Day 36 Tuesday 30th Lake Somerset, Golf, Yowies, History and Walks

A cool, calm and beautiful day greeted us this morning. Rob had decided he would play golf today at the Kilcoy Gulf Club as there was a competition on tomorrow. This worked out well as I was happy to do a history walk of the town while he played golf. We met a couple of locals at the golf club who were very friendly and more than happy that Rob was going to play on the course, in fact they tried to convince him to play in the competition tomorrow. The course was quite hilly but very picturesque. I had fun walking the streets of Kilcoy. Many of the buildings had large, coloured boards complete with old photos on them, informing the reader of the history of the property and the businesses over the years. Of course being Queensland, many of the buildings are made from timber and had been moved several times over their life. I also visited the Kilcoy Historical Society Museum and nearby Arts and Crafts shop which were located adjacent to Yowie Park. What is a Yowie, I hear you ask. Apparently, the Aboriginal group who lived in the area had a spirit who roamed over the earth at night called the Yo-wi. In more recent Kilcoy history, in 1979 two local boys claimed to have witnessed a 3 metre tall Yowie while camping out. Anyway that is why Kilcoy had sculptures of Yowies (large brown fury creatures) everywhere and a park named Yowie Park. There was quite a lot of information about the supposed sighting of the Yowie in the museum, with old newspaper clippings etc. I was still on my walk when Rob called to say that he had finished his golf round I could come and collect him from the club. Returning to the van, we had a bit of a lazy afternoon. I couldn’t put the kayak in as the wind had sprung up so I completed a walk around the whole of this huge park which certainly got my steps up.

Day 35 Monday 29th Lake Somerset, From Small Lakes to a Large One

Leaving Helidon Spa, we travelled to our next stop, a beautiful and huge park on the shores of Lake Somerset. The road to the small town of Esk was pretty good and we stopped at Esk at an extremely busy bakery for coffee. I really could not believe the constant number of travellers, workers, locals etc. all calling in at the bakery for coffee and their morning tea. From here, the road on to Lake Somerset became quite windy and hilly which we expected. In two places though, we had to wait due to what appeared to be rock falls on the road so only one lane of traffic could go through at any one time. The park we are in is huge, although very quiet in terms of the number of campers here. It is located on a spit of land and so is surrounded by water on three sides. Unfortunately, it is a very windy and so I’m not sure if I will put the kayak in but we will wait and see. We drove to the nearby town of Kilcoy after lunch to check out the golf club and other tourist information.

Day 34 Sunday 28th More Gardens, More History and More Cemeteries!

We had a lazy start to the morning before driving back up the mountain to Toowoomba. A change had come in overnight and although the weather was ok at Helidon Spa, the further up the mountain we drove the further the temperature dropped. Anyway our first stop was another magnificent garden/park in Toowoomba, The Laurel Bank Park Gardens. It was given to Toowoomba as a gift in 1932 and developed into another stunning park. It featured more beautiful, mature trees, topiaried gardens everywhere, and more plantings of seedlings in preparation for the garden festival in September. Again there was a wonderful playground, picnic shelters and many families out enjoying these spaces. There were also a few croquet lawn courts in the park. I also loved “The Scented Garden”, a spectacular garden filled with richly perfumed plants and herbs following a suggestion from the Down Association for the Blind. This garden also had a small pond and fountain and various statues set amongst the plants. From here we visited the nearby centre of the city and the huge Grand Central Shopping Centre. We could not believe the size of this centre set over 3 levels, with over 130 shops! Needless to say we spent time just walking around this centre and exploring, while waiting for some scripts to be processed at the chemist. We returned to the caravan for lunch before heading out again in the opposite direction to the actual town of Helidon Spa. This sleepy little town had quite a lot of history information displayed in the main street. We found out that it is famous for sandstone and that it in fact does have a spa/spring water. A company was set up in the 1880’s to bottle water naturally rising from the ground. After doubting that there really was a “spa” I have to eat my words. The lakes surrounding our caravan park is what was left of the spa! In the 1960’s there was a huge cement pool built here (the largest in the Southern Hemisphere) and 100’s of people flocked here to swim in the natural spring water. Anyway, it has changed dramatically over the years and is now more a natural lake. We drove from the sleepy town on to the larger town of Hatton. I may have visited the cemetery where I have to say I found an awful headstone relating to a triple murder of a brother and his 2 sisters, in 1889. I did some research and found that these murders were never solved!

Day 33 Saturday 27th Helidon Spa, To Toowoomba Again

Another easy day of driving brought us to our next destination of Helidon Spa. We are staying in an Eco Village and it is a lovely setting with huge grassy sites overlooking a small lake (not big enough to kayak on though. The name of the town, Helidon Spa sounded a little bit special but it really isn’t, other than being a lovely small town. Unfortunately no “spa treatments” for me. The town is only a 20 minute drive from the city of Toowoomba, one of the oldest inland cities, the second largest regional centre in Queensland and a place that we had enjoyed visiting on a previous trip, north. We drove in to Toowoomba after settling in to our new site. We decided to visit a bakery for lunch and I found the nearest one on our route into the city. It was in a very upper class area of Toowoomba, had great reviews and was busy. Rob ordered a pie for himself and a quiche for me and nearly died at the price. Needless to say they were very expensive and although my quiche was delious, his pie was disappointing.  Anyway we continued on and visited the magnificent Victorian era Queens Park, which also contained the Botanic Gardens. Toowoomba has a famous garden festival held in September. There are garden beds spread over the whole of the city. Of course many of them are in the Botanic Gardens and they have already been planted out and will look quite spectacular in a couple of months. Queens Park was a hive of activity with many families and groups enjoying all the park had to offer, beautiful nature, mature trees, picnic areas, playgrounds and playing fields etc. Following this, we visited the main part of Toowoomba where we walked the street and I enjoyed the well preserved Victorian architecture. We completed our visit to Toowoomba with a trip up to the Picnic Point lookout. Here we had a good view of parts of Toowoomba.

Day 32 Friday 26th Beaudesert, A Visit to Queensland’s first National Park

Today we set off to explore the area around Tamborine Mountain, a 30 minute drive from Beaudesert. Again a winding road took us up into some more magnificent rainforest. We started the day with a visit to Tamborine Rainforest Skywalk. This was a wonderful way to explore the beauty of the rainforest canopy with an elevated walkway and a Skywalk cantilever. From here we drove to the Curtis Falls walking track, a fairly easy walk into the forest brought us to some lovely falls. From here we drove to the town of Tamborine Mountain (as opposed to the town of Tamborine which is about a 20 minute drive away!). Here there was a walk called the “Gallery Walk”…..hmmm. It was a walk down the main street which was just shop after shop. There were a few interesting ones including The Cuckoo Clock Shop, The Scottish Shop, and the Christmas Shop but I found it a bit disappointing as the “Gallery Shops” were full of cheap things, made overseas and not things made by local artists. It was a little like Hahndorf but a lot more tacky. Rob and I were amazed at the huge number of people doing “The Gallery Walk” but when we realised that a visit to Tamborine Mountain only takes travellers 45 minutes from the Gold Coast and one hour from Brisbane, many tourists would come to the area for day trips. We stopped at a park for our picnic lunch before going on another walk into the rainforest to see a large Curtain Fig Tree. Our final stop before returning home was to a magnificent lookout overlooking the Lamington National Park which was the first declared National Park in Queensland in 1915. Unfortunately the view over the Scenic Rim was a little hazy. We returned to Beaudesert after a wonderful and active day!