PASSING by Fairholme School, I’m at a crossroad in Toowoomba and look down Taylor Street over to Russell Street and see the sign pointing to Hodgson Vale.
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I head south and travel along the Gore Highway to Slade School via Canningvale Road and Leslie Dam.
I’m namedropping of course, but the names of everyday landmarks with which we’re all familiar come from somewhere.
It’s fascinating to discover for oneself why and how places came by their title.
An exhibition at the State Library in Brisbane until April 21, has brought together a select number of items from 19th Century pastoral life on the Darling Downs which lend insight into the placenames we take for granted.
The properties most featured in the exhibition are Canning Downs, Glengallan, Maryvale, Westbrook, Yandilla and Talgai stations.
There are items on display which have not been seen publically for almost 150 years.
It’s said that if there was a choice between discovering a new play by Shakespeare or his laundry list, the world would clamour for the latter.
People crave to know the nitty gritty of how we used to live.
What would have been mundane in its day, with the passage of time, becomes fascinating because those ordinary things are usually not thought worthy of keeping and thrown away.
Some of the works on show are part of the Arthur Hodgson Archive, which was acquired by the State Library as recently as July last year.
Its inclusion gives insight into the operations of the early pastoral industry and the financial dealings of one of its early settlers as he transitioned from hard times to a life of privilege.
There are 67 works featured, so it’s a very manageable exhibition to view. Many of the visitors to the exhibition are compiling a family history and looking for ancestors who they know worked in the area in the late 1800s.
The records include pay registers and labour books recording the names of shearers and farm workers.
Then there is the rarely displayed Christian Qwist necklace, commissioned by John Watts in the 1860s.
This precious piece arrived to the State Library through the mail, unregistered, from England in 2006.
The kangaroo and emu grace the main medallion, a popular emblem at the time because both creatures could move only in a forward direction.
At this time in Queensland’s history, life was brimming with opportunity for the entrepreneur.
The risks were great but the rewards were there as well.
Tucked into the corner of a display cabinet is a humble garden book begun by the Clarks from East Talgai Station in 1869, which dutifully records the plants and makes annotations about their suitability for the climate and conditions in that time.
There is a delightful glimpse into a simpler time when communication wasn’t available at the click of a keyboard.
The Maryvale household updated their family through a gazette, hand written and illustrated, and sent on rotation about the countryside for their amusement.
The exhibition is sprinkled with Scottish and English names still familiar in the Downs and its environs today.
The show is further enhanced by specialist talks on topics like the thoroughbred heritage of the Darling Downs and a history of squatters.
Dianne Byrne is the curator. It is located in the Philip Bacon Heritage Gallery on level four of the State Library.
I’ll let a comment taken from the Visitors’ Book sum up the experience, “Satisfying to “see” something of those NAMES that drift in the back of our memory.”
