Gatton, Queensland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gatton is a town (pop. 6000) and the administrative centre of the Gatton Shire Council Local Government Area situated in the Lockyer Valley of South East Queensland, Australia.
The area is primarily agricultural, with vegetables making up the majority of crops. Fruit was grown extensively in the Shire until the 1990s, when economic conditions changed and many of the orchards were removed.
The University of Queensland has a campus on the former Queensland Agricultural College site at Lawes, just to the east of the town of Gatton. This campus is now the base for much of the university's rural focused research and teaching.
Over recent years, the rural tranquility of the Gatton Shire has started to be encroached on by the suburban sprawl of metropolitan Brisbane and Ipswich in the east and Toowoomba in the west. The Warrego Highway, which runs east-west through the Shire, has also experienced increasing strip development, with fuel outlets and commercial properties gradually spreading along the highway.