Laurel Hill Farmhouse is a heritage-listed farm house at 105 Ruffles Road, Willow Vale, City of Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1883 to 1884 by Alexander Fortune for William Doherty. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 1 December 1997. History Laurel Hill Farmhouse, a single-storeyed timber farm house with attic, was erected in 1883-1884 for Pimpama arrowroot grower and manufacturer, William Doherty. The builder was Alexander Fortune of Coomera. At the time, Laurel Hill Farmhouse was considered the finest residence in Pimpama district, and in 1897 was photographed by the Queensland Lands Department as an example of a successful Queensland selector's home. Much of the Pimpama district had been taken up in the 1850s by William Duckett White of Beau Desert Station, who leased between the Logan and Coomera Rivers, including upper Hotham Creek (a tributary of Pimpama River), as Pimpama run. A small settlement was established on Pimpama River , but the site was abandoned within a few years in preference to Hotham Creek. Much of Pimpama run was thrown open for selection from April 1869, and White forfeited his remaining leasehold on Pimpama from 1 January 1870. The private subdivision and sale in February 1870 of town and farm lots at the junction of the Pimpama River and Hotham Creek, consolidated Pimpama township and initiated a small farming community of predominantly Irish settlers. In the 1860s, farmers along the Pimpama River experimented firstly with cotton growing, then with sugar, both of which initially were dependent on South Pacific Islands labour. By December 1876 the principal Pimpama sugar plantations (Ormeau, Malungmavel, Pimpama and Yahwulpah) had ceased production, and were devoted either to cattle or arrowroot, but some smaller farms in the district continued with sugar growing for several decades. The Pimpama selectors of the 1870s, searching for a new commercial crop, discovered that the climate, soil, and abundance of pure water in the Pimpama district were ideal for the cultivation and manufacture of arrowroot. Arrowroot gave about the same return as maize or potatoes, but was more frost, drought and flood resistant. The first commercial arrowroot in Pimpama was grown in the late 1860s, and the Lahey family, who moved to Pimpama in 1870 and eventually took up Sunnyside, adjoining William Doherty on Hotham Creek, went into arrowroot cultivation on a large scale, inventing a mechanical processing method which revolutionised the production of