Aussirose Travel and Photography: Landsborough, Maleny, Glass House Mountains & Caloundra

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LANDSBOROUGH

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Since we crossed into Queensland, the rain has been relentless. We avoided Brisbane and took the high road in the mountains, passing through Stanthorpe and Toowoomba and on to Woodford. See my other pages. The plan was to come back onto the Queensland coast around the Sunshine Coast and continue our journey up the coast of Queensland.

We arrived at Landsborough Holiday Park in the rain. I chose Landsborough as it is close to the Glass House Mountains and Maleny but also close to the Sunshine Coast to check out all of the great beaches there and show hubby some of my old stomping ground beaches. Well the latter didn't happen because there was so much rain that it wasnt worth visiting the beaches here. We did however drive down to Caloundra so at least I got to see one of the beaches again.

I also chose Landsborough Holiday Park as it is advertised much cheaper than the caravan parks on the coast. Since planning this journey, they put up there price here from $45 to $48. I think that anything over $45 is way too much for what is on offer here. Yes, there is a nice little lake with ducks and all sorts of birdlife and a pool, but Landsborough itself is small with not much else but a nice pub. I think they are playing on the fact that coastal parks are expensive and they are close to the Glass House Mountains and Australia Zoo up the road.

The Landsborough Pub was nice with a lovely beer garden verandah out the back. It had a cool, casual vibe and shady, tropical gardens. We didn't eat here, but the food did look good and reasonably priced.

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GLASS HOUSE MOUNTAINS

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Luckily we got one fine morning in order to check out the Glass House Mountains look out.

The mountain below is called Mount Tibrogargan, but I call it Ape Mountain. We stopped on the roadside and took a couple of quick photos in between showers. There were electricity lines across the top of the mountain that I successfully photoshopped out.

The Glass House Mountains Visitor Centre is well worth a stop. The lady there was very helpful, mapping out places that would be of interest to us. Unfortunately, we only got to do a couple of them due to the continual rainfall.

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CALOUNDRA

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Hubby had to get a part for our van awening, so we drove down to Caloundra.

We took the opportunity to visit Kings Beach and Wickham Point.

I was sad that I didn't get to go back to the lovely beach at Noosa Headland or any of the other beaches along the coastline. I have fond memories of Coolum, Mooloolabah, Maroochydore etc and wanted to spend a day checking them out. Instead, we were holed up in the van, watching the ducks in the lake back at Landsborough. Not to mention a couple of big things I wanted to see. The Big Pineapple and The Big Shell.

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MALENY

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I have fond memories of Maleny. I don't remember the town much, but do remember coming up on a school excursion to the rainforest, complete with plenty of leeches.

Our daughter Janine and partner Leigh happened to be visiting Brisbane and the Gold Coast at the same time which was very exciting. They drove up along with a friend and daughter. Son Dylan who has just moved to Brisbane also drove up to join us.

As we got near to Maleny, we encountered dense fog. I chose the Mountain View Cafe for lunch as the food prices were very reasonable. Unfortunately we could not sit outside and could not enjoy any view over the mountains due to the fog and rain. We did however spend a bit of time at the information centre here which had a lot of interactive stuff to do including bird and animal sounds. There are bush walks that branch out, but we could only do a little one under our umbrellas.

So sad. 😞

But that didn't dampen our spirits as family time is always a happy time and we just loved our catch up.

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After, we drove into Maleny and wandered up the main street. It is very much like Mullimbimby and Byron with a chick, boheme collection of shops. I bought a $5 necklass from the op shop and I had to drag hubby out of the record shop chitchatting and reminscing about the old records he used to own.