Before
leaving Toowoomba we wanted to visit The DownsSteam Railway Museum. We had been
told that this was run entirely by volunteers and was free to visit. Well we
were pretty well blown away with what we saw. There are over 60 volunteers
working at the old station, restoring old steam engines, steam locomotives,
carriages etc. The gardens were beautiful too. Rob and I had a tour guide to
ourselves who was a passionate train enthusiast and was very interesting. Old
buildings had been donated, sheds, carriages etc. as well, were all there. One
of the final carriages we visited was an amazing carriage that had been beautifully
painted from one end to the other, by an incarcerated Aboriginal man. This man’s
mother was Aboriginal and his father was Italian. The volunteers said they had wanted to
acknowledge the contribution of the Aboriginal people during the building of
the railways and decided a painted carriage would be a good idea. They had used
work gangs for prisoner rehabilitation from the nearby correctional Centres to
assist with some of the larger jobs like building sheds, cementing new platforms
etc. and went there again to find an artist. This one artist was prepared to do
the painting. It took him 19 weeks and was brilliant. Many people have seen it
and apparently a very wealthy American wanted to buy it but it was not for
sale! We bought a print of some of the work and a set of postcards as photos
were not allowed. From Toowoomba we had a short drive to our next stop, the
picturesque Lumley Hill Camp Ground located on Lake Wivenhoe. We set up on a
site that overlooks the lake and I went kayaking. It was so calm that Rob
decided to have a kayak too. We have kangaroos, birds and other wildlife at our
door as well as the great scenery.
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