2023 - this is the year!

 

First parkrun of the New Year on a humid warm morning, thank goodness they start at 7 am in Queensland! This is the North Lakes parkrun which is held in a sociable suburb of Brisbane some 15 miles north of the city. North Lakes was created as a new town less than 20 years ago and it's now a busy little place as evidenced by the 200 or so runners who gathered for a merry jaunt three times round the parkland that surrounds the lake. The huge shopping centre has all the big stores including an IKEA. And that's just about all I can find to say about North Lakes, there's nothing much going on of note part from the fact that some of the residents were upset about three years ago about plans to close the golf course and develop it as a retirement village.

And a week later we were at the very different Glass House Mountains Conservation parkrun, a lovely low key off road event with the longest parkrun name in the world. We parked up alongside a row of cars by the roadside and a small number of us gathered at the start of a little used forest trail - slightly downhill for 2.5K until the halfway point then back up. The leading runners saw a kangaroo bouncing away from them but I wasn't quite fast enough. Then back to Woodford for breakfast at CJ's, famous for their pies and pastries, looking at what they had on offer I would have happily come back here for lunch as well. Technically the parkrun is in the Beerburrum West State Forest Park which is south of the Glass House Mountains District Park so we headed north to the mountain lookout to see the panoramic view of these impressive mountains. They were formed through volcanic activity 26 million years ago, the surrounding sandstone has gradually worn down to leave the harder volcanic plus which form the dozen or so striking present day peaks. On the left of the photo is Mount Beerwah, the tallest mountain at 556 metres, on the right is the pointy peak of Mount Coonowrin - several climbers have been killed and seriously injured attempting to reach the top and access to the summit is now prohibited with spot fines of the princely but odd sum of $431 payable by transgressors.