Mike Yardley: Heritage-tinged Toowoomba

Have you ever been to Toowoomba? No, neither had I. Changing the habit of a lifetime on a recent road-trip in Queensland, I took the 2 hour drive west of Brisbane to the Great Dividing Range, where Woombie or Tbar as the locals call it, clings to the escarpment, 700 metres above sea level.  As you enter from the east, the city seemingly dangles on the edge of the elevated plateau, overlooking the undulating green patchwork of the Lockyer Valley. Beyond the city limits of this sprawling country hub, Toowoomba is enrobed by the agricultural powerhouse of the Darling Downs region.  Toowoomba is Australia’s largest inland city and it’s Queensland’s Garden City, playing host to a fiendishly popular Carnival of Flowers in September - the longest running floral event of its kind in Australia. It welcomes hundreds of thousands of hyper-coloured flowers in full bloom, planted across the city’s parks and public spaces. But it’s not just the plants that attract out-of-towners. A glut of gorgeous, manicured gardens lie within the city’s boundaries, graced with stately homes and broad tree-lined streets.  To help get my bearings, I joined a two hour guided excursion with Lindsay from Toowoomba Sightseeing, introducing me to the city staples, from the historic CBD to panoramic vistas over the range. Lindsay remarked that Toowoomba is like a volcanic saucer, with rich red soils. “Everything grows here.” An essential stop is at Picnic Point, located on the eastern side of Toowoomba, serving up enormous views across the topographical grandeur of the region. A picturesque highlight is the imposing sight of Table Top Mountain.  Its name is rather self-explanatory and looks like a mesa from the American Southwest. 600 metres high, the two-hour return climb itself is quite demanding with a lot of large steps over the Camel's Hump and a scramble just before the summit. Used as a training track for hikers prepping for Mount Kilimanjaro and the Kokoda Trail for years, stick to the well-worn trail.  But the sweet reward is at the s