We had once been to Crows Nest in Queensland for a quick lunch. But we had no recollection of the town. It proved a lovely place to visit and use as a base for exploring the area, such as the wonderful Bunya Mountains NP. The town is unusual with its “village green” centre-piece. The restored Nolan’s Block is a really stunning building. We also enjoyed the walks around the town. It’s all well worth a visit, and we know we have left a few things behind for next time.
Getting There
We arrived in the town on 16 June 2023 and departed on 19 June to go to Wivenhoe Dam. It is only 27km away from where we had been staying at Murphys Creek so a very easy drive through some pretty country.
This was part of a 9 day escape – Murphys Creek for 3 nights ( to read that post click here), Crows Nest for 3 nights, and then Wivenhoe Dam for 3 nights ( to read that post click here). We had great weather for the 9 days, except for when we were at Murphys Creek and Crows Nest where it was very cold overnight.
Kerry’s snippets in fuchsia
History
First Nations History
I could not find much significant information about the First Nations people of this area. The indigenous story of Crow’s Nest goes back thousands of years and any written history of these times is very sketchy or almost non-existent.
The Indigenous tribes of the Jagera, Giabal and Jarowair people inhabited the Darling Downs for at least 40,000 years before British settlement. Estimations place the Indigenous population pre-settlement from 1,500 to 2,500 people. The Jagera people were of the foothills and escarpment, Giabal were of the Toowoomba area and the Jarowair were of the northern areas towards and including the Bunya Mountains. The local tribe that used to occupy the area around Crow’s Nest was the Jarowair.
The Darling Downs was originally known as the ‘upland area’ and Indigenous people of this area used a hunting technique whereby they would burn the grasslands so that the new, green sprouts would grow and attracted animals. This earned them the name “Gooneburra”, or, “the ones who hunt with fire“, by the coastal tribes.
Colonial History
In the 1840s, large areas of land were taken up in the area around Crows Nest as sheep runs, which were subdivided and opened for selection by the mid-1870s. During this time, forest reserves were harvested to encourage the growth of the timber industry, and immigrant settlers began establishing dairy farms. By 1876, Crows Nest was officially declared a town. The town name is said to have come from an indigenous man. In the early days when teamsters visited this area Jimmy Crow, an Aboriginal named by early settlers, used a hollow tree as his gunyah (bush hut). He was relied on for information and directions.
Crows Nest was the terminus of the former branch railway line constructed from Toowoomba in 1886. As the rail head for the region, Crows Nest became a relatively substantial town in the early twentieth century until the closure of the line to Toowoomba in the early 1960s. With the arrival of rail, the town prospered and became an established place to live and work – plentiful natural timber resources and the surrounding lands’ suitable for cropping and dairy farming. The Crows Nest Butter Factory operated from 1905 to 1969, processing milk and cream from local farms. With its closure, dairying in the area declined.
The early development of the town itself was largely a result of the efforts of an early storekeeper, J.T. Littleton, an entrepreneur and a police magistrate. The early public buildings included a court house, police barracks, a railway station, a hotel, four churches, and a state school. In addition, a large emporium was built by James Nolan in 1916, known as Nolan’s Block, as one of the main stores. The town consolidated in the 1920s and 1930s largely due to the success of the timber industry. However, by the mid-twentieth century, the population contracted as many local rural industries stagnated. A series of major fires in 1949 and 1967 also destroyed many of the buildings in the main street.
To read more of the Darling Downs history and development, click here.
Day 1 – Friday 16 June – To Crows Nest
It was a beautiful day and we were on the road by 10:00am for the short drive. We had a bit of an issue with getting out of the Murphys Creek. I wanted to take a video of the vans going over the culvert and then do a very hard right to get up the hill. All went well getting the vans down to the culvert, although it was steep. But going around the sharp bend to go up the hill Barry’s van caught a rock at the inside edge of the bend and came down with a thump. Unfortunately I was staring into the sun trying to see it all through my camera and missed that specific piece of action. Kerry, towing our shorter van, had no problems. This can be seen on the video for this post below.
It is a very good road north to Hampton through some pretty countryside. Lots of trees on both sides of the road.
It is a good van park – we paid $117 for the 3 nights. The office looks a lovely old building. We had side-by-side drive through sites which were very spacious. However, there was nowhere we could tie down our awning or privacy screen – just the compacted dirt surface. Barry tried to drill in a peg but no luck. We put our awning out without the guy ropes and Barry left his up. All the facilities were good and it was a short drive to town.
After setting up we drove into town for a look around and some shopping.
The town centre layout of Crows Nest is unlike most other towns in Queensland. The town centre of shops and cafés are located around a distinctive and unusual ‘village green’, which is an unusual open quadrangular-shaped park space.
There are many historical buildings in the town, but the standout is a large emporium built by James Nolan in 1916, known as Nolan’s Block. It was one of the main stores of Crows Nest – a fabulous building. It is now an arcade of cafes and boutique shops.
Other buildings are historical but not of the nature of the grand building in other rural towns. The fires mentioned above would have ruined many of those. There is also a bit of street art – last photo of this block.
I was taken by the bicycle repair station – we have not seen one of those before.
On the way back to camp we decided to do the Lakes Tourist Drive to Lake Perseverance and Gus Butels Lookout, then back to Hampton and home. Lake Perseverance is the second largest (in terms of storage capacity) and the second oldest reservoir of Toowoomba city’s three water supply dams. The other two storages are Cooby Dam and Cressbrook Dam which is located downstream of Perseverance. Construction of this dam started in 1962 and was completed in 1965. We stopped at the lookout next to the spillway with views across the lake.
Trying to find Gus Beutels Lookout proved difficult because of lack of signage. Eventually we asked Siri to take us there which she did. Gus Beutel was granted a one hectare special lease in 1924 on which he felled trees to establish a picnic area and create a lookout that now bears his name. It is a great lookout with great views of the Lockyer valley. Arriving there I felt sure we had been there before. And when I looked at our Toowoomba post of July 2019 I saw that we had indeed been there and had been impressed. We had also been to the Ravensbourne and Crows Nest National Parks. But because of the extreme droughts at the time the Parks were bone dry.
Nice drive back to van park – nice countryside up here.
Day 2 – Saturday 17 June – The Barn & Scotties Garage
For my morning walk I headed into town and came to the Bullockys Rest picnic area. The plaque at the park tells more about its history. The replica bullock train is pretty good.
From there I then took the Applegum walk, an enjoyable 2,053m trek to Hartmann Park. It is a really good walk following the river. About half way I came to the Pump Hole. This is so named because of the remnants of a water pump remain, where there was once a weir. It was a steam pump that provided water to the Butter Factory in Creek Street. This is fed from Crows Nest Ck which flows most of the time. It is a wide and deep hole, with plenty of water when I was there.
From there it is a pretty walk along the Creek – plenty of rock pools next to the cliff face.
At Hartmann Park I did the Bottlebrush and Tea Tree walks around the park. Then I exited the park and had a look at the nearby church and some lovely houses. I then walked back past Bullockys Rest to the van park. It had been a great start to the day.
In the meantime, Liz and I chatted to a couple in a van parked near ours, who had a cat (named Purdee). A pretty cute cat who was 12 years old and had to wear a harness all the time, as the poor little thing has epilepsy…. which I had never heard of before in a cat.
Later we went to have lunch at The Barn & Scotties Garage, to the south east of Toowoomba – in the foothills of the escarpment. We went into Toowoomba so that Barry could see Picnic Point and Tabletop mountain.
Then it was down the hill to the restaurant, along Flagstone Creek Rd. This place is all about motor vehicle memorabilia – a great place to explore and have a meal, a wedding or an event. We walked around the gardens before lunch.
Lunch was great – but it is BYO. There is only soft drink available.The Barn is full of antiques and other memorabilia, so is worth a walk around.
More exploring after lunch. Some of us were thinking about going into the garage/museum, but the place was packed for a function and we would have to go back into the restaurant to get some one to let us in as it is not open all the time.
It was then a long drive back home along the foothills before the climb to Crows Nest through this lovely area.
I persuaded Liz and Barry to have a look at the Pump Hole – Kerry declined. It was great and we walked the full Applegum track – they were very impressed.
Day 3 – Sunday 18 June – Bunya Mountains
We spent most of the day at the Bunya Mountains National Park. It’s a long drive – 84kms via Cooyar. Estimated to take 1 hour 20 min. But it was a nice drive on mostly bitumen roads – there were three sections of gravel road close to the National Park but these were short.
Just before we got there we stopped at Fishers Lookout with a spectacular outlook from recently completed viewing facilities. The elevated viewing platform provides a fantastic vantage point to appreciate the scale and beauty of the mountains. We also saw our first shoe cleaning station to stop any outside dirt to plants being inadvertently carried into the National Park. There is a bacteria that can be brought in on peoples shoes which kills the Bunya Pines – hence the shoe cleaning stations. A number of information panels provide the history of the NP.
It was close to noon when we arrives at Dandabah. I was really surprised to see what was an alpine village, with cafes, accomodation, houses in lock-up areas and plenty of visitors.
There was also a sculpture of a large hand. This was designed and sculpted Ironic Art in June 2008. The signs tells us that: The buttress root base is a reminder of bygone logging days while fungi and vines represent nature reclaiming the forest. The hand reaching to the heavens demonstrates the eternal struggle within the rainforest to reach the life-giving sunlight above the canopy. It also symbolises humans caring for the Bunya Mountains.
We decided to have lunch at the cafe and then do the walk. I had a hamburger with bunya nut – could not really taste the nut. We were aiming to do the Barker Creek walk, going up to Paradice Falls first, then to Little Falls, Barker Ck Lookout, Big Falls Lookout, and then to Tim Shea Falls before completing the loop. Unfortunately we could not find any signs telling us where in the large parking area the walks would start. Lots of information panels, but nothing that said Barker Ck trail this way.
In the end, after cleaning our shoes at the cleaning station, we found ourselves on the trail to Tim Shea Falls, not really the way we wanted to do it, but little choice. It was a really enjoyable walk with everything the Parks is noted for. We read that the tall Rainforest trees shelter the largest stand of ancient bunya pines in the world. There are massive trees of all colours, palms galore, creepers, and such a range of lichen and fungi. It is a great walk.
At the Tim Shea Falls, we were on the trail that arrived at the top of the falls and we could look down on the pool. There was very little water flowing at the top of the falls, it being so dry for so long. We realised that the track at the base of the falls was the one to Pine Gorge Lookout. At the junction of the 2 trails we could have gone back to get to the base of Tim Shea Falls to see that, but decided to keep going instead. But Kerry was feeling the pinch in her hip and decided to return to Dundabah.
We continued this impressive walk to the side trail to the Big Falls and Barker Creek Lookouts.
We took the side trail that led us to the Big Falls and Barker Creek Lookouts – this is a 750m diversion each way. But the dry conditions had sapped all water from the Big Falls – we could not even see where it was.
The view from the Barker Creek Lookout was impressive. But so was the size of the prickly pears bushes in the park.
Back on the trail there are some great views as we proceed through an open space.
Back into the rain forest, we next came to Little Falls which had only a triple of water down the black rock face into the base pool.
We walked on to Paradise Falls which was very similar to Little Falls.
We then had the 3km walk to Dandabah through a great variety of plant life.
All in all it was a great walk but tiring. My watch showed that we had walked 14km in total.
On the drive home we came around a corner to see a motorbike stationary on our side of the road facing us, with the rider looking at a bundle of something on the road. We pulled over and found the bundle to be a large carpet snake, which had obviously been run over. Terrible to see such a beautiful animal in such a condition. All we could do was to lift it off the road and into the bush. Luckily we had walking poles – so using 2 together, I picked up the snake and moved it to the grass verge… hopefully it will survive, but likely not. We had a chat to the bike rider – a visitor from Estonia. The bike rider is based in Perth working on the big solar battery.
To see photos from this post, click here
To see a video of the Bunya Mountains, click here