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| View from Picnic Point
Lookout |
Toowoomba (including Drayton and Highfields)
Gracious and historic city to the west of Brisbane.
There can surely be no city in Australia more dramatically
located than Toowoomba. If you enter it from the south or
west you get the impression that it is a rather large and
pleasant city on some rather gently undulating country. If
you enter it from the east it is clear that the city dangles
on the edge of a plateau some 600-800 m above sea level. The
Warrego Highway from Brisbane rises steeply up the
escarpment and the city spreads from the edge of the
escarpment to the west and south.
The poet Bruce Dawe lived in Toowoomba for most of the
1970s and immortalised this dramatic location in his
excellent poem 'Provincial City'. His observations of the
town included:
'Climbing the range
your ears pop like champagne...'
You can smell the peace up here.
The proportion, the narrowness...'
'It moves, but oh so slowly
you would have to sleep years,
waking suddenly once in a decade
to surprise it in the act of change.'
Located 128 km from Brisbane via the Warrego Highway,
Toowoomba has an annual rainfall of 950 mm, its population
is close to 85 000 (making it the largest inland town in
Queensland and one of the largest in Australia) and it is
anticipated that the population will exceed 100 000 by the
year 2000. Over the years it has been known variously as the
'Regional Capital of the Darling Downs' (an accurate
description) and 'The Garden City' (a fair description given
the number of parks and public gardens and the proliferation
of tree-lined streets). It celebrates this last description
by holding the Carnival of Flowers every September.
The area around Toowoomba was first explored by Allan
Cunningham who discovered and named the Darling Downs after
the New South Wales Governor, Sir Ralph Darling.
Toowoomba as a township grew up in the 1840s as a
convenient stopping point on the route from Moreton Bay
(Brisbane) to the pastoral holdings to the west. It is easy
to imagine bullockies, horsemen and itinerant rural workers
stopping at the top of the hill after spending most of the
day trudging up the steep slopes of Gorman's Gap.
The first settlement was at Drayton (which now is part of
the southern suburbs of the city). It is a common name in
England and was obviously named after one of at least a
dozen Draytons in that country.
Drayton can lay claim to being the first town established
beyond the Great Dividing Range in Queensland. It was
settled in 1842 and by 1847 the Royal Bulls Head Inn had
been built. It was a popular haunt for the local squatters
and their workers. The first proprietor was William Horton,
a convict from Worcestershire in England who, so rumour has
it, was actually descended from the local aristocracy.
Drayton managed to have a separate life from Toowoomba
until the 1860s when it was overwhelmed by the increasing
importance of the nearby township. During that time however
Drayton achieved a number of historic firsts. It was at
Drayton that the first newspaper in the area, the Darling
Downs Gazette, was published in 1858. That same year saw the
construction and operation of the area's first sawmill. The
following year saw the first sessions of the circuit court
and the first race meeting and in 1866 the first Roman
Catholic church was built. Darling Street, Drayton was the
birthplace of Arthur Hoey Davis (14 November 1868) otherwise
known as Steele Rudd who wrote On Our Selection and created
the immortal characters of Dad and Dave. See
Greenmount for more details.
In 1852 the squatter Thomas Alford settled to the north
of Drayton and called his property Toowoomba. Slowly a
settlement grew up in this area. Its original, and rather
unromantic, name was 'The Swamp'. This was changed in 1858
although, ironically, it is claimed that the Aboriginal word
'toowoomba' means either 'the swamp' or a variety of melon
which grew on the banks of the swamp. Some sources claim
that it was a reference to the reeds on the edges of the
swamp. These definitions are based on the notion that the
name is a corruption of 'tchwampa' - the swamp, 'choowoom' -
native melon, or 'woomba woomba' meaning 'reeds in the
swamp'.
Toowoomba was officially declared a municipality in 1860,
became a town in 1887 and was declared a city in 1904.
In the 1860s the town expanded rapidly and quickly
outstripped the smaller Drayton. It was during this period
that the railway reached Toowoomba (1867 - it did not reach
Drayton until 1915), a branch of the Bank of New South Wales
was opened, the gaol and Court House were built, and the
School of Arts and numerous churches were built.
It was during the latter part of the nineteenth century
after the arrival of the railway in 1867 (the Railway
Station was built in 1874) that the town blossomed with
large numbers of elegant Victorian buildings being erected
and the trees, which are such a distinctive part of the
city's appearance, being planted.
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| St Patricks Church
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Things to see:
Picnic Point Lookout
A first stop for anyone coming from Brisbane should be
Picnic Point Lookout - signposted from the Warrego Highway
on the eastern side of town. The Lookout, on the edge of the
escarpment, offers superb views over the Lockyer Valley and
the bare Tabletop Mountain dominates the landscape.
Parks and Gardens
This is but one of the parks within the city limits.
Toowoomba boasts a total of 1044 hectares of parkland
including the natural bushland escarpment Redwood Park and
Jubilee Park and the centrally located Queens Park (owned by
the Council since 1865) which includes mature trees and a
number of playing fields. Next to Queens Park is the
beautiful Botanical Gardens which are one of the highlights
of the city's annual Carnival of Flowers festivities.
Botanical Gardens and Flower Displays
People interested in floral displays should visit the
beautiful Botanical Gardens or the privately owned Leegray
Azalea Nursery in Kuhls Road, Highfields - (07) 4630 8292
which specialises in azaleas and rhododendrons.
Webb Park and George Essex Evans
In Webb Park on Prince Henry Drive is a broken column
monument to the local poet George Essex Evans (1863-1909).
Now little known outside of Queensland he was recognised in
his time as the equal of his contemporaries - Paterson,
Lawson, Henry Kendall and Adam Lindsay Gordon and his poems
'The Women of the West', about the women pioneers of western
Queensland, and a patriotic poem titled 'An Australian
Symphony' were his most famous works.
Like Paterson and Lawson he had a delightful sense of
outback humour as this sample from 'A Drought Idyll'
indicates.
'McGinty left his pumpkin-pie and gazed upon the scene:
His cows stood propped 'gainst tree and fence wherever they
could lean;
The horse he'd fixed with sapling forks had fallen down once
more;
The fleas were hopping joyfully on stockyard, path, and
floor;
The flies in thousands buzzed about before his waving hand;
The hungry pigs squealed as he said, 'Me own, me native
land!'
'Queensland, me mother! Ain't yer well?' he asked. 'Come
tell me how's - '
'Dry up! Dry up!' yelled Mrs Mac, 'Go out and feed the
cows.'
A Walk in Toowoomba
Toowoomba has a surprisingly elegant and gracious city
centre with many handsome old buildings, wide streets, and a
level of sophistication which is uncharacteristic in what is
basically a large country town.
The National Trust of Queensland has produced an
inexpensive brochure titled A Walk and Drive of Toowoomba
which takes visitors on a self guided conducted tour of the
city's most elegant buildings. Included in the tour are the
Post Office at 136 Margaret Street which was designed in an
Italianate style by the Government Architect in 1878. Over
the years it has been greatly altered but the clock tower
and the two storey loggia are original features of this
imposing building. At the time of construction it cost
£8,100.
Nearby is the Court House which was built in the 1870s in
the Classic Revival style. It is a suitable accompaniment to
the Post Office. Over the road is the Strand Theatre which
has a very distinctive semi-circular window and an unusual
central balcony.
Toowoomba has a number of distinctive churches in the
central business district. There's St Stephens Church in
Neil Street which was built in 1884. There's the gothic
magnificence of St Lukes (1891) on the corner of Ruthven and
Herries Streets. And the gothic style of St Patricks Roman
Catholic Church (1889) dominates James Street at the top of
the town centre.
Historic Houses
The city also boasts a number of beautiful historic houses.
The most famous of which are Vacy, Fernside, Clifford House,
Tawa and Smithfield.
Vacy Hall
Vacy Hall in Russell Street is now an historic guest house.
Built in the 1880s the house is characterised by beautiful
bay windows, a magnificent surrounding garden, and extensive
areas of patterned parquetry floors.
Fernside
Fernside in Prince Henry Drive between Margaret and Campbell
streets is a large brick residence built in the early 1870s
on a piece of land which, at the time, was 9.7 hectares and
included a coach house and stables. In the early 1880s it
was used as a summer retreat by Sir Arthur Kennedy, the
Governor of Queensland (1877-1883).
Clifford House
Clifford House at 120 Russell Street, over the road from
Vacy Hall, is recognised by many as Toowoomba's finest old
home. Now functioning as a restaurant it was built in 1860
as a residential club for squatters. It is a superb example
of the way stone and timber can be integrated with the
sandstone providing the solidity of the building while the
upstairs timber verandah is an almost delicate addition.
Tawa
Tawa in Boulton Street can be considered the oldest
remaining cottage in Toowoomba. A small cottage built from
home made bricks and with simple pit sawn timber floors and
a shingle roof it was completed in the 1850s on a site
originally owned by the famous pastoralist Thomas Mort.
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| Smithfield Homestead near
Toowoomba |
Smithfield Homestead
On the way out to Drayton there are signs to Smithfield
Homestead in Panda Street. This historic home is now
surrounded by ordinary suburbia.
It was designed by the architects J. Marks and Sons
probably for the grazier and landowner James Taylor. It is
by any measure a superb rural residence having been built in
stone with wide verandahs and elegant paired timber columns.
The buildings most famous occupant was a successful
German industrialist Oscar Flemmich who kept thoroughbred
horses and employed a large number of grooms and servants.
It is said that when he left the area he shot all his horses
and dogs rather than let them go to another owner.
Cobb & Co Museum
Toowoomba's most notable tourist attraction is the Cobb & Co
Museum at 27 Lindsay Street (07) 4639 1971 which is part of
the Queensland Museum. It is open from 10.00-4.00
Monday-Friday and 1.00 p.m. - 4.00 p.m. on weekends and
public holidays. It is more comprehensive than its name
suggests tracing the history of horse drawn transportation
in Australia from old timber wagons, spring wagons, and
bullock drays through to the Cobb & Co coaches and the
elegant Victoria and a landau used by the Duke of Edinburgh
when he visited the colony in 1876. It has a total of 31
vehicles.
Royal Bulls Head Inn, Drayton
The Royal Bulls Head Inn was the location of the first
Church of England church service on the Darling Downs when,
in 1848, Rev Benjamin Glennie held a service in one of the
rooms.
The building was extended in 1859 and for some time it
was known as the best building on the Darling Downs. It was
certainly good enough for the Governor of Queensland to stay
the night.
Today this remarkable building, which through accident
rather than any conservation intent remains much as it was
in the mid nineteenth century, is owned by the National
Trust. It is open from 10.00-4.00 from Thursday to Monday.
The original 1847 kitchen, the rooms of the hotel, and the
interior have all been lovingly restored and preserved by
the National Trust.
St Matthews Church, Drayton
Drayton also boasts the interesting St Matthews Church which
was built in 1887 and has the knocker from the Royal Bulls
Head Inn on the Vestry door.
Australian Businesses for sale
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Hotels for sale
Broadwalk Business Brokers
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Wrecking Yard for sale in Toowoomba.
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