The Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers is held in September, and generally runs for ten days at the end of the month.
We visited the Laurel Bank Park, where there are beds of many colorful flowers,
open spaces,
statues,
an area set aside for not only tulips but a model windmill
and quite a number of hedge sculptures
There was also the opportunity to go on a morning or afternoon garden tour which visited a number of private gardens of residences in Toowoomba.
The Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers is held in September, and generally runs for ten days at the end of the month.
We visited the Laurel Bank Park, where there are beds of many colorful flowers,
open spaces,
statues,
an area set aside for not only tulips but a model windmill
and quite a number of hedge sculptures
There was also the opportunity to go on a morning or afternoon garden tour which visited a number of private gardens of residences in Toowoomba.
It’s a writer’s paradise for characters
…
I’m not a night person and even less so a pub person, except perhaps for a Sunday lunch, for what is usually an incomparable steak.
But tonight is different.
We’re meeting people who have come up from Melbourne for a wedding, people we haven’t seen for a long time.
I’m not a conversationalist, so I leave them to it, and go on a character hunt.
And the pickings are rich.
My first victim, If she could be called that, is the one I call the lady in the red dress.
She’s on the other side of 40, with a sort of earthy attractiveness about her. The first thing to notice, for her age, the dress is too short. Maybe that’s the fashion and I’m just an old fogey, but it does say something.
She’s definitely single, or perhaps a player, certainly a flirt. She holds the stage, and talks with her hands, and those around her are captivated.
The untidy hair loosely collected in a hair tie tells me she carries a sort of messy but not messy look, and I wonder at the state of her residence. It’s a leap I know, but small signs indicate bigger things.
I’ve counted two glasses of beer in an hour and a half, so she is sensible, aware of her surroundings, and of the three men she has spent her time with, it’s hard to pick a winner. It’s not hard to captivate a loser.
Next comes the party girls three 20 somethings dressed to be noticed, and overly animated and screams look at us.
Oops, they just parked themselves nearby with the very expensive and exotic-looking matching cocktails. There’s the obligatory selfie together, and then a casual look around to see what’s on offer.
I don’t think there’s a lot, but my standards and their standards are most likely miles apart.
Hang on, news flash, they’re a part of another group nearby, several older office workers who could be the so-called chaperones, or just having a quiet drink before having to go home to any of, a family, a car, an empty flat, or blessed relief the week is finally over.
Next door to us is a family group, the kids are teens, and I’m wondering if the boys are boyfriends. The mother is an older, very attractive version of the daughter.
Perhaps it’s an experience for the girls because I don’t see a man who could act as a husband unless it’s the second time around with a younger version.
Why not. Men do it, why can’t women. But out on the town with your teenage children?
The bar’s entertainment … a single guy playing the guitar, along with backing music that makes him sound better, but people seem to agree that it’s good but not brilliant.
He’s singing covers, which may have made him just so so, perhaps if he sang his own material it might take him to the next level.
But, who cares, no one seems to be listening, the noise level of what seems like a thousand concurrent conversations drowning out any appreciation.
Of course, it’s headache-inducing because he has the volume so high, just to get over the ambient noise, and in doing so, it takes away the intrinsic musicality of it all, and it’s just more noise to contend with.
I suppose it’s better than canned music.
OK, news flash, the red dress had moved down the table and settled on a prospect, about 15 years younger. Her animation has intensified, and yes, there’s the casual brushing against him, like a cat marking its territory.
The night is young, and it’s looking good. I’m not going to pretend I have given a passing thought to spending a few minutes with her, for character creation purposes only.
And yes, we now have a sing-along. At half-past eight, it’s a bit early for the crowd to be too exuberant.
A squeal shatters the, well, not silence, and is one of the groups pretending like someone had dripped ice down the back of a dress that has no back, the next phase of attention-getting.
And, attention directed their way, they do a little dance, skol the drinks, and with all eyes on them, head to the bar for round two, or is that three. Several others join them, but they don’t need to do the dance. The lack of clothes more than makes up for the squeals.
If these are the modern mating rituals a lot has changed in the last 50 years. Or perhaps not, I’m just too old to remember.
O’Reilly’s Canungra Valley Vineyards located on Lamington National Park Road, Canungra, Queensland, is a 15-acre vineyard with the 163-year-old historic homestead ‘Killowen’ set up with dining rooms and long verandahs, and extensive grounds that are next to the Canungra creek where it is possible to find Platypus and turtles while partaking in a picnic.
There are about 6,000 vines of the (white) Semillon, Verdelho and (red) Chambourcin, Shiraz and Petit Vedot varieties.
We visited there in December when the vines were just starting to produce fruit.
That fruit is usually harvested in February and then turned into wine.
The setting for picnics is, on a warm Summer’s day is idyllic, where you can wade in the creek, or go looking for a platypus. We did not see one there the day we visited but did spend some time sitting beside the creek.
O’Reilly’s Canungra Valley Vineyards located on Lamington National Park Road, Canungra, Queensland, is a 15-acre vineyard with the 163-year-old historic homestead ‘Killowen’ set up with dining rooms and long verandahs, and extensive grounds that are next to the Canungra creek where it is possible to find Platypus and turtles while partaking in a picnic.
There are about 6,000 vines of the (white) Semillon, Verdelho and (red) Chambourcin, Shiraz and Petit Vedot varieties.
We visited there in December when the vines were just starting to produce fruit.
That fruit is usually harvested in February and then turned into wine.
The setting for picnics is, on a warm Summer’s day is idyllic, where you can wade in the creek, or go looking for a platypus. We did not see one there the day we visited but did spend some time sitting beside the creek.
Or to be more precise, the homestead at what is now O’Reilly’s vineyard, where there is a pleasant lawn out back running down to the river for picnics, an alpaca farm next door, and the homestead plays host to functions and wine tastings
My interest was that we had assumed there was a restaurant, and we were going to have lunch. There might be one, but not the day we visited, it was just cafe food or a picnic available.
I was more interested in the old homestead because it was a fine example of the homesteads built in the ‘outback’.
…
Today we are having lunch in the Platypus room, in the O’Reilly’s vineyard farmhouse, which, if you close your eyes and let your imagination run free, could see it as the master bedroom of a homestead.
Certainly, the building is old, made completely of timber, inside and out, with the traditional high ceilings to keep the heat at bay.
At one end, a large bay window, which would be ideal to sit and view the outside, past the sweeping verandah. There is a small lawn and a rotunda, but beyond that what might have been extended gardens, is the vineyard.
The homestead is in an ideal position midway between the main road and the river, has the traditional surrounding verandah, and shows signs of being extended on almost all sides.
On the other side of the wide corridor that leads you to the bar, and, coincidentally, down the centre of the house, is a smaller bedroom, also used as a dining room, and ubiquitously named the library.
It may be small but it does have a fireplace, which the assumed master bedroom does not, but now I’m thinking that room might have been the morning room.
Behind the room, we’re in is another bedroom, or perhaps this might be the master because it does have a fireplace and is quite large. And a name, the Ambassador room. Now it serves as the pickup place for picnic baskets.
There is another room on the opposite side of the corridor called the Drawing Room but is not open to the public. But, going into the room with the fireplace adjacent to it, you can sell the aroma of pizzas, so it’s probably an extension of the kitchen, and, walking around the outside that side of the house proves it to be the case.
After all, they do catering for weddings and need a very large food preparation area which I discovered runs down the whole of that side of the house.
At the end of the corridor I’d the bar and spare space, and running off that and behind that is where there is a large dining area, perhaps prior to COVID, the restaurant.
It’s not hard to imagine that area as a very large entertaining area, either for very large dinner parties, or dancing.
As for the food, it’s either a picnic basket or pizzas. We chose the latter, not realising the bases were not homemade, but bought in.
The toppings however were both plentiful and tasty. It could have been hotter, because it was a cold day, and it was cold in the room.
As for something to do other than taste the wine, and buy a few bottles, you can get up close to the vines, which, at this time of the year gave been pruned back and look quite dead, look at or walk an alpaca, even feed it, or all of them, or go down to the river and see if you can spot a Platypus.
Perhaps next time we’ll have a picnic down by the river.
A story called “Mistaken Identity”
…
How many of us have skeletons in the closet that we know nothing about? The skeletons we know about generally stay there, but those we do not, well, they have a habit of coming out of left field when we least expect it.
In this case, when you see your photo on a TV screen with the accompanying text that says you are wanted by every law enforcement agency in Europe, you’re in a state of shock, only to be compounded by those same police, armed and menacing, kicking the door down.
I’d been thinking about this premise for a while after I discovered my mother had a boyfriend before she married my father, a boyfriend who was, by all accounts, the man who was the love of her life.
Then, in terms of coming up with an idea for a story, what if she had a child by him that we didn’t know about, which might mean I had a half brother or sister I knew nothing about. It’s not an uncommon occurrence from what I’ve been researching.
There are many ways of putting a spin on this story.
Then, in the back of my mind, I remembered a story an acquaintance at work was once telling us over morning tea, that a friend of a friend had a mother who had a twin sister and that each of the sisters had a son by the same father, without each knowing of the father’s actions, both growing up without the other having any knowledge of their half brother, only to meet by accident on the other side of the world.
It was an encounter that in the scheme of things might never have happened, and each would have remained oblivious of the other.
For one sister, the relationship was over before she discovered she was pregnant, and therefore had not told the man he was a father. It was no surprise the relationship foundered when she discovered he was also having a relationship with her sister, a discovery that caused her to cut all ties with both of them and never speak to either from that day.
It’s a story with more twists and turns than a country lane!
And a great idea for a story.
That story is called ‘Mistaken Identity’.
Or to be more precise, the homestead at what is now O’Reilly’s vineyard, where there is a pleasant lawn out back running down to the river for picnics, an alpaca farm next door, and the homestead plays host to functions and wine tastings
My interest was that we had assumed there was a restaurant, and we were going to have lunch. There might be one, but not the day we visited, it was just cafe food or a picnic available.
I was more interested in the old homestead because it was a fine example of the homesteads built in the ‘outback’.
…
Today we are having lunch in the Platypus room, in the O’Reilly’s vineyard farmhouse, which, if you close your eyes and let your imagination run free, could see it as the master bedroom of a homestead.
Certainly, the building is old, made completely of timber, inside and out, with the traditional high ceilings to keep the heat at bay.
At one end, a large bay window, which would be ideal to sit and view the outside, past the sweeping verandah. There is a small lawn and a rotunda, but beyond that what might have been extended gardens, is the vineyard.
The homestead is in an ideal position midway between the main road and the river, has the traditional surrounding verandah, and shows signs of being extended on almost all sides.
On the other side of the wide corridor that leads you to the bar, and, coincidentally, down the centre of the house, is a smaller bedroom, also used as a dining room, and ubiquitously named the library.
It may be small but it does have a fireplace, which the assumed master bedroom does not, but now I’m thinking that room might have been the morning room.
Behind the room, we’re in is another bedroom, or perhaps this might be the master because it does have a fireplace and is quite large. And a name, the Ambassador room. Now it serves as the pickup place for picnic baskets.
There is another room on the opposite side of the corridor called the Drawing Room but is not open to the public. But, going into the room with the fireplace adjacent to it, you can sell the aroma of pizzas, so it’s probably an extension of the kitchen, and, walking around the outside that side of the house proves it to be the case.
After all, they do catering for weddings and need a very large food preparation area which I discovered runs down the whole of that side of the house.
At the end of the corridor I’d the bar and spare space, and running off that and behind that is where there is a large dining area, perhaps prior to COVID, the restaurant.
It’s not hard to imagine that area as a very large entertaining area, either for very large dinner parties, or dancing.
As for the food, it’s either a picnic basket or pizzas. We chose the latter, not realising the bases were not homemade, but bought in.
The toppings however were both plentiful and tasty. It could have been hotter, because it was a cold day, and it was cold in the room.
As for something to do other than taste the wine, and buy a few bottles, you can get up close to the vines, which, at this time of the year gave been pruned back and look quite dead, look at or walk an alpaca, even feed it, or all of them, or go down to the river and see if you can spot a Platypus.
Perhaps next time we’ll have a picnic down by the river.
Televison is a great recorder of the past, and most channels, and especially cable tv have great libraries of films that go back more than a hundred years.
And, whilst it’s possible that modern day films and television series can try to recapture the past, the English as an exception being very good at it, often it is impossible to capture it correctly.
But, if you have a film shot in the moment, then you have a visual record of what life, and what was once part of our world before you in all it’s dated glory. The pity of it is that, then, we never appreciated it.
After all, in those particular times, who had the time to figuratively stop and smell the roses. Back then as life was going on, we were all tied up with just trying to get through each day.
Years later, often on reflection, we try to remember the old days, and, maybe, remember some of what it was like, but the chances are that change came far too rapidly, and often too radical, that it erases what we thought we knew existed before.
My grandmothers house is a case in point. In it’s place is a multi lane super highway, and there’s nothing left to remind us, or anyone of it, just some old sepia photographs.
I was reminded of how volatile history really is when watching an old documentary, in black and white, and how the city I grew up in used to look.
Then, even though it seemed large to me then, it was a smaller city, with suburbs that stretched about ten or so miles in every direction, and the outer suburbs were where people moved to get a larger block, and countrified atmosphere.
Now, those outer suburbs are no longer spacious properties, the acreage subdivided and the old owners now much richer for a decision made with profit not being the motivator, and the current suburban sprawl is now out to forty or fifty miles.
The reason for the distance is no longer the thought of open spaces and cleaner air, the reason for moving now is that land further out is cheaper, and can make buying that first house more affordable.
This is where I tip my hat to the writers of historical fiction. I myself am writing a story based in the 1970s, and its difficult to find what is and isn’t time specific.
If only I had a dollar for every time I went to write the character pulling out his or her mobile phone.
What I’ve found is the necessity to research, and this has amounted to finding old films, documentaries of the day, and a more fascinating source of information, the newspapers of the day.
The latter especially has provoked a lot of memories and a lot of stuff I thought I’d forgotten, some of it by choice, but others that were poignant.
Yes, and don’t get me started on the distractions.
If only I’d started this project earlier…
The Kingston Flyer was a vintage train that ran about 14km to Fairlight from Kingston, at the southern end of Lake Wakatipu, and back.
This tourist service was suspended in December 2012 because of locomotive issues.
However, before that, we managed to go on one of the tours, and it was a memorable trip. Trying to drink a cup of tea from the restaurant car was very difficult, given how much the carriages moved around on the tracks.
The original Kingston Flyer ran between Kingston, Gore, Invercargill, and sometimes Dunedin, from the 1890s through to 1957.
There are two steam locomotives used for the Kingston Flyer service, the AB778 starting service in 1925, and the AB795 which started service in 1927.
The AB class locomotive was a 4-6-2 Pacific steam locomotive with a Vanderbilt tender, of which 141 were built between 1915 and 1927 some of which by New Zealand Railways Addington Workshops.
No 235 is the builder’s number for the AB778
There were seven wooden bodied passenger carriages, three passenger coaches, one passenger/refreshments carriage and two car/vans. The is also a Birdcage gallery coach. Each of the rolling stock was built between 1900 and 1923. They were built at either of Addington, Petone, or Hillside.
I suspect the 2 on the side means second class
The passenger coach we traveled in was very comfortable.
This is one of the guard’s vans, and for transporting cargo.
The Kingston Railway Station
and cafe.
A poster sign advertising the Kingston Flyer
The running times for the tourist services, when it was running.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 