Toowoomba

Toowoomba, nicknamed 'The Garden City' and 'T-Bar', is a city on the border of the South East Queensland and Darling Downs regions of Queensland, Australia. It is located west of Queensland's capital, Brisbane. The urban population of Toowoomba as of the was 142,163, having grown at an average annual rate of 1.45% over the previous two decades. Toowoomba is the second-most-populous inland city in Australia after the nation's capital, Canberra. It is also the second-largest regional centre in Queensland and is often referred to as the capital of the Darling Downs, or the 4th biggest city in South East Queensland after Brisbane, Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. The city serves as the council seat of the Toowoomba Region.
Toowoomba, one of Australia's oldest inland cities, was founded in 1849 on the lands of the Giabal and Jarowair people. The city's central streets were named after the history of the House of Stuart. The city became the viceregal summer retreat of Queensland's governors. The city witnessed several significant events during Australia's Victorian period, including the War of Southern Queensland and Battle of One Tree Hill. During the Federation period, Toowoomba emerged as a major artistic and cultural centre with the establishment of the Austral Society.
Toowoomba is celebrated for its preserved Victorian-era and traditional Queenslander architecture, historic churches and gardens, and vibrant food, and coffee culture. The city boasts street art, laneways, and numerous nature trails. The city experiences a distinct four seasons and is home to festivals including the Carnival of Flowers. Notable landmarks include Queens and Laurel Bank Park, the Queensland State Rose Garden, the Empire Theatre, St James' Palace, and Mt Meewah.

Etymology

The exact origin of the city's current name is unknown, although it is widely accepted that the name derives from an Aboriginal language.
When Toowoomba was first discovered by Europeans, it was named "Drayton Swamp" and was often nicknamed "The Swamp". One theory is that after European settlement, the local Aboriginal people referred to it as "Tawampa", which is borrowed from "The Swamp".
Another theory is that it derives from the name "Toogoom". This theory was first proposed by author Steele Rudd in a letter to the Toowoomba City Council. He claimed that his father told him that in 1848, he first saw Toowoomba and that he assisted in laying it out the following year. He believed that it derived from the native name "Toogoom" because of the reeds that grew in the area. Rudd also wrote that he remembered that the original Aboriginal name for "The Swamp" was Chinkery Yackan meaning "water like the stars".
Another theory was proposed by the wife of pioneer Toowoomba resident Thomas Alford. She claimed to have asked the Aboriginals what they called the area; they replied with "Woomba Woomba", meaning "the springs and the water underneath". However, she claimed that the Alfords thought this would not be a suitable name for their house and store, so they added the prefix "too-" and omitted one "Woomba", hence "Toowoomba".
In 1875, William Henry Groom wrote an account of Toowoomba. He stated that "Toowoomba" derived from the Aboriginal term "great in the future". However, he did not provide a source for his information.
Another theory was proposed by botanist Archibald Meston in a book titled A Geographical History of Queensland. He wrote:
While this melon still exists and can be found in areas along the Balonne and Warrego Rivers, as well as in areas closer to Toowoomba, there is no evidence that the melon grew near the Toowoomba swamps.
A man named Enoggera Charlie proposed another theory in a news story he wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald. He claimed that when he was looking for work as a tar boy, he camped overnight near the Toowoomba Swamp. He claimed that when he asked a shepherd about the naming of the Toowoomba Swamp, he was told that near the junction of the East and West Swamps, there was a log with an inscription informing swagmen of the way to a well-known homestead where food rations were available. He claimed that the inscription read "To Woombrah".
A man named Ardlaw Lawrence put forward his theory shortly after Enoggera Charlie. He suggested that the name was an Anglicised form of "Boowoomga", which comes from the term for "thunder" in the dialect spoken by the Aboriginal tribe inhabiting areas along the Upper Burnett River. However, it is highly unlikely that this theory is correct, as this dialect was not spoken in the Darling Downs region and Lawrence did not state why he transferred the name to the Darling Downs. In fact, the distance between Toowoomba and Gayndah is just over 218 kilometres as the crow flies.
In 1899, George Essex Evans published his theory in a pamphlet. He wrote that "Toowoomba" was an Aboriginal word meaning "meeting of the waters", although no evidence was provided to support this claim.

Geography

Toowoomba is on the crest of the Great Dividing Range, around above sea level. A few streets lie on the eastern edge of the range, but the majority of the city is situated west of the divide.
The city is situated on the edge of the range and the low ridges behind it. Two valleys extend north from the southern boundary, originating from springs on either side of Middle Ridge near Spring Street, at an altitude of approximately. These waterways, East Creek and West Creek, converge just north of the CBD to form Gowrie Creek.
Gowrie Creek drains west across the Darling Downs and is a tributary of the Condamine River, part of the Murray–Darling basin. The water flowing down Gowrie Creek travels approximately to the mouth of the Murray River near Adelaide, South Australia. Rain falling on the easternmost streets of Toowoomba flows east to Moreton Bay, a distance of around.
The rich volcanic soil in the region helps maintain the 159 public parks that are scattered across the city. Jacaranda, camphor laurel and plane trees line many of the city streets. The city's reputation as 'The Garden City' is highlighted during the Australian Carnival of Flowers festival held in September each year. Deciduous trees from around the world line many of the parks, giving a display of Spring colour.

Suburbs

The City of Toowoomba includes the following suburbs:

² - from former Shire of Jondaryan

History

Traditional inhabitants of the land

and Jarowair are recognised as the two main Aboriginal language groups of the Toowoomba with Giabal extending south of the city while Jarowair extends north of the city. The Jarowair language region includes the landscape within the local government boundaries of the Toowoomba Regional Council, particularly Toowoomba north to Crows Nest and west to Oakey.
This traditional landscape changed dramatically from 1840 with the incursion of British pastoralists into the region. Those Aboriginal Australians that survived the frontier conflict of this time were pushed to the fringe of society in camps and later moved to missions such as Deebing Creek, Durundur and later Barambah. Some local Aboriginal Australians worked on the properties around Toowoomba in this contact period. Ceremonies such as the Bonye Bonye festival remained active until the late 19th century – groups from south east and south west Queensland as well as northern New South Wales gathered at Gummingurru, near Gowrie prior to attending the festival. The Gummingurru site with its ancient stone circles is being restored by the Gummingurru Aboriginal Corporation and is an important ceremonial place for not only the traditional groups but neighbouring groups.

British exploration

Toowoomba's colonial history traces back to when English botanist and explorer Allan Cunningham arrived in Australia from Brazil. He conducted an inland expedition north from the New England region and in June 1827 encountered of rich farming and grazing land, which he named as the Darling Downs, bordered on the east by the Great Dividing Range and west of the settlement of Moreton Bay.

British colonisation

In 1840, Patrick Leslie and Peter Murphy established Toolburra Station south-west of Toowoomba, being the first British pastoralists to take land on the Downs. Later that same year, Eton College graduate, Arthur Hodgson, together with Gilbert Elliot and Cocky Rogers established "Eton Vale" on land which included "The Swamp", now known as Toowoomba.
In forming Eton Vale, Hodgson's brother Christopher Pemberton Hodgson, later described the "constant skirmishes with the natives" to wrest control of the area off the local Aboriginal people. He wrote that hundreds of Aborigines were killed in a bitter war that lasted three years from the time they arrived in the area. The interior of Eton Vale homestead was decorated with spears and boomerangs and other spoil which the Hodgsons had collected after hard fought battles with "the blacks". Hodgson wrote "who would not rather put a ball in their hearts to rid themselves of their ceremonials and presence at once?"
The general mode of attack by the colonists would involve an early morning raid on the Aboriginal camps. The Hodgsons would "generally employ our boys from distant tribes to act as trackers" to locate defiant groups of Aboriginal people. Sometimes a prisoner was taken and "ordered to conduct us to his own camp on risk of his life" and once at this camp, "we rushed to attack it and we had, notwithstanding, ample revenge". Hodgson describes how Aborigines would try to recover "the corpses of those who had fallen victims to the white man's gun in defiance of a sentry on the lookout". Those who were at peace with the Hodgson brothers, were kept in line with methods such as the taking of young boys from the tribe as hostages. Hodgson claimed that if the local Aboriginal people were to be considered a species of simia acaudata or tail-less monkey, they had to be "hunted down and exterminated".