Community & Business
19 July, 2021
The Grange residents chuffed after enjoying an engine-ous outing
Residents of The Grange Country Villas in Pittsworth braved the coal’d and enjoyed a lovely train themed day out in Toowoomba recently, thanks to Diane Cattell who owns the independent living village with her husband Doug.
Mrs Cattell organises a day of adventures for residents of The Grange a couple of times a year, but this outing looked a little different to usual.
This time, 25 residents of the independent living village and some others got to enjoy a train trip from Toowoomba to Wyreema and back again.
Starting at 8am, those who went on the trip hopped onto Kylie Schultz’s bus and made the journey into Toowoomba, ready for a day filled with fun and good company.
They arrived at the Toowoomba railway station at 9am, just in time to jump aboard the Puffing Billy for the two hour round trip.
Mrs Cattell said the carriage in which they rode in was at the very back on the way out to Wyreema, which meant on the way back to Toowoomba they got to be at the front.
After returning to Toowoomba and dis-embarking the train at 11am, they headed out to Drayton to enjoy the afternoon at the DownsSteam Tourist Railway and Museum.
There, they first got to enjoy a ‘Track Pack’ for lunch, which Mrs Cattell explained was a little box that had sandwiches, cakes and fruit in it.
After that, they were treated to a guided tour of the Dreamtime Journey Coach at the Museum.
The coach aims to acknowledge the contribution made by the indigenous workers to the construction of the railway up the Toowoomba range.
To achieve this, an indigenous inmate from the Westbrook Correctional Centre volunteered to paint one of the Museum’s carriages as part of his prison rehabilitation program.
The carriage, which took 19 weeks to paint back in 2012, depicts a spiritual journey from dawn to dusk.
The paintings represent the traverse of a day, starting from the entrance with the orange and yellow colours of the dawn, to the bright colours of the day in the middle of the carriage, and then the pink and purple colours of dusk at the other end of the carriage.
Mrs Cattell said it was a truly fascinating thing to witness and everyone loved exploring the carriage and understanding the story it had to tell.
“It is absolutely fantastic and absolutely worth the five dollars to go and have a look,” Mrs Cattell said.
After the guided tour finished, everyone jumped back onto the bus for the journey back to Pittsworth.
Mrs Cattell said everyone had a fantastic time.
“It was a great day out,” she said.
“Everybody enjoyed it.”
