Lions Road

This is just a short blog about the Lions Road.

This is one of those roads which you hear about and never see so one afternoon, Geoff and I headed off down to Beaudesert (southwest of Brisbane) and turned off onto this road that heads down into New South

Wales.

To read more about this road which was built by community members, click here.

This is pretty country just west of the coastal range where O'Reilly's is located. The view from the ridge on the way up to O'Reilly's would be of this area.

There is enough rainfall in this area for it to support a dairy industry.

Eventually, the countryside becomes more hilly.

There's not much traffic so it is fun to drive though the roads get narrow.

Crossing the border from Queensland to New South Wales. Years ago, there was an quarantine inspection point to prevent stock from being taken into NSW. Now they simply record every thing on camera.

This is the big attraction for me on the trip, the railway spiral loop.  It's easy to see part of the loop on the left of the photo, but a little difficult to see the lower part of the loop on the right. I have been on trains that went up and down the spiral in the day time, but it's one of those things to do in summer when the sun goes down late in the day.

 

The viewing platform. As you can see, it's quite mountainous in the area, so getting a train line through this area was difficult. Why the train line from Sydney to Brisbane had to go so far west is a mystery to me when a shorter and easier route could have joined Southport in Queensland and Murwillimbah in NSW.

It was incredibly noisy at the lookout with a flock of bell birds happily belling away. It's quite a small bird and you can see it in the lower middle of the picture. Click here for a YouTube of the sounds of bell birds.

The train line needs a lot of bridges to cross the numerous creeks in the area.

I liked the two halves of the photo divided by the train line.

One of the numerous creeks. While it has some water in it, I actually expected more after the recent rains.

And finally a hazy view of Mount Lindesay in the late afternoon. I quite enjoyed the drive and would happily do it again. This journey is better from north to south so that you don't have the sun in your eyes.