The city witnessed several significant events during Australia's Victorian period, including the War of Southern Queensland and Battle of One Tree Hill.

Toowoomba, a city renowned for its cathedrals and universities, is celebrated for its preserved Victorian-era and traditional Queenslander architecture, historic churches and gardens, and vibrant food, and coffee culture.

Notable landmarks include Queens and Laurel Bank Park, the Empire Theatre, St James' Palace, and Mt Meewah.

He wrote:[11] "Toowoom" or "Choowom" was the local blacks' name for a small native melon (Cucumis pubescens) which grew plentifully on the site of the township.

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 (including the town of Gayndah).

The water flowing down Gowrie Creek travels approximately 3,000 km (1,900 mi) to the mouth of the Murray River near Adelaide, South Australia.

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 (now Cherbourg).

[9][17][18] 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 4 million acres (16,000 km2) of rich farming and grazing land, which he named as the Darling Downs,[19] bordered on the east by the Great Dividing Range and 160 kilometres (100 mi) west of the settlement of Moreton Bay.

In 1840, Patrick Leslie (second son of the ninth Laird of Warthill) and Peter Murphy established Toolburra Station 56 miles (90 km) south-west of Toowoomba, being the first British pastoralists to take land on the Downs.

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".

The Hodgsons would "generally employ our [black] boys from distant tribes to act as trackers" to locate defiant groups of Aboriginal people.

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".

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".

[21] Towards the end of the 1840s, closer settlement was occurring and the nearby township of Drayton had grown to the point where it had its own newspaper, general store, trading post and the Royal Bull's Head Inn, which was built by William Horton and still stands today.

[27] A map advertising the auction shows that the estate was bordered by Bridge, Mary and Lindsay Streets and overlooking and adjoining the Royal Agricultural Society's Showgrounds.

[citation needed] During World War II, Toowoomba was the location of RAAF No.7 Inland Aircraft Fuel Depot (IAFD), completed in 1942 and closed on 29 August 1944.

Immediately to the east of the CBD is the Caledonian Estate, an area of turn-of-the-20th-century housing, ranging from humble workers cottages to large stately homes, in the classic wooden Queenslander style.

After years of neglect, the Empire Theatre was extensively renovated in the late 1990s, but retains much of its art deco architecture and decorations,[40] especially the proscenium arch.

In the Commonwealth Parliament, Toowoomba forms part of the Division of Groom, which is held by Garth Hamilton for the Liberal National Party of Queensland.

Buses bring people from around the nation, and a popular way to arrive at the carnival from Brisbane is on chartered antique steam and diesel trains, which captures the yester-year aspect of travel to Toowoomba with 19th-century wooden carriages.

As a result of the festival, over 50 pieces of large-scale, public art exist throughout the Toowoomba CBD, which has led to a transformation of previously underutilised lane and alleyways, as well as a reduction in costs associated with graffiti management.

[61] The Clysedales dropped out of the Queensland Cup after the 2006 season due to financial difficulties and are no longer a feeder club for the Brisbane Broncos.

Toowoomba is home to 12 clubs including South West Queensland Thunder, Fairholme College, Garden City Raiders, Highfields, Rockville Rovers, St Albans, South Toowoomba Hawks, St Ursula's College, University of Southern Queensland, West Wanderers and Willowburn.

The inaugural FKG Tour of Toowoomba was won by Patrick Shaw riding for the Virgin Blue RBS Morgan team.

[84] Of the three commercial networks, Seven Queensland and WIN Television both air 30-minute local news bulletins at 6pm each weeknight, produced from newsrooms in the city but broadcast from studios in Maroochydore and Wollongong respectively.

Southern Cross Nine aired a regional Queensland edition of Nine News from Brisbane, featuring local opt-outs for Toowoomba and the Darling Downs from August 2017[85] to February 2019.

[citation needed] There are frequent inter-city bus services between Toowoomba and Brisbane, and other centres operated by Greyhound Australia and Murrays.

Toowoomba also sits above the eastern edge of the Great Artesian Basin and to the west underground water is available beneath unconsolidated alluvium.

[111] This Wikipedia article incorporates text from Language Resources for Toowoomba and Darling Downs published by the State Library of Queensland under CC BY licence, accessed on 16 August 2018.