The creek appears on an 1859 survey as Chinaman's Creek — the name reportedly recalling a Chinese miner who died beside it en route to the Port Curtis goldfields. James Cash, the district's first permanent European settler, built a hut near the South Pine River in 1849; Cash's Crossing still carries his name.

Twenty-seven farms were surveyed along the river in 1864 and all taken up by 1866 — Ballinger, Greensill, Mountford, then Eaton, Leitch, Draper, Cuthbert, Ireland and Morgan: names still on the map today. A church (1866), the cemetery (1873), a receiving office (1874) and the school (1875, as Chinaman's Creek State School) followed. In June 1885 residents petitioned to drop the old name and the district became Albany Creek, after the Duke of Albany — a change also read as reflecting the era's anti-Chinese sentiment; both readings are part of the story.

For a century it stayed a farming village — 67 people in 1871, still only 163 in 1947 — with Seth Mole's store (c.1905) its focal point and the flood-prone Cash's Crossing bridges its saga. From about 1960 the dairy farms sold for subdivision: 1,523 people by 1971, 8,537 by 1991, about 16,400 today. The 36 estates in this map's parcel data are that era's visible layer.