Toowoomba property

I

The Giabal and Jarowair

Giabal and Jarowair are recognised as Toowoomba's two main Aboriginal language groups. Giabal country extends south of the city and Jarowair country north of it. The Jarowair language region takes in the landscape inside the Toowoomba Regional Council boundaries, reaching north to Crows Nest and west to Oakey. The Bonye Bonye festival and other ceremonies continued into the late 19th century, and groups travelled from south east Queensland and the south west, and from northern New South Wales, to gather at Gummingurru, west of Toowoomba, before the festival.

From 1840, British pastoralists made an incursion into the region and the traditional landscape changed dramatically. Aboriginal Australians who survived the frontier conflict of the time were pushed to society's fringe in camps, and later moved to missions at Deebing Creek and Durundur, then Barambah, now Cherbourg. Some local Aboriginal people worked on properties around Toowoomba during this contact period. The Gummingurru Aboriginal Corporation is restoring the site and its ancient stone circles, and the place stays important for ceremonies among the traditional groups and their neighbours.

II

Naming the swamp

Nobody has settled where the city's present name comes from, though it is widely accepted that it comes from an Aboriginal language. When Europeans first reached the place, they named it "Drayton Swamp", after the Toowoomba Swamp, and it was often nicknamed "The Swamp". One theory holds that after European settlement the local Aboriginal people called it "Tawampa", taken from "The Swamp".

The author Steele Rudd put another explanation to the Toowoomba City Council in a letter, tracing the name to "Toogoom", the reeds that grew in the area. He wrote that he remembered the Aboriginal name for "The Swamp" as Chinkery Yackan, meaning "water like the stars". The wife of an early resident, Thomas Alford, said she asked local Aboriginal people what they called the area and was told "Woomba Woomba", meaning springs and water lying underneath. She said the Alfords thought it unsuitable for their house and store, put "too-" in front and left out one "Woomba".

In 1875 William Henry Groom set down an account of the town in which he said the name came from an Aboriginal term for "great in the future", though he offered no evidence for it. The botanist Archibald Meston, in a book on Queensland's geography, argued that "Toowoom" or "Choowom" was the local name for a small native melon and that the word meant "melons there". The melon still grows along the Balonne and Warrego Rivers and in places closer to Toowoomba, but no evidence shows it grew near the swamps there.

III

Pastoralists and the frontier

The botanist and explorer Allan Cunningham reached Australia from Brazil and led an expedition inland, north from the New England region. In June 1827 he found four million acres of farming and grazing land, which he named the Darling Downs, with the Great Dividing Range along its eastern edge and the settlement at Moreton Bay 160 kilometres away. In 1840 Patrick Leslie and Peter Murphy set up Toolburra Station, the earliest British pastoralists to take up land on the Downs. Later that year "Eton Vale" was established by Arthur Hodgson, Gilbert Elliot and Cocky Rogers, on land that took in "The Swamp", the site of Toowoomba.

Hodgson's brother, Christopher Pemberton Hodgson, later described the fighting as "constant skirmishes", with the settlers taking control of the area from the local Aboriginal people. In his account the fighting was a bitter war that lasted three years from their arrival, and hundreds of Aborigines were killed. Spears, boomerangs and other spoil from those battles decorated the inside of the Eton Vale homestead. Attacks usually began as early morning raids on Aboriginal camps, and the Hodgsons brought in boys from distant Aboriginal groups to track defiant groups, Hodgson wrote.

IV

A town grows at the swamp

By the late 1840s closer settlement had set in, and the nearby township of Drayton had grown enough to support its own newspaper, general store and trading post, along with the Royal Bull's Head Inn, built by William Horton and still standing. The earliest British residents settled at "The Swamp" from 1849, and men there cut reeds and timber for use at Drayton.

In 1852 Thomas Alford opened the first store at Toowoomba. The town's land at "The Swamp" was surveyed in 1849 and again in 1853. By 1858 the town had 700 people, three hotels and many stores, and land that had sold for £4 an acre in 1850 was fetching £150 an acre. Governor Bowen granted the locals' wish, and on 24 November 1860 a new municipality was proclaimed.

The first town council election followed on 4 January 1861, won by William Henry Groom. The railway from Ipswich opened in 1867 and brought business development with it. In 1892 the township was proclaimed by the Under Secretary of Public Land, and in 1904 Toowoomba was declared a city. By the 1900s pastoralism had replaced agriculture and dairying. The city also served as the viceregal summer retreat for Queensland's governors, and during the Federation period it became a centre of art and culture with the founding of the Austral Society.

V

Floods, flowers and later years

In 1905 the Royal Agricultural Society merged with the Drayton and Toowoomba Agricultural and Horticultural Society, and the showgrounds on Campbell Street became the only venue for the annual show; in 1985 the show moved to a new site at Glenvale. The Rotary Club of Toowoomba was formed in 1930. During World War II the city held RAAF No.7 Inland Aircraft Fuel Depot, which was finished in 1942 and shut on 29 August 1944.

On 10 January 2011 Toowoomba was hit by a catastrophic flash flood. Unusually heavy rain in the days before had swollen the city's waterways, and around midday an intense storm came in from the north east and overwhelmed East Creek and West Creek, the creeks that flow through the central business district. In one day 149.6 mm fell. The flood damaged property and infrastructure and killed two people in the city.

Toowoomba took the title of Australia's Tidiest Town in 2008. The Carnival of Flowers is held every September and is known around the country, with buses bringing visitors from across the nation. In 2009, during the Q150 celebrations, it was named one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland, and in 2017 it recorded 255,639 attendees.

VI

Living in Toowoomba

Toowoomba sits on the crest of the range, about 700 metres above sea level and 132 kilometres west of Brisbane, where the South East Queensland and Darling Downs regions meet. The city is the council seat of the Toowoomba Region and the second-largest regional centre in Queensland. Two valleys run north from its southern edge, and East Creek and West Creek meet just north of the central business district to form Gowrie Creek. Rain on the easternmost streets drains east towards Moreton Bay.

The city has four distinct seasons and 159 public parks, kept up by the rich volcanic soil of the region, with jacaranda, camphor laurel and plane trees along many streets. Its central streets take their names from the history of the House of Stuart. It is known for buildings kept from the Victorian period, traditional Queenslander architecture, old churches and gardens, and a cafe and restaurant scene compared to Melbourne's. Landmarks include Queens Park, the Queensland State Rose Garden and the Empire Theatre, along with Laurel Bank Park, St James' Palace and Mt Meewah. More than fifty sites in the city are on the Queensland Heritage Register.