassowary Coast Regional Council.
The first sugar plantation was established near Innisfail in 1879, and two years later the Johnstone local government division was created from the northern portion of Hinchinbrook division. Timber cutters cleared the district, opening the land for sugar plantations, while Chinese miners displaced from gold and tin mines, established banana plantations. Settlement spread to Bingil Bay, where the Cutten brothers operated a tropical fruit orchard and a timber mill while inland Mena Creek and Silkwood were opened up in the early twentieth century for timber getting, sugar and dairying. Local growers persuaded the state government to set up the South Johnstone central sugar mill in 1916 and soldier settlers opened up the area around El Arish around the same time the Cairns to Ingham railway line went through in 1924. There was further expansion inland from Innisfail associated with the construction of the Palmerston Highway, linking Innisfail and Millaa Millaa, and completed in 1935. Initially the focus was on dairying, and Silkwood had a dairy factory until the 1940s, but the focus in the hinterland swung increasingly towards beef production.