Toowoomba - Visit the garden city

The Garden City is an appropriate description for Toowoomba on Queensland's Darling Downs.

The city has 1,044 hectares of parkland including Redwood and Jubilee parks on a natural bushland escarpment and the centrally located Queens Park with its mature trees and playing fields.

The beautiful Botanical Gardens, with their perfectly manicured lawns and vibrant garden beds, bring a divine serenity to the heart of Toowoomba. The gardens are a central highlight of the city's annual Carnival of Flowers, held every September.

Architecture and history complement the beauty of the city's parks and gardens. Toowoomba has an elegant and gracious city centre with many handsome old buildings, and wide streets.

Stroll the streets and you'll uncover many National Trust-preserved sites such as the Italianate-style post office (1878) with its original clock tower, and the nearby courthouse, also built in the 1870s in the classic Revival style.

Worth a visit is the Cobb & Co Museum, which traces the history of horsedrawn transportation in Australia. Among the 30 vehicles featured are old timber wagons, spring wagons, and bullock drays, Cobb & Co coaches and the elegant Victorian landau used by the then Duke of Edinburgh when he visited the colony in 1876.