NEWS FROM THE PAST

Rather abrupt is the termination of Margaret-street at its western extremity. A fence bars the route, and a grove of weeping willows with their drooping branches almost conceals the brewery buildings, a peculiar shaped, oblique portion of which is seen to peep above the foliage, and lean forward as though in the act of tottering down on the roof of the factory.

Your olfactory nerves denote the existence of hops, and your visionary powers descry the Inspector approaching.

Peeping from amongst “the willows” is seen the residence of a blunt, but otherwise, model businessman, wherein a damsel with lofty and aristocratic airs, and an exuberance of bustle attracts your attention.

You cross a continuation of “the swamp,” in whose stagnant waters lurk the foul monsters of Malaria and Typhoid, and as though to afford these curses additional strength, an enclosure on your right is used as the refuse shoot of the city.

The Royal Assembly Rooms, in all their naked plainness, meets your gaze as you toil along the ascent from the swamp. You vainly search for some token of its royalty, but your research is unattended by success.

You pass out to the centre of the road now, and intently examine the firebell and its tower.

And here, surely, is the remnant of some ancient churchyard, you muse, as you pass on to examine what appears, at first sight, to be a tombstone. How the town has sprung ahead since those old days when our ancestors were wont to bury their dead hereabouts, you imagine; but on a closer survey seem at a loss to account for its recent erection.

The unemployed haunt this vicinity – policemen, cabmen, and loafers all have their favorite resort hereabouts.

Crossing Ruthven-street at its business centre, the Club Hotel and AJS Bank buildings on the opposite

corners, strike one as being amongst the noblest of Toowoomba’s edifices more particularly that of the former.

While passing a row of antique rookeries, observable on the opposite side of the street, are the business establishments of a would-be aristocratic auctioneer, a silverhaired, keen business man and an eccentric solicitor, and adjoining this last the business house of a

Toowoomba pioneer and once mayor of the town.

Beyond Neil-street stands the Court-house. The everlasting red dust and mud have not added much towards its external adornment, and this is also applicable to its adjacent building – the Post and Telegraph offices.

You slacken speed as you cross Hume-street, and passing that almost useless building termed “the depot,” cross a creek, and again confront the slopes of the range.

To your left is “the Park,” wherein the military men of Toowoomba’s united armies were once wont to hold their drills.

Past the sombre walls of the jail you wander, and reaching the Grammar School, the summit of the hill still seems afar off, but the sparsely populated portion of the street remaining will hardly repay the labor of the climb.

Homeward you ramble, with a better idea of the “city of Redmud,” with many particles of its interesting red soil clinging to your clothes, and despoiling their cleanliness.

Queensland Figaro and Punch, March 13, 1886