Where the businesses actually are on the Darling Downs

Ruthven Street is the spine of the central business district and carries the New England Highway through the city. Margaret, Russell, Neil, Bridge and Herries streets carry the CBD commercial tenancies across it. Ruthven and Neil streets are also the eastern boundary of the Toowoomba Railway Parklands priority development area, so a CBD tenancy can sit inside a state declared renewal area with its own development scheme rather than the ordinary planning scheme. That is a specific and checkable fact about a premises, and it belongs in due diligence.

At the intersection of Dent Street and Margaret Street, Toowoomba QLD 4350, inside the CBD, owned by QIC RE. The centre publishes over 50 fashion stores and 140 speciality stores, a six screen cinema and a food court with 550 seats. Gross lettable area and redevelopment history are not published, so no floor area is stated here.

On the corner of James Street and Anzac Avenue, described by the centre as 1.5 kilometres west of the CBD. It is a single level centre opened in 1983, held as part of the Elanor Investors Group, with over 73 specialty stores and services anchored by Big W, Woolworths, Coles and Best and Less, and over 1,500 car parks. That corner is the practical dividing line between the CBD retail catchment and the western suburbs catchment. James Street is also the Warrego Highway through Toowoomba and carries a long strip of showroom, bulky goods, hospitality and automotive tenancies.

InterLinkSQ is at Charlton, 13 kilometres west of Toowoomba, described by its operator as a master planned logistics, warehousing and industrial estate made up of the InterLink Global Logistics Centre intermodal terminal and the InterLink Industrial Park. It has 3 kilometres of frontage to the existing West Moreton rail line connecting to the Port of Brisbane, and it sits at the junction of the Gore, Warrego and New England highways. The operator describes the site as part of the larger Toowoomba Enterprise Hub, 2,000 plus hectares of industrial land. That Enterprise Hub description comes from the operator, not from a Queensland Government designation, and its official status and boundaries could not be verified.

Toowoomba Wellcamp Airport is at 1511 Toowoomba Cecil Plains Road, Wellcamp, described by the operator as the gateway airport for the Toowoomba region, the Western Downs, the Southern Downs, the Surat Basin and the Granite Belt. It carries 30 plus direct services per week flown by Qantas to Sydney and by Regional Express to western Queensland, and operates a dedicated cargo terminal and the Toowoomba Wellcamp Trade Distribution Centre. Wellcamp Business Park adjoins it, situated on the Toowoomba Second Range Crossing, targeting aviation maintenance and training, transport logistics, warehousing, corporate offices, manufacturing, commodity processing and factory outlets. The airport’s opening date, owner, runway length and throughput are not published on the pages checked.

Inside the Toowoomba local government area sit Highfields, Westbrook, Wilsonton, Harristown, Drayton, Charlton, Wellcamp, Oakey, Pittsworth, Millmerran, Crows Nest, Yarraman, Clifton, Cambooya, Greenmount and Cecil Plains. Oakey, Pittsworth and Millmerran carry the agricultural service and processing activity, and Toowoomba Cecil Plains Road is the axis of the industrial land west of the city. Toowoomba recorded 899,871.2 hectares of agricultural holdings and 264,998.7 hectares of broadacre crops in 2020-21, alongside 375,622 meat cattle and 137,828.9 pigs.

Western Downs Regional Council names its six townships as Chinchilla, Dalby, Jandowae, Miles, Tara and Wandoan across 38,000 square kilometres, describing the region as having five pillars of energy generation, coal, gas, hydrogen, wind and solar, in the resource rich Surat Basin, alongside broadacre farming particularly for grain and cotton and a growing number of animals on feed. Council states the region is 208 kilometres west of Brisbane and 82 kilometres from Toowoomba Wellcamp Airport, and publishes a median house valuation of $330,000 and median weekly rent of $385 at December 2023. The council area held 5,215 businesses at 30 June 2025, 2,395 of them agricultural at 30 June 2024, an index of 5.81.

Southern Downs Regional Council runs from Warwick and Allora down to Stanthorpe, Killarney and the Granite Belt wine and horticulture district. The council area held 4,477 businesses at 30 June 2025 and recorded 2,721,921.7 meat chickens and 839.6 hectares of orchard fruit and nut trees in 2020-21. Its median age was 48.6 years at 30 June 2024, the oldest of the six, and it recorded 404 registered deaths against 394 registered births in 2023. It also recorded net internal migration of plus 300 people in 2024, the tree change flow, which is the other half of that picture.

Goondiwindi Regional Council sits on the Macintyre River and the New South Wales border. It held 2,047 businesses at 30 June 2025, of which 889 were agricultural at 30 June 2024, 44.1 per cent of its base at an index of 5.44. At the 2021 Census, 27.3 per cent of its working residents worked in agriculture, forestry and fishing. It carried 363,766.3 hectares of broadacre crops, 177,091.2 sheep and lambs and 133,095.8 pigs in 2020-21, and it approved $21 million of non-residential building against $12 million of residential in 2024.

Balonne Shire Council names St George, Mungindi, Hebel, Dirranbandi, Thallon, Bollon and Nindigully, and describes its four economic pillars as grain and cotton, sheep and cattle grazing, horticulture, and tourism and events. On a population of 4,356 it carried 942 businesses at 30 June 2025, 216.0 businesses per 1,000 residents, of which 52.9 per cent were agricultural at an index of 6.53. It also holds the highest share of large turnover businesses researched for this site: 12.0 per cent of its register turned over $2 million or more and 3.2 per cent turned over $10 million or more at 30 June 2024. Its median established house transfer price in 2024 was $204,500 and it approved 2 private sector houses in the whole year.

The Roma Saleyards at 44589 Warrego Highway are owned and operated by Maranoa Regional Council and described by the operator as Australia’s largest cattle selling centre. The operator reports 362,051 head sold through the facility across 12 months in the 2025-26 financial year, with cattle sales valued at a record $554 million. Those figures are the operator’s own and have not been checked against an ABS or Meat and Livestock Australia release. Agents, transport operators, fuel and tyre businesses, stock and station suppliers, motels, cafes and rural merchandise stores in Roma trade against that sale calendar. Council also owns the Roma Quarry and the region’s airports.

The rest of Maranoa Regional Council, which covers 58,719.3449 square kilometres at 0.2 persons per square kilometre. Roma is the service centre for the Surat Basin gas fields. Maranoa recorded the tightest labour market of any local government area researched for this site at the 2021 Census, a 2.5 per cent unemployment rate and a 65.6 per cent participation rate. Council reports mining as the largest and most productive industry in its area, generating $1,551 million in 2022-23, and a gross regional product of $2.78 billion, 0.59 per cent of Queensland’s gross state product.

The only priority development area on this page, sitting directly behind the Ruthven Street retail spine. It is declared under the Economic Development Act 2012 and regulated by Economic Development Queensland, with assessment powers delegated to Toowoomba Regional Council. Council publishes approximately 50 hectares, stated as 51.3 hectares in its statistics, comprising 8.6 hectares of parkland and 25.7 hectares of urban renewal land, bounded by Bridge Street north, Russell Street south, Mort Street west and Ruthven and Neil streets east, centred on the Toowoomba Railyards. The development scheme amendment No. 1 took effect on 24 July 2020.

The Warrego Highway runs Brisbane to Toowoomba then west through Dalby, Chinchilla, Miles and Roma to Charleville, and it is the road every gas field services business runs on. The New England Highway runs through Toowoomba on Ruthven Street then south through Cambooya, Clifton, Allora, Warwick and Stanthorpe to Wallangarra. The Gore Highway runs Toowoomba south west through Millmerran to Goondiwindi. The Cunningham Highway runs Ipswich to Warwick over Cunninghams Gap then west. The Bunya Highway runs Dalby to Kingaroy, and the Balonne and Carnarvon highways serve St George and Dirranbandi. Roma is 480 kilometres from Brisbane by road. A buyer flying into Wellcamp and driving to Miles spends a day on the road for one inspection.