Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia is perched atop the Great Dividing range at a height of just over 700 metres above sea level. The ‘escarpment’ is home to several bushland parks that cling to the steep inhospitable hillsides. All of these parks have walking trails that allow access to some of the inner secrets of this otherwise inaccessible terrain.

The walk takes in several landscapes, from the green desert of the privet forest where nothing else grows, through a patch of native woodland before emerging into the hidden fern gully. The gully is in the early stages of regrowth following the devastating floods of January 11, 2011 during which a huge volume of water cascaded down this gully, sweeping all before it. So during this visit the ferns were not so evident, but signs of the destruction were easy to see.

The walk that descends around 350 metres and the decline traverses many layers of basalt and tuft rock, before culminating in the creek bed that is like a journey back in time with sandstone that was deposited over 200 million years ago.