East Toowoomba, immediately adjoining the city centre, is home to Toowoomba's first secondary school, Queens Park and the botanic gardens.

The park and the grammar school are on Margaret Street and their sites were reserved in the 1860s. A camping reserve on Margaret Street was tentatively reserved for the grammar school, but a change saw it designated for Queens Park and the school was given a site further east. In 1874 part of the camping reserve was set aside for a botanic garden. Opposite the botanic garden was the Campbell Street showground, which was the site of Toowoomba's first floral carnival in 1904. Toowoomba's great postwar reputation as a garden city came with the annual Carnival of Flowers that began in 1950, in which Queens Park featured prominently.

Toowoomba Grammar School opened in 1877, a non-denominational Christian boys' secondary school. The Toowoomba East State primary school was opened ten years later. The years 1910-20, were the period when East Toowoomba became an important educational precinct: in 1912 Toowoomba Technical College was opened, and in 1917 Fairholme College (Presbyterian girls' secondary) and Mater Dei primary school were opened. Two years later Toowoomba's first high school opened on the site of the Technical College. Further east, Toowoomba Grammar opened a primary years preparatory school (1911) on a site that had been occupied by Girton girls' college (1904-10).

East Toowoomba has several neighbourhood parks and extends to the escarpment of the dividing range which meets with Redwood Park. There are a TAFE and a Cobb and Co Museum on the former showground site. East Toowoomba's census populations have been:

census datepopulation
20065991
20115676

Paul McNally, ed, School ties: a history of private schooling in Toowoomba, Toowoomba, Darling Downs Institute Press, 1989

 

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