Toowoomba - Culture and History

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.