Drayton, Queensland

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Drayton is a township in Queensland, Australia, part of the City of Toowoomba.

The first substantial settlement on the Darling Downs in c.1842. The nearby township of Toowoomba expanded more rapidly than Drayton, and in the 1860s the centre of population shifted to Toowoomba, leaving Drayton as a southwestern suburb.

One of the oldest buildings in the Drayton area is the Royal Bull's Head Inn. The town also saw the area's first newspaper, the Darling Downs Gazette, in 1858. The National School (later Drayton State School) established in 1851, was one of the first in Queensland.

Drayton has a core of homes dating to the 19th century and a substantial number of homes and commercial premises dating from the mid years of the 20th century. More recently a large number of detached homes and growing numbers of multi-unit dwellings were built in the 1990s and 2000s, mostly targeted at students from the nearby University of Southern Queensland.

To the west of Drayton, the southern part of ANZAC Avenue forms the axis of a growing industrial and commercial district extending west and north towards Glenvale.

[edit] Politics

Drayton lies in the City of Toowoomba, a Local Government Area in Queensland. Toowoomba elects Councillors from the City as a whole rather than from wards/districts, so there is no local representative as such.

The people of Drayton and surrounding areas are represented in the Queensland Parliament by Stuart Copeland, National Party member for Cunningham, and in the Commonwealth Parliament by Ian MacFarlane, Liberal Party member for Groom.

[edit] Royal Bull's Head Inn

1847-48: Inn first built. Founded by William Horton, an English convict.
1858: Currently extant brick and plastered timber structure substantially complete
1879: No longer in use as an inn, became a private home
1973: Purchased by the National Trust
1976: Ongoing restoration begun

The building now serves as a show-case of life in the 1870s. Some rooms have been maintained in their original state.