Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers

Every year I've lived in Brisbane I've promised myself that I would go to  the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers and I was determined that this year I would make it .....and I did!

Toowoomba is about 130 kms  west of Brisbane and has a population of about 160,000 people. It's perched on top of The Great Dividing Range and the surrounding Lockyer Valley is among the top ten most fertile places in the world......I do believe they are talking about agriculture and not the people lol.

Lee and Nicky and I set off early with the compulsory stop at Micky D's.........followed by the equally compulsory stop a half hour later at the first toilet we could find.....we must really rethink breakfast when we go tripping.lol

It's a beautiful drive and the sights from the top overlooking the valley are quite amazing. Toowoomba is a lovely town with great architecture and and just has a really good feel about it.

We started at Margaret Street markets and fell in love with this little guy.

Need a really big bread roll and some tomato sauce

Cute - don't know if I want goat goo on my lips though.

Not having had enough to eat at Macca's we headed to the Toowoomba Sports Club for lunch. Had a  Fisherman's Basket - yummy.  I must say everyone we met seemed really nice and friendly.......certainly a place to re visit.

Now at this point I have to say we hadn't seen a flower and after asking for directions we got a few vague."there are displays in all different spots" but it was a bit hard to pinpoint exactly where those spots were....and being strangers we really didn't know where to start. The answer was to get in the car and drive around....we eventually spotted tents and carnival paraphernlia and car parking people so headed that way. No flowers but they did have carnival rides and ice cream. Lee decided to risk her life on the ride below but Nicky and I decided we were food or rides people....definitely couldn't do both. To do both would court disaster....for all within throwing up distance.

Yes...those are legs in the air...like a giant Bamix.

By this time it had clouded over and we were freezing...still no flowers......so we took off again....in despair. Suddenly we saw them....flowers everywhere. Gorgeous, colourful and definitely worth the trip.

We even became flowers ourselves

Good trip home and hopefully I won't be hearing from any of the many police speed traps I saw.........counted about 8........how many didn't I see? Gulp!.