Texases, our Texases

Originally released for publication June 18, 2008
(c) 2008 by Steve Martaindale


I just could not resist.

We had settled into our room near the Gold Coast area of eastern Australia, recovering from a 33-hour trip and planning our first full day Monday. Looking at a Queensland state map we picked up at the regional airport, I couldn’t believe my eyes.



Australia has some funny-looking names for a lot of towns, like Goondiwindi, Toowoomba, Mullumbimby, Wooroowoolgan and Jackadgery. Imagine my surprise, roaming over the map, to come across the town of Texas.

About 200 miles inland, sitting on the outer edges of the bush, it’s an agricultural town of some 900 people that also has a silver mine and boasts of great fishing on the Dumaresq River.

I just could not resist. We had to go.

Thursday, after a rather long drive circling the trickier parts of the mountain range between the Gold Coast and Texas, Leah and I found the incredibly appealing downtown of Texas and could not have picked a better place to walk into than the shop of Lester Dawson.

Leah picked it because the sign mentioned souvenirs. Turns out, Lester dispenses a lot of things from there, including cell phones, crafts made by his wife, photos, the MacIntyre Gazette and friendly information. A lively, animated host who grew up on a nearby farm and eventually went into retail, he willingly answered questions about the area.

The first, of course, was the origin of the name.

Lester provided a tourism pamphlet, which I would be surprised if he did not put together himself, the lead item of which is “How did Texas get its name?”

The McDougall brothers, it said, originally settled the area about 1840, but they temporarily abandoned it in the 1850s while trying their luck in the gold fields. They returned to find another settler on their land and it was some time before they were able to establish their prior claim.

Apparently, the McDougalls had been taken with the fight some years earlier by the settlers of Texas in North America as they gained independence from Mexico. The brothers supposedly saw similarities between the two stories and named their re-acquired claim after that faraway land.

As we might say in this Texas, ain’t that something.

Drawing connections between the two Texases would be easy. The terrain surrounding the Queensland town could easily remind someone of parts of West Texas. The pamphlet lists attractions as “fishing, Dumaresq River, bird watching, stargazing, flora and fauna, sunsets ... and photographic opportunities.”

Indeed, the cover advertises Texas as “Our friendly town.”

An outsider from the original Texas might think they were playing off of our state motto of “Friendship.” Lester, however, convinced us the label is justly applied to our namesake town.

Due to the long drive back, which would press us well past our desire to get off the highways before the end of winter-shortened days, we were not able to spend much time in Texas. We were flying home the next day, so we could not even check into the Yellow Rose Guest House for the night.

As we left town, we drove through a park with pecan trees. Pecan trees?

Sure enough, I read later that the state tree of Texas was a gift to the area from “the people of Texas, U.S.A., and dedicated to the town of Texas, Queensland, in friendship and goodwill on 10-9-88.”

So, the name on the map was no mere happenstance. There was and there remains a bit of a link between two vastly separated, but not all that different, parts of the world.

How refreshing is that?
(c) 2008 by Steve Martaindale