Texas

Texas
Quiet rural service centre.
Texas is located 101 km from Stanthorpe and 159 km from Tenterfield on the Dumaresq River. It is really a very small community serving the surrounding grazing area. Like so many of Queensland's rural settlements it spreads and has lots of vacant land within the boundaries of the town.

There was a time when the town was important. It was first settled in 1842 and was named after the nearby 'Texas Station' - the largest landholding in the area. In 1868 George Myles was appointed Sheep Inspector and border customs officer. In the 1870s the area became a centre of tobacco growing and in 1876 the town had its own factory which converted the tobacco leaves into cakes and plugs. But it was still hardly a town. A report in 1886 describes Texas as 'the town only exists on paper' and describes it as a hotel, a store, a few cottages and the factory.

The famous flood of 28 March 1890 wiped out the tobacco factory and what there was of the town. People were forced to climb trees and wait until the flood waters receded. The town moved 2 km north to higher ground. The town's interest with tobacco continued for nearly a century but it started to decline in the late 1950s so that today there is little evidence of tobacco growing.

Around the turn of the century Chinese were employed to grow tobacco in the area. One of the pamphlets at the Museum recalls: 'The Chinese tobacco grower's farm usually consisted of five acres on which he would put down three well which were fifteen feet deep...The growers were terrific workers. They carried 2 six gallon watering cans full of water on a pole across their shoulders. They walked between the rows and sprinkled the plants on each side simultaneously as they walked, or rather jogged, between the rows.'

The town has a nice sense of humour about its very unusual name. In the main street there is a Dallas Gift Shop.

Things to see:

Texas Historical Museum
The most interesting feature of the town is the Texas Historical Museum, located in the old Police house (not the Police Station) which was built in 1890 after the floods. It is open on Saturdays from 10.00-3.00. However a phone call to the numbers listed on the gate (53 1169 or 53 1410) will get the Museum opened promptly during the week.

In recent years the museum has expanded beyond the police house (which is organised so that local pieces of memorabilia have been placed in the appropriate rooms) and now includes a shop from Smithfield, the old Gaol (with special steel reinforcement between the timbers to ensure that even the most committed inmate could not escape), a special room for a telephone display and some interesting old farming equipment.

Just along the street from the Museum is a disused building with the Cobb & Co sign on the side of it. This was used by the Cobb & Co South Queensland Transport company until quite recently.