Banyo, a residential and industrial suburb, is situated between Nundah Creek and the Kedron Brook floodway, 12 km north-east of central Brisbane.

During the early settlement period Banyo was part of the Nudgee area, and the former Nudgee State primary school (1928) is in Banyo. A railway station on the Sandgate line (1882) was originally named ‘Clapham Junction’ in the expectation that it would be the place at which the North Coast line would intersect the Sandgate. However, the naming proved erroneous, as the junction was moved to Northgate and Clapham Junction was renamed ‘Banyo’ in 1897. The renaming occurred 13 years after the Clapham Junction estate was put up for sale, one of several along the Nudgee-Sandgate railway line in the 1880s.

It is thought that the name Banyo was an Aboriginal expression describing a rising slope known as Beehive Hill, part of the site chosen for the Pius XII seminary, now the Australian Catholic University (2003) and St Paul’s Theological College.

By the 1920s there were about 400 people in Banyo: some farmers, a few storekeepers and residents who commuted by rail to metropolitan employment. A school of arts in St Vincents Street was opened in 1920. There was ample space in Banyo in 1942 for the American Army to erect a depot in Earnshaw Road, amounting to 75 buildings including kitchens, mess halls, cinema and infirmary. In 1945 part of the site with a railway siding was acquired by the Committee of Direction of Fruit Marketing for a cannery, and the Golden Circle factory opened in 1947. It has floor space of eight acres and by 1953 processed 32,000 tons of fruit for 2500 growers. Known as the Northgate Cannery, it is in Banyo.

Another part of the US site was transferred to the Australian Army for an Ordnance Depot (1950) and yet another was reserved as a Railways engineering workshop (1958).

Banyo had over 3000 people by the early postwar years. There were a bowling club and a memorial hall (in addition to the school of arts) but only half a dozen shops and a garage according to the Post Office directory (1949). Banyo High School (since amalgamated with the Nudgee State School in 2003 to form Earnshaw College) was opened in 1955, a short way from the Pius XII Seminary which opened in 1941. The seminary closed in 2001, and since 2003 the premises have housed a campus of the Australian Catholic University.

In addition to the educational bodies already mentioned Banyo has a Catholic primary school (1947). There are local shops near the railway station, four churches and part of the Virginia golf course (1930) along Nundah/Downfall Creek. Access to Banyo by road accelerated with the opening of the Gateway Motorway on Banyo’s eastern edge.

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