In 1676 James Nicol, a member of a leading Dundee merchant family, married Barbara Scrymgeour a member of the family of the Earl of Dundee, the hereditary Banner Bearer of Scotland and a descendant of "Nicol Carron le Scrymgeour" who held the Banner for King Robert the Bruce at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314.

Their great great grandson, George Nicol married Margaret Wedderburn, a member of the principal merchant family of Dundee and the hereditary clerks of Dundee.  The Wedderburns were descended from Walter de Wedderburn (1296).

Two of George and Margaret's sons, Peter and Henry came to Moreton Bay in 1840.  Peter was a Druggist and became Administrator of the hospital in the convict settlement. He married the daughter of Sergeant William Jones (the Barrack Sergeant in the Moreton Bay Colony) in 1843, his first wife Margaret Morrison having died of TB in 1840, only three months after arriving in Australia.  She died childless.

Peter became a Doctor after training at the hospital, and in the late 1840's he travelled to the Darling Downs calling on farms as a travelling doctor.  He also had a farm at Rosewood, west of Ipswich.

In the late 1840's, Peter and Henry purchased 25,000 acres of land near Stanthorpe and stocked the property with sheep. They called the property "BALLANDEAN" after the Wedderburn Estate near Dundee in Scotland.

The "Moreton Bay Courier" a forerunner of the Brisbane "Courier Mail") reports in the 1860's that Ballandean was the "centre of social life and grace in the western regions" and that "the homestead contained family silver and crockery of considerable value".

Peter was killed in a horse riding accident leaving his brother Henry and his sister (who arrived in the 1850's) to look after his family.  Henry went back to Scotland in 1860 and returned after visiting Ogilvie relatives in France.  From France he brought back to Australia grape vines and was the first person to grow grapes in the Stanthorpe district but he never made wine. That was left to a Catholic Priest in the mid 1870's.  Today, most of the vineyards in the region are on what was the Ballandean property, and the small town of that name is the centre for the wine industry.

Henry became Administrator of Queensland Institutions, a position gained for him by Andrew Petrie.

Clan members Helen Nicol, Jill Easton,  Counsellor Peter Nicol and Tracey Nicol are of this family.