Day 14 - Day 17

Day 14 - Sunday August 3rd

Overnight it was mentally hard to cook dinner and get back into a swag after spending the previous night in a 5 start hotel! It's also now time to leave the beachy Gold Cost. After chatting to a local at the caravan park and having a coffee on the main street I left for the Tamborine national park.

On the edge of the national park is the Tamborine Rainforest Skywalk. This is a steel walkway apparently 40 meters up at the highest point. It gave a beautiful perspective of the tree tops. The walkway then took you back down to ground level were the track continued to a creek lookout.

Looking down the Skywalk

Check out the treetop view! That's me in the corner, of the fence.

After lunch I followed two walking tracks within the national park. Firstly I followed the Curtis Falls walking track. This waterfall provided a lovely cool lookout due to all the shade and greenery around. The next track I took was the Sandy Creek walking track. It went right over the top of Cameron Falls, the cliff edge was only meters away! This waterfall was pretty dry, however still flowing a little. The pictures show a stunning cliff face but not much water. The car park at Sandy Creek track was magnificent, you could see Brisbane in the distance.

Curtis Falls

Cameron Falls

Brisbane in the distance

Before daylight disappeared it was time to drive on to Ipswich. I didn't realise until after arriving that there was only one caravan park in town. I didn't like the look of it, so continued on to Toowoomba. I arrived too late due to roadworks so I stayed in a motel and had Grill'd for dinner.

Day 15 - Monday August 4th

I had been looking forward to this day, I visited the Cobb & Co Museum where they have some original Cobb & Co. coaches on display plus many others from the era. I just happened to time my visit with 200 primary school children from all year levels... Mum I don't know how you do it!

In the past there was a private collection on display. However like many things in the mid to late 1900's, it burnt down with the rest of the town strip. Residents at the time cut the locks to the building to save what they could. Later the owners donated the remainder of this collection to Queensland Museum which started the new museum I visited.

A charity raising event for the Royal Flying Doctor Service saw an original Cobb & Co. coach pulled by houses from Port Douglas to Melbourne in 1966. This was the longest coach journey in the world and took a staggering 3 months to complete!

The coach taken from Port Douglas to Melbourne

It wasn't just the coaches at the museum, there were a number of other displays. There was a 'The Beatles' collection on exhibit which I found spectacular. Another major exhibit contained inspirational sports people from the local Darling Downs area. Another interesting part was watching and talking to the in-house carpenters restoring a Cobb & Co. carriage.

I explored Toowoomba a little and took photos of some of the old buildings in town. Below are some of my favourites.

In the afternoon I made the short drive to Dalby. Once I got into Dalby I started seeing B-triples, I had only been seeing B-doubles earlier (for those who don't know, I'm talking about long trucks or Road Trains).

Day 16 - Tuesday August 5th

Before setting off from Dalby, I visited the Pioneer Park Museum. This place is huge! It's run by the local community and has plenty more land to expand on. There were sheds filled with tractors, glass bottles, rocks, indigenous artefacts and medical equipment just to name a few. The place had first opened in the 1980's and appears to have expanded many times since. Some of the old steam and diesel equipment had been restored at one point, but left to weather again over the years. They are currently saving to build a new shed.

Their highlights included a supervisor station from the old Dalby telephone exchange which was decommissioned on June 10th 1986, two flying saucers built with chainsaw motors and tested by NASA (it hovered at 15 feet) and a resident owl who stays around in the rafters over winter.

Flying Saucer

Supervisors desk from the Dalby telephone exchange, the whole exchange was many times bigger

A rusting local with no where to go

I headed off and had lunch in Miles. Continuing on I spent the night in Roma.

In Roma I watched their Big Rig night show which explains the history of the town. The show has two screens, a commentary / story, light effects and fire.

Roma is a gas mining town, however the gas was originally discovered by accident. On the search for bore water they struck gas. After many more bores and a series of mishaps, it wasn't until much later that a pipeline was constructed to Brisbane. The expense of the pipeline had to be justified with commercial interest and a fertiliser plant in Brisbane was the answer. Brisbane's natural gas is still supplied through the Roma-Brisbane pipeline today.

Big Rig nigh show

Day 17 - Wednesday August 6th

After packing up this morning I spent some more time in Roma exploring the Big Rig attraction. It contains explanations of how gas is created and trapped underground over thousands of years as well as some of the original equipment used in Roma.

This rig made many bores in Roma

Roma has a distinctive bottle tree planted around town. This is native to the area. It's also worth noting that from Roma onwards I have started to see lots of larger birds, presumably some type of Eagle, circling the skies.

A Roma bottle tree

I drove on to Charleville and booked in at the Cosmos Centre for their night time astronomy session. I was really interested in this because I don't get to see much of the night sky living close to Melbourne. I have been enjoying seeing the stars again while camping out.

Before dark I cooked dinner and spoke to a few groups of people around the BBQ. Like most others they were curious about my Yaris and swag.

The evening astronomy session was fascinating, they showed us Saturn, Mars, the Moon, as well as close up on some stars. Having never looked through such a powerful telescope (40,000x) I had never seen Saturn's rings anywhere other than a photo. Mars was pretty boring due to dust storms, but the Moon was amazing. I could see some craters and shadows in fine detail. At the end of the session they handed us information sheets and said something to the effect of 'we had all been so attentive and likely promptly forgotten everything we were just told'.