The McConnel family of Cressbrook and Durundur stations are descended from the pastoralist children of James McConnell (1762-1831) and Margaret Houldsworth (1778-1845) who migrated from Scotland and England to Queensland in the 1840s. Notable family members include David Cannon McConnel (1818-1885), who settled at Cressbrook in 1841, his brother John McConnel (1806-1899), who joined him in the Cressbrook enterprise from 1844 and operated Durundur station from 1851, and Ursula Hope McConnel (1888-1957), an anthropologist.

Kathleen McArthur, botanical illustrator and conservationist, was born Kathleen Evans in Brisbane in 1915. In 1938 she married Malcolm McArthur, with whom she travelled to India and around Australia. They were divorced in 1947. From 1953, Kathleen began a major project documenting the wildflowers growing in her local area around Caloundra and the Sunshine Coast more generally. In 1962 she co-founded with her friend the poet Judith Wright the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland (WPSQ) and was the driving force behind the Cooloola Campaign which saved areas of the Sunshine Coast from sand mining.