Toowoombah

Just before arriving in Toowoombah at a wee town called Oakey we suddenly noticed that our view was being obstructed by hills and trees, quite a novelty as our last few days have been driving through fairly open country.  We arrived in Toowoombah (a mere 2574km from Wellington)

at midday and had a nosey around town, checking out St Lukes church and their Christmas tree display and finding out about Christmas Wonderland – a Christmas light display on in the evenings.  Its beginning to feel a lot like Christmas……..

From what we saw Toowoombah is a lovely town and there were no signs of the devastation that occurred earlier this year.  We had a tour of the Empire Theatre which is Australia largest regional performing arts venue,

and  had a sqizz around the old railway station

which I believe is still operational.  We spent a day and a half on Picnic Hill chilling as it was such a beautiful park with magnificent views, almost to Brisbane. 

We enjoyed watching the change from daylight to dark and spotting the lights from the small settlements off the highway which weren’t visible during the day and watching and hearing the traffic grind up the Toowoomba hill on the highway. 

After spending a few days looking around the town we decided it was time to move on – not sure where were heading however we knew that Tallebudgera Valley where Tonys sister and her family live would be the final destination for Christmas.  So now it was our turn to wind our way down the big hill.

On the way we had an amazing find on the roadside “The Big Orange” – fruit and veges cheap as – stone fruit 99c per kg, mangoes for 25c each, oranges for 5c each, a 10kg watermelon for $2.00 – fruit heaven!!!!!

Because we can we made a wee diversion to Fernvale and the Wivenhoe dam.  We drove across the dam which had magnificent picnic areas on either side, we stopped at Cormorant Park for lunch, from there we found an overnight stop by Northbrook Creek that the information centre had recommended – it was nothing more than 2 bbq tables and a river, which we put to good use!!! 

A very peaceful night with the sky pinpricked with millions of stars.  From here we decided that we really needed to get to Rositas place to offload our booty from The Big Orange as it would be a shame to have to dump it.

The last few kms of the trip Tony didn’t want to use the toll road so we clocked up a few more kms than we had expected trying to find our way out of the suburbs we found ourselves in – ending up by deciding it would have been cheaper to use the toll road.