Japanese Garden in Toowoomba 01

Japanese garden is within the USQ campus area which is about 4.5 hectare.  It is very beautiful and special.  There are hundreds type of plants in this garden.  There are features like lake with bridges, a very long walking path, waterfalls, a hill with viewing pavilion, mountain stream, rocks, stones, pergola, Japanese lamp and other Japanese style decoration.

Just next to the enterance there is a map of this park.  You can see there are 2 islands and 4 bridges.  There are 2 exits, one is facing the Block Z of the Uni, the other one I have forgotten because I seldom used that exit. 

I can’t believe I have forgotten how is that entrance look like.  And now I really hope that I can be there and check it out.  The only thing I can do now is to check the Goggle Map.  After 5 years, what I can recall is that it is somewhere near the Concannon Residential College.

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This Japanese Garden is called Ju Raku En.  “Ju” means longetivity.  “Raku” means to enjoy and “En” means public recreation area.  I got this information from USQ website. 

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Riding bicycle is not allowed in this park, therefore I always parked my bicycle outside this park.

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This is the willow tree in the winter, all the leaves were gone.

I took the following picture in between May to July 2002.  It was a good place to relax my mind.  There was one time I went there after submit my assignment.  I also went there after taken  the exams.  Although the winter is cold, I still liked to go there.

Japanese Garden in Toowoomba 05

In Autumn, some of the trees will start to turn their leaves into red colour.  But in winter most of the leaves will be gone and have to wait until the spring to come and bring back the shoots.  Summer will be the evergrowing season, where the plants will have all their leaves bushy.

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The scenery in Japanese Garden from different angles.

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There is a mountain stream connected to the lake.

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All the waterfalls, islands and bridges are labeled with names in Japanese and has been translated into English.

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Not far from one of the bridge, ther is a pavillion beside the lake.  There was one time I went there and saw someone feeding the fish.

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I took this picture while I was standing on one of the islands.  The viewing pavillion on the top left corner of this picture is actually located on a small hill.

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The name of this bridge is “Viewing mountain bridge” becauase while standing on this bridge, you can see the hill.

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This is a Japanese style landscaping feature where the small stone is white, tidy and clean. 

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There are bigger stones by the side of the lake.  My brother had created a slideshow of some of my seleted Australia photos which can be played on DVD machine.  This picture of stones was used by my brother at the begining of each chapter to show the title for each chapter in the DVD slideshow.

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The name of this waterfall is written on a small Japanese style sign board.  If translate into English it is called “The Waterfall of Dragon Door”.

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Another pavillion beside the lake.  It is the good place to watch birds, swans, geese, ducks and fish in the lake.

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The stone steps as the stair case and the evergreen-leaves wall on both sides lead you to the viewing pavillion on the hill.  There are 2 paths to go up to the viewing pavillion.  one on the east, the other on the west.  If we walked up the hill using the east side, we will go down using the west and vise versa.

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From the viewing pavillion on a hill, this is how Japanese Garden looks like.

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The gardener was sitting on a cute small car smilling at us.

The story of Japanese Garden has not ended yet.  I have a lot more stories to tell you.  Stay tune with colinjong.com for more stories about Japanese Garden.