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!