Dularcha Rose Circuit

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Hello friends. Today I'm coming from Mooloolah up in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland and I'm about to set off along this track here. This was originally the old railway route. The track used to go through here. About 300 metres in is a historic tunnel. Today I'm up here heading into the Dularcha Natonal Park and doing some of these tracks before heading back and going through to Landsborough. I've come up here by train. Mooloolah Station is about half a kilometre back that way. The new track runs 600 metres over the hill that way. I'm doing the hike from Mooloolah Station up to Landsborough Station taking the old route. This track goes through rainforest, perhaps some of the most spectacular rainforest in the Sunshine Coast. So I'm taking this track through to Landsborough and doing this one (Roses Circuit) as well. I've done tracks through the Ewen Maddock Dam. This track (what I'm doing today) runs two kilometres inland from the lake. This is a historic area. Come join with me as I hike this historic railway track, and let's see what I discover.

Well friends I've reached the entrance of the tunnel and all prepared now with my light. The camera's got a flash on it so I'm going to do some photography in here and it's actually just started raining so fortunately I'll get some shelter here where I can get some photography done, then I'll be back with you.

OK friends I'm going to walk through the tunnel now. You can hear it's got quite a good echo in it from the solid concrete walls. With the stone structure it's very good acoustics. I'm just going from end to end. This tunnel was built back in 1890 and 1891 when they extended the railway line from Brisbane up to Gympie over a length of about 170 kilometres. This was one of two tunnels they had to build in amongst the toughest terrain of the route. They built the tunnel about 130 years ago and it went out of service in about 1930 when the other railway line (and tunnel) was built over much better terrain apparently. This tunnel was shut and abandoned. In the late 1940s it was rented out as a mushroom farm. Mushrooms grew here for a while but not for very long. Then again it was closed but eventually made as part of Dularcha National Park when it was expanded and now it's part of the walkway through here.

I've just come out of the other side now into some more beautiful forest and the echo's just gone now. It's quite an interesting historic tunnel. It is quite spooky in there leading to some conspiracy theories about being haunted with ghosts and even yowie sightings through here. Apparently both are scared of cameras so with carrying a big camera today I should be very safe. Now I'm going over the highest point of the railway and starting a five or six kilometre descent towards Landsborough still running parallel to the track I took earlier up from Landsborough. I will be following this track back to Landsborough but in the meantime there is another track which is a tunnel bypass for people too scared to go through the tunnel. That was a bit scary but I survived. Anyway this track goes to another track called Roses Road which goes above the tunnel and up the ridge a bit so I'm going to explore that for a while then I'm going to come back here and keep exploring the track and hopefully end up back in Landsborough.

Well friends I've reached the end of this really interesting trail. I did know about the tunnel but I didn't know about the Roses Road track heading all the way around the hills. It was really fascinating. As you can see I got up to the Maleny Road and even walked along some of the (disused) Old Maleny Road before the new one went in. It's been really interesting. I think the tunnel was definitely the highlight. Great walk today. Thanks for joining me and see you next time. Ciao for now.