Glasshouse Mountains, Blackall Range, and Kondalilla National Park

This weekend Neil and I decided to rent a car. Or rather, we planned to rent a car and head to the 'hinterland' of the Sunshine Coast providing that I got most of my main assignments done. By the time Saturday rolled around I was pumped and ready to go.

Our destination for this day was Glasshouse Mountains National Park. It's located about 70 km outside of Brisbane (30km from our house) and the neat thing about this park is that the 'mountains' in this area are actually volcanic 'outcroppings' (a Neil-term). They're actually the cores of extinct volcanoes, called 'volcanic plugs', and they were formed about 25 or 27 million years ago. There are 4 or 5 mountains, 2 of them you can actually climb to the top. At the scenic lookout we went on a short hike through the forest, but there wasn't much to be seen this day. On one of the pictures that will be posted after this entry, you'll notice that it'll have a list of the wildlife that are in the area. Well, we didn't see any. And for those of you who remember our trip out to the west coast of Canada, we didn't see anything there either. *lol* I'm sure Neil will have an explanation for that!!!

Anyway, after the hike, we headed back on the road to another range of mountains, the Blackall Range. There was a sign for it on the way up and so Neil and I headed back in that direction. We drove along the scenic route and stopped at a few lookouts, one of which showed the ocean and the coast. We could see our little town from the lookout as well as the others along side it. It was pretty neat to be so far inland yet able to see where you live.

Once we were back in the car, we decided to head home, but along the way we saw some signs for Kondalilla Falls. After a bit of deliberating, Neil and I decided to check it out. And it's a good thing we did. It's a national park, Kondalilla National Park. The park is full of hiking trails and we picked one (that was about 4km long) and followed it in the hopes of seeing the falls. But unfortunately we were a bit disappointed because some of the trails were closed because they were being reconstructed. However, we still managed to take in some of the beautiful scenery, and one of the pools with a mini waterfall at the end of the one trail we were following. I'm not sure what the name is of the main falls, I'm assuming it's the Kondilla Falls. But either way, we could hear it from where we were standing at the end of the trail, we just couldn't see how far it went.

After hiking back to the entrance, which took about 2 hours round trip, Neil and I headed home driving through a town called Bli Bli (pronounced: Blye Blye). Earlier this week, Neil rode his bike out there in search of a reservoir that has some pretty good bike trails. While on his adventure, I was at school, and I received a couple of calls from him. Why? IT WAS ALL UP HILL. *lol* So we drove up the street that he took on his way there because he wanted to show me where he went. It's a nice area, but again I'm blown away by how 'hilly' this area is, even by the coast. Almost everywhere you go, every street is uphill. Which is good and bad in a way. *lol* (One day I will have to take a video of my ride to school to explain why bike riding there isn't a great option).

After our drive through Bli Bli, we headed home to Mooloolaba which ended our adventureous day!!!

*****

So it's been about a month since this blog has started and we have more than a month's worth of entries here. We haven't been getting a lot of feedback and we would really appreciate some sort of response just to know whether or not we should keep this blog going. Perhaps some of you just don't have anything to say and enjoy reading what we post, or maybe there are some of you who don't know or don't think you can post comments here.

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