// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did the wall at Austral Hall say? "I'm a great hall back.
 | This article contains too many or overly lengthy quotations. (August 2025) |
The Austral Society was founded in 1903 because of the influence of The Toowoomba poet George Essex Evans to promote Australian Arts and Culture.[1][2]
The Society purchased part of the closed Toowoomba Gaol grounds and let a tender to roof part of the goal yard in September 1904. The Austral Hall was built on this site.[1][2]
According to a commemorative plaque at 84-88 Margaret Street, Austral Hall was built on the site of the former Toowoomba Gaol and could accommodate 500 performers and 5000 audiences. Designed by architect William Hodgen, the building incorporated three surviving outer walls of the gaol and used cats-iron columns produced by Toowoomba Foundry. The hall was intended support the Autral Society’s promotion of music, literature, art and science, and was officially opened on 5 November 1904 by Sir Hugh Nelson, the Lieutenant Governor of Quessland. [1]
Following George Essex Evans’s death in 1909, the Austral Society ceased operating in 1911.[3]
Moving pictures were shown here by a local enterprise, Austral Pictures,[4] until the Empire Theatre was built in 1911,[5] and the building was later demolished.[2]
Much of the roofing iron was sold and used to fence the old Toowoomba Showgrounds.[4]
The remaining western section of the wall’s basalt foundations was covered with a town rock following an archeological excavation conducted by Dr. Bryce Baker of the University of Southern Queensland.[2]
References
[edit]- 1 2 3 "Plaques mark historic Toowoomba sites". Toowoomba City Council. n.d. Retrieved 6 May 2008.
- 1 2 3 4 Talbot, Don (August 2006) [2004]. Ghostly Tales of Toowoomba. Talbot, Don. ISBN 978-0-9580584-3-8.
- ↑ Munt, Von (15 August 1980). "A Toowoomba Hall that held 8000". Toowoomba Chronicle. Toowoomba: Toowoomba Chronicle.
- 1 2 Johnston, Bill (2006). George Essex Evans, Patriotic poet of Australia – Volume 1 – His Life and Family. Maleny. p. 110.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ↑ Bradley Knewstubb (13 December 1998). "List of Queensland Cinema". Bradley Knewstubb. Archived from the original on 20 January 2005. Retrieved 17 October 2008.