Taroom is a town in the Shire of Banana and locality split between the Shire of Banana and the Western Downs Region in Queensland, Australia. In the 2021 census, Taroom had a population of 885 people. Geography The town is located on the Dawson River and the Leichhardt Highway, 380 kilometres (240 mi) north-west of the state capital, Brisbane, 300 kilometres (186 mi) west of Maryborough, 261 kilometres (162 mi) South-west of Rockhampton and 302 kilometres (188 mi) from Toowoomba. The Leichhardt Highway runs through from south to north, and the Roma-Taroom Road enters from the south-west. Climate History Prussian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt passed through the district in 1844, carving his initials and date on a coolibah tree that now stands in the centre of town. The name Taroom is said to be an aboriginal Waka word tarum meaning wild lime. The town was surveyed by Clarendon Stuart in 1860.Taroom State School opened on 11 April 1871 as a primary school. In 1964, the school had a secondary department added to provide secondary education to Year 10. In 1883, Taroom police officer William O’Dwyer was killed after being struck in the head with a tomahawk by a man he was attempting to arrest near Wandoan. The suspect was immediately shot dead by an accompanying police constable. O’Dwyer died from his injuries thirty minutes after being struck, and was buried at Wandoan. A plaque was unveiled on 7 September 2012 by Assistant Police Commissioner Paul Wilson on a rock in front of the Taroom Police Station to commemorate O’Dwyer being killed in the line of duty. St Mary’s Catholic Primary School opened in May 1921. In April 2015, the Catholic Education office in Toowoomba announced that it would be closing St Mary’s School in Taroom on 26 June 2015. The closure of St Mary’s means St John’s School in Roma and St Joseph’s School in Chinchilla became the closest Catholic schools to Taroom. The principal of St Mary’s said he was not allowed to publicly comment about the matter but the executive director of Catholic Education in Toowoomba said in a statement the decision to close the school was made with “careful consideration”. Taroom Aboriginal Mission operated until 1927, when it was closed and its residents moved to Woorabinda, Queensland. In the 1972 Taroom explosion, three men were killed when a stationary truck carrying ammonium nitrate which had caught fire exploded on the Taroom-Bauhinia Road, north-west of Taroom. The three men included the driver and two brothers from a nearby property who had ridden up to the burning truck on motorbikes to assist with the initial fire, which was believed to have been caused by a fault with the truck’s electrical system. As the three men were standing near the truck, a significant explosion occurred which burnt out more than 2,000 acres of surrounding bushland, uprooted trees and left a deep crater in the ground where the burning truck had been parked. It was reported that the explosion was so loud that it was heard in Moura and Theodore with debris from the destroyed truck scattered up to two kilometres away. A memorial to the three men was unveiled in Taroom, which led to another one being erected at the accident site in 2013. The Taroom War Memorial commemorates residents of Taroom Shire who served in World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War. It is located at the Ludwig Leichhardt Park in Yaldwyn Street and was dedicated in about 1973. The Taroom Town Hall was built in 2004, immediately next door to the shire council chambers. It was intended to serve as a civic and recreational centre for the town and has a main auditorium that seats 300 people as well as a commercial kitchen and bar. The hall was awarded a regional commendation by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects in 2004. The current Taroom Public Library opened in 1976. Taroom made national news headlines in December 2014 when a man and two children were found near the town after being missing for eleven days. The trio, consisting of Steve Van Lonkhuyzen and his two young sons, had departed the Brisbane suburb of Lota on 11 December 2014 for a road journey to Cairns when they became stranded in Expedition National Park north-west of Taroom, after their four-wheel-drive vehicle became bogged. The Queensland Police Service appealed to the public to help locate the father and his two sons after they were reported missing when they failed to reach Cairns as scheduled on 15 December 2014. The last known communication from the man was a phone call made from Taroom. A local Taroom grazier eventually located the trio on 21 December 2014 while he was searching the national park looking for them after seeing media reports about their disappearance and realising he had witnessed their vehicle enter the national park several days earlier. It was reported they had survived by collecting rainwater and eating mouldy bread. The two boys were admitted to Taroom Hospital as a precautionary measure due to malnutrition. On 29 September 2018, Taroom & District Historical Society Inc and Taroom RSL Sub Branch worked together to preserve the 1973 War Memorial by moving it from Ludwig Leichhardt Park to the Taroom Museum at 17 Kelman Street, Taroom (on the original site of the Taroom State School 1871–1956). A new war memorial was erected in the park on 18 August 2019 (Vietnam Veterans Remembrance Day). Local government
Taroom Wikipedia