Archive for March 6th, 2008
Just up the road
March 6, 2008Brisbane’s location, between the Gold Coast’s beaches and nearby national parks an hour or two south and the Sunshine Coast and nearby national parks an hour or two north, is great for weekend trips.
Australia Day at the end of January provided a long weekend and Kristi and I took advantage of it by heading north to visit Mapleton, Montville, Maleny, Mooloolaba, Caloundra, Buderim, Tewantin and various beaches and mountaintops in between.
No worries if you don’t know where any of these places are. With one or two exceptions, they were unknown to us, too, before we used the holiday weekend to celebrate our birthdays (if you ignore the year designations, Kristi is about a week older than I am).
Two very different kinds of natural beauty were on display before our eyes (a) the ocean and its beaches and (b) the lush countryside a very few miles inland along the Blackall Range of small mountains.
From a two-lane highway that runs mostly along the ridge of these mountains, we enjoyed grand views of the green meadows and forests of an area some have described as “the calm behind the Sunshine Coast.” Not far away in the east, we often saw, was the ocean.
We found interesting forest trails in Mapleton Forest Reserve and in Kondalilla National Park. We briefly visited tourist shops in Montville and then drove to Maleny, where everyone Read the rest of this entry »