Toowoomba is bloomin’ beautiful

It's springtime in Queensland and after a wetter than normal winter, everything is green and blooming. Last week I took a drive up to Toowoomba to check out the city's gardens ahead of the launch of their annual Carnival of Flowers festival.

The festival began in 1949 and has been an iconic event in the city’s calendar for 67 years. My grandmother lived in Toowoomba for a time, and as a child I remember visiting her during spring and going to Queens Park to look at the perfect lines of tulips and gaily coloured beds of pansies.

These days I love to take my camera along for the journey and I've spent many happy hours crawling around the flower beds with my macro lens, capturing vibrant snapdragons and perfect poppies. I’m always trying to capture the moment that a fat bumble bee will perch on a bloom to scoop some pollen onto the panniers on their legs.  

Some years it’s been rainy and other it’s been freezing cold. There was even one memorable year where the city was thrashed by gale force winds which buffeted all the flowers flat and made it impossible to photograph anything. But on this day, the gardens were at their brilliant best and everything was in bloom and ready to be enjoyed.

The sky was soft blue and the temperature was a perfect 24 degrees (Celsius – that would be 75.2 Fahrenheit). The winds were gentle and mild and it was easy to time my photos between the puffs of breeze which made the flowers dance gently before they stilled to pose beautifully for me again.

The gardeners’ plant pretty much the same kind of flowers each time, but they vary their arrangements each year, mixing up colour and style to create different effects. Every time I visit I find a different thing to photograph.

 After we’d enjoyed the scenery in Queens Park, we drove around the centre of town and picked up some sushi to take with us to the Ju Raku En Japanese garden which sits on the northern side of the University of Southern Queensland campus. We strolled around the lake, accompanied by some hopeful geese and a bush turkey or two and admired the blooming cherry blossoms and soaked up the sunshine. 

We ended the day with a stop at Picnic Point to admire the view down the range before reluctantly heading back to Brisbane. 

The Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers 2016 will be hosting events right up till 25 September, so there’s still time to plan a visit. Check out their events calendar here. And if you’d like to know more about the ever growing city of Toowoomba, visit the Toowoomba Living website to find out about the art, food, entertainment and culture of this vibrant city. I’ll certainly be back.