Find Serenity in Queen’s Park: Chapel and Waterfall Bliss

Queen’s Park in Maryborough has long been a favourite for its heritage charm and lush lawns, but its lower section offers a more secluded slice of serenity. Known early last century as a hangout for couples indulging in ‘monkey business,’ this area now invites visitors to explore its tranquil offerings.

In the Walker Street corner, a waterfall cascades into a lily pond, a sometimes sunny, sometimes shady reason to linger and contemplate the view of the spacious sloping section of the 5.2 hectares of the park that rises to the Gallipoli to Armistice memorial and beyond to the river views.

Once a creek with two pedestrian bridges, one superbly ornamental, flowed along the bottom of the hill. The creek now drains the city underground but the area is ground zero in a flood as the rising river flows into the gully, immersing the lily pond more often than the frogs care to remember.

A pathway up the slope once led past cages of monkeys. They disappeared in the 1960s. At the top to the right a fernery styled into two geodesic domes stood for 30 years before the structure was demolished early this century.

The modern bush chapel with decorative stained glass was built in 2009 beside the waterfall as a Rotary project and has become a popular place to ‘tie the knot’ in matrimony.