Return to home to Toowoomba costs man his job, licence and $2000

It wasn't the homecoming he'd expected when this former resident was locked up for a night, fined and disqualified from driving which will ultimately cost him his job.

A return to his home-town of Toowoomba wasn't the welcome he was expecting.

RETURNING to his native Toowoomba has cost a man his job, his driver's licence and more than $2000 in fines.

Christopher David Rhodes returned to his home-town about a month ago but was picked up by police on outstanding warrants on New Year's Day and spent Tuesday night in the watch house.

The 28-year-old appeared in Toowoomba Magistrates Court yesterday to plead guilty to a string of matters dating back to September 2012.

Those offences included driving while disqualified at Sippy Downs on the Sunshine Coast on September 19, 2012; stealing a vacuum cleaner which he had hired for 24 hours but failed to return in October 2013; driving while unlicensed in Chinchilla, September 8, 2015; and failing to appear in court in Chinchilla in September 2015 and Southport in October 2013.

Police prosecutor Senior Constable Leea Trewin told the court when police found Rhodes on Tuesday he explained that he had moved to Victoria for some years and had only just returned to Toowoomba.

Duty solicitor Shane MacDonald told the court his client had grown up in Toowoomba but had become involved in drug use from age 14.

His client had suffered post traumatic stress disorder and anxiety for which he had been medicated and instructed he had been off drugs for three years, he said.

Because his driver's licence would be disqualified for two years, his client would lose his job as a truck driver, Mr MacDonald said.

Acting Magistrate Roger Stark fined Rhodes a total $2050 and disqualified him from holding or obtaining a driver's licence for two years on the disqualified driving offence.