The first building we happen upon when we entered was the hall of competition. There were contests for the best bouquet, the best afternoon tea arrangement, the nicest floral hat design and different themed events like "bent but not broken," "winter moon," "autumn sunset" and so on. Each even had its charm and we really enjoyed walking up and down the aisles. After visiting this area we wandered around the showgrounds and saw many vendors selling orchids and other flowers. Leslie bought a hyacinth and a basil plant and both survived the trip back home
We passed the Sunshine Castle that was built in 1972 by a Scottish couple. They housed fairytale dioramas and a doll collection. More buildings had been added in the 80's and 90's and the business shifted to events and weddings. Covid put a hurt on the business scaled back. Some of the buildings are now closed and some parts of the castle are in ruins
We passed farms and saw the local mountains off in the distance
Nambour is out destination
A cute church
Let the orchids begin!
Seeing all these brought back memories
We used to really enjoy the Miami Orchid Show
Plus the Ft Lauderdale Show
We even went up to the West Palm Beach Show one year
The Floral Hats begin
A huge variety of styles
A steampunk top hat
Great for St Pats day
Artsy hats
One big bloom
The wizard of flowers
2nd place on most creative, first place on obscuring the entry with the sign
A little door on the side
Very barky
Wagons a' plenty
Larger stand alone displays with
A drift wood dolphin in the nautical category
Sea Dragon
Sea turtle
A funky fish
Sea jellies
On to a new category
The Wintery Moon
Shine on, shine on winter moon
More elegant bouquets
Fewer flowers but artfully arranged
The blue irises blew us away
Bent but not beroken
Curvy with huge blooms
These orchids were giant
The birds of paradise flowers
More big blooms
Bent but not broken
Out into the fray
Pallets of blooms
Pitchers
Lovely red and yellow
A big burst of color
All green
You can see how large the shed was where these vendors were set up
Cute little blooms
There were so many to choose from
We decided not to get an orchid
But there were so many worthy options
We could have bought a whole wheel barrel of them
It has been 3 years and 35 days since we began our Migration
