Maleny and Montville
Happy birthday Dad! Another glorious day today. We drove to Maleny 26kms NW. The route to Maleny and Montville is via the Blackall Ranges tourist drive and incorporates small touristy arty crafty towns and some amazing scenery including the Glass House Mountains. Maleny is known as an arty crafty town with a population of about 5000. We visited the Mary Cairncross reserve and sanctuary just before you get to Maleny. This is 55 hectares of subtropical rainforest that was bequeathed by one of the local families for the community to enjoy. There is a 1.2km walk through the rainforest and it was very lovely. Amazing how cool it was in the forest and some of the trees are amazing, the way their roots have grown is quite spectacular. Lots of vines and it is really interesting to see how they take over these huge trees. After a picnic lunch in the grounds we then drove into the town of Maleny. We were surprised how busy it was wouldn’t like to be there on the weekend. Lots of speciality shops, cafes etc. The drive from the park to town is via Mountain View Road and the views over the mountains are spectacular. From Maleny we drove 15km NE to a town called Montville. This is a particularly lovely town with some really interesting shops, including a cuckoo clock shop which I would like to go back to, chocolate shop, italian shop, doll and teddy bear shop, cheese factory and a really nice African shop. This shop had some really lovely good quality artifacts from Africa and very reasonably priced. Interestingly there was a wooden giraffe similar to ours priced at $800! While we were in town there was a wedding that was just about to start and the bridal party were outside the African shop preparing to walk to the nearby church hall. The bridal procession was led to the hall by a bagpipe player it was a really nice touch. Something about bagpipes that gets to you especially when they are played well. Montville could be compared to Hahndorf in SA with its restaurants and speciality shops and is definitely a tourist mecca with many people going there for weekend getaways. I really want to visit this town again in more detail. There are lots of great forest walks and heritage walks in the towns. All in all a very lovely area. Looking forward to the weekend going to spend it with Wendy and Rob who live in Pomona about 75kms north. They have recently moved from WA we haven’t seen their new house yet.
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