A visit to Montville and Mapleton Falls

Visited Montville on the Sunshine Coast recently. This is what used to be the old Post Office, now the Misty Morn Restaurant - in 1975 I was offered the house next door, which was the post mistress's old house, for the princely sum of $20,000 AUD! It was on a 1/2 acre block, came with several cats and a goat, and an English oak in the garden. I dithered around and didn't buy it. Now it is worth about 1.5 million...............................

Montville has become a tourist centre, with boutiques, galleries, craft shops and hotels etc. Back then there was the post office, a pottery and that was it. It is on the ridge of the Blackall range and has wonderful scenery, mountains, waterfalls, bush walks and rain forest.

This is a view from the top of the range, looking out to sea.

It is a great farming area - everything grows here! Sugar cane, macadamias, avocados, bananas, ginger (both edible and flowering) pineapples, and it is wonderful grazing land too. It gets very cold up here in the mountains, much colder than Brisbane and it has a very high rainfall - no drought here, and no water restrictions!


The local school, pictured here (right opposite the house I didn't buy) is very old. It is very progressive and is totally "nut free" no nut products allowed for any of the children to eat, even peanut butter - because of allergies and connections to learning difficulties.















It has a very old school bell
originally used on a cane farm in the 1800s to call the Kanakas ( black sugar cane workers) in from work at the end of the day. It was donated to the school in 1897




The bell was restored and a new bell tower erected in 1983.






The children get to take turns to ring the bell after classes and for breaks - this little boy was obviously having a ball!




This is the little chair they stand on to be able to reach the bell rope!
















This is the Sunshine Coast Crafts Shop - run by a local co-operative of artists and craftsmen, and I am very lucky to have some of my baby knitwear on sale here!





This is right in the main street of Montville - such a pretty little village - all along the street which is beautifully paved, there are plaques set in the paving pointing out things of interest.

Lots and lots of magnificent trees some are giants!

















The trees carry lots of epiphytes; wild orchids, staghorns, mosses. If you are planning on visiting Queensland in the near future - this little village on the Sunshine Coast is beautiful - it has an English pub, restaurants, sidewalk cafes, many jewellery, antiques, and clothes boutiques - a shop where you can watch candy being made (especially pulled taffy) and a shop to die for that sells pure alpaca yarn (plus knitted alpaca items)

Further along the range is another little village called Mapleton - and Mapleton Falls. I have uploaded a video of the view from the lookout platform - it is pretty high up - the palm trees you can see at the bottom that look so small, are being viewed from several hundred feet up in the air - they are really full sized palms! There are two falls in the video, one looks like smoke it is such a fine spray! They are quite little falls, but the scenery is spectacular!


















The above pic probably gives you a better idea of the height ! And as someone who doesn't like heights - AT ALL - and who was standing on a flimsy (to me) little viewing platform, trying to photograph straight down by bending over the railing of said platform....................*shudder* oooh I think I've frightened myself!

This is a most beautiful flowering ginger plant - these grow like weeds in this area!












Lovely spooky rainforest too!



And a pretty little woodland path......... this place is paradise on earth - guess who is sorry she didn't buy that house all those years ago??????