North Star

Zillmere sits north of Brisbane's centre, and the football club that carries the suburb into Queensland's league system began with a withdrawal. The Zillmere Church of Christ stopped backing its football teams, and a group of local fathers took the teams on themselves in 1958, under the name Zillmere Stars Junior Soccer Club.

The club took the Queensland Cup in 1984 and again in 1985.

League titles followed in the next decade: a grand final won 2-0 against Rochedale Rovers in 1992, then 2-1 against Taringa Rovers two years later. Money troubles in the middle of the 1990s ended that period. A business merger with Brisbane Strikers FC in 1996 restructured North Star, dropped it out of the top flight and returned it to amateur status.

The way back took fifteen years and ran through Royce Brownlie, who played for the club and then coached it. Brownlie had spent his own career in higher company — Brisbane Strikers in the NSL, Queensland Roar in the A-League, Swindon Town in England, Wellington Phoenix across the Tasman. Under him North Star won the Brisbane Premier League Division 1 grand final in 2011 and went up.

Home is O'Callaghan Park on Jennings Street, a ground that holds 2,000 for football, though the park itself takes five times that for Australian football.

The fathers who started it in 1958 were replacing something the church had let go; the club is still on the same patch of Zillmere.