For the King’s birthday long weekend, we decided to venture a little further than Brisbane city and take a trip to Toowoomba. It has been a little while since we have been to Toowoomba so a three day break sounded like a good idea.

The annual attraction of Toowoomba is the carnival of flowers and I was pleased to see that the long weekend was the final weekend of the displays

M and I had tried to go to Toowoomba to see the flowers many years ago, but arrived the weekend after the show only to find most of the beds had been pulled out completely ready to start for the next season.
We joked that the place looked like freshly dug graveyards.

I chose an apartment hotel in the centre of Toowoomba‘s CBD that we had stayed at before.

I made reservations for Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.
I knew it was quite a large one bedroom apartment with a full kitchen, had decent parking, and was in the center of everything. we planned on taking the car fridge with us for this trip and taking some food from home.

Although the apartments themselves did not have a restaurant in the building,  the Burke and Wills Hotel was just next-door and they had a buffet breakfast and a  good dinner menu.

Friday

After doing the boys wages and sorting them out, we managed to get on the road just after 10:30.

We took the inland route through Beerwah Peachester, and onto Kilcoy.

We planned on stopping at Kilcoy for a late lunch as we thought we would have dinner at the Burke at Will’s when we got to Toowoomba.

Driving into Kilcoy, I could see the bakery, but it was on of the other side of the road and I must admit I kind of got lost and couldn’t work out how to get to said bakery.

We decided to stop at the Exchange Hotel as I was sure they would have sandwiches of some sort on their lunch menu.

While they did not have sandwiches, we settled on a hamburger for M and I chose a steak sandwich which I pulled apart (because it was on inch thick bread) and had basically steak and salad for lunch.

While in the queue to order our lunches, a young man in front of me, who was probably a local as he greeted the girl behind the counter by name, said “just the 700 thanks”.
Looking at the menu we had noticed one of the options was indeed a 700g rump!!!!  How on earth did he eat all that?

Back on the road and our next stop was to be Esk.

Driving along, we could see there had been fairly recent fires and we remembered the last time we came up this way we were following fires as well.

We stopped for a pitstop in Esk, and continued up the range towards Highfields and on to Toowoomba.

At the top of the hill is the information centre at Hampton. I decided it was probably easier to stop here for brochures that I wanted rather than going into the information centre into Toowoomba itself.

Sure enough the lady at the information centre was very helpful and found all the brochures I was looking for.

Before going to the apartments, we made a quick stop at the shopping center to buy a few things we had forgotten from home.

I had packed the car fridge perfectly with milk, bread, butter, and eggs, but had forgotten tea, coffee, and sugar 🙁

We arrived at the apartments just before 3 o’clock. Our room was ready and we unpacked, had a cup of tea, went for a short walk to get our bearings.

We also had a look at the restaurant in the Burke and Will‘s Hotel next door and decided the menu did indeed look good.

We asked if we needed to make a reservation, but were told no we didn’t, it was not that busy.

We decided on an early dinner,
I chose the filet mignon and M had the Salt and Pepper Calamari.

We were certainly NOT going to have “the monster mixed grill “
They certainly know how to feed people in the country ha ha ha

After dinner, it was just a little bit of TV and an early night.

Saturday

After a lovely nights sleep, we got up and had just a light breakfast as the plan this morning is to firstly drive to the Farmer’s Market then bring the car back to the hotel and catch the free shuttle bus around to the parks where the carnival of flowers were.

The farmers market was in between the Cobb and Co. museum and the Botanic Gardens. I was able to get a good park and we had a look around the market, bought some nice pastries and then were able to look around at the flowers before the majority of the people arrived.

Driving back to the apartments, we walked across the road to the big shopping centre and found the bus stop for the shuttle bus over to the Laurel Banks Park to see the rest of the floral displays.

The gardens here were absolutely stunning each year. They work on a different theme and plant the garden like a tapestry. It really is very clever.  There were also many topiary hedges. One was a “Thomas the Tank Engine” complete with sets in the “carriages”

We caught the bus back to the shopping centre and had a little bit of a look around. Apparently the Grand Central shopping centre is one of the largest in regional Queensland.

We had planned to have lunch at the George Banks rooftop, but we were a bit early and they were not open.

Although their opening times said 11:30 we spoke to a man who was just starting to open up and said they would not be opening until at least midday as they had a big night the night before and did not get out until 2 AM.

We thought that if the staff had not arrived yet the chances of having problems with our meal might be a little high, so we thought we would come back the next day.

We had noticed at the Shopping Centre, Lonestar Tavern and we went back there and had a lovely lunch.
I had a lamb shank and M had beef brisket tacos.

After lunch we wandered around the shops a bit and I noticed a sushi shop had a robot delivering orders to tables !

Before heading back to the hotel, we went for a short walk following one of the historic walk brochures. I had picked up at the Hampton information centre.

Sunday

In the morning, M opened the door to the balcony and stepped out and mentioned it seemed quite hazy and smoky. I got up and had a look and sure enough. It was very hazy and smoky. You could smell the smoke in the air.

I had a look at the bushfire app on my phone and sure enough there were large bush fires around the area that we had driven up to get to Toowoomba.

We were certainly not going back the way we came.

I had a look at Google Maps and found we could head down the Cunningham Highway and turn left towards Fernvale, then onto Esk and home

We chose to have the buffet breakfast at the Burke and Will’s Hotel next door. While it was very nice, it was nowhere near as large as the Hyatt Regency in Brisbane.

After breakfast, we followed one of the other historic walks and ended up at the George Banks rooftop again for lunch.

It was a lovely meal and the view over the city was nice.

We had a quiet afternoon in the unit and just had a light dinner of ham sandwiches.

Monday

We did not have to check out until 11 o’clock so we had a slow start.

After a leisurely breakfast in the apartment, we packed and headed off about 10:30

First was to get some fuel for the trip home. Although on the map, the petrol station was only around two blocks away to get there. I needed to go right around a few blocks, so it was on the right side of the road to actually get into the petrol station. M was totally confused.

I checked with the bushfire app again and sure enough we could not get back via Highfields.

It has been a long time since we went down the Cunningham Highway as really it is the wrong direction to get to the Sunshine Coast.

I was a little nervous at the idea of driving through Cunningham‘s gap as I always remembered it to be very tight and windy. There has obviously been a lot of work done over the years because it was not too bad at all. We found the turn off to Fernvale easily enough.

Neither of us had been to Fernvale and we were quite impressed. Being long weekend it was very busy so we did not stop but have made a plan that we must come back.
From Fernvale it is not far to Esk, then we were in familiar territory. We got to Kilcoy in time for a late lunch and I managed to work out how to get to the bakery. Yay Me!

From Kilcoy, I decided to keep going along the D’Aguilar Hwy toward Caboolture and stop in at Meat City in. Morayfield. I had seen they had some good meat specials and with the fridge in the car it was a good time to stock up..

Meat shopping done we made it home around 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

Now we are coming into our busy period at work the chances of having any more weekends away before we close up for Christmas are fairly slim.

We have decided to have a week in Brisbane at the Mantra South Bank just after Christmas, so stay tuned.