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Places
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Places of Literary Significance I wore my new brown velveteen, my grandmother was ‘at home’, and there came to her tea-table numberless old ladies in jet and black, who looked as if they had only been born out of consideration for an unworthy world, but wouldn’t have done it if they had known how unworthy it really was, haughty old ladies these with black pompoms in their bonnets and black silk gloves. There came also certain fat old ladies with artificial flowers in their little toques, and grey or yellow gloves, old ladies that looked as if they would have got on very nicely with the world if it had let them. I discovered later that they were periodically butchered by the old ladies in jet and pompoms not to make a Roman holiday, but a Toowoomba ‘at home’… ‘The Singing Gold,’ Dorothy Cottrell
Davis came to the selection with his parents in 1875 and grew up here before gaining work on surrounding properties as a teenager and then taking up a public service position in Brisbane. He attended the nearby Emu Creek State School from 1875-1880 and represented it as the Vinegar Hill State School in Memoirs of Corporeal Keeley (1912).
The selection is approximately 30 kilometers south of Toowoomba along the New England Highway. It represents the setting for many of his famous Dad and Dave stories, which were initially published in the Sydney Bulletin before being collected for book publication and later adapted for radio, stage and screen.
Davis later returned to the Cambooya region and took up a farm of his own, 'The Firs', not far from the current Nobby turn off. He became the first Chairman of Cambooya Shire in 1914.
The replica of the Rudd family home on the original selection was constructed by the members of the Cambooya Rural Youth Club in the 1980s. The site was further upgraded with a Federation grant in 2000.
Submissions
and suggestions for places not yet included can be sent to leec@usq.edu.au |
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