What is Powercruise we hear you say?  Powercruise has been around for over a decade, giving car enthusiasts a safe place to get their inner speed demon out of their body and onto the track. From the moment you walk through the gates, it sounds and smells like excitement. You can close your eyes and hear cars racing on the track, smell cars doing burnouts and you just know it is going to be an action packed day!Powercruise has it all, from cruising the Queensland Raceway track alongside other like-minded fans to powerskids, burnouts, drifting, a show and shine and more.

With inbuilt trampolines, an inclusive merry-go-round, custom parkour inspired obstacle course, and swings – all surrounding a mammoth three-story climbing tower and giant slide – kids of all ages will be bouncing, swinging and climbing to their hearts content on the new Orion Springfield Central Playground which is now open!Orion Springfield Central Manager, Melissa Crittenden, is over-the-moon to deliver this transformational project.“The centrepiece of this innovative play space is the custom built 11 metre tower. The slide from the top of the tower rewards little adventurers, while the 16-metre walkway offers children a new elevated vantage point to engage with the space around them.”

The Workshops Rail Museum has a new permanent attraction and kids are loving it.Tucked away in the right hand corner of the museum there’s now 20 interactive exhibits for big kids and little kids alike in the new Sciencentre.There’s fly wheels, a fluid coupler, sparks and air blasts to help you learn the science behind train travel, challenge your friends and solve puzzles.

Your destination? Flinders Goolman Conservation Estate, a veritable theme-park for hikers, with 10 walking trails and three summits encompassing 2,200 hectares of extensive forests, countryside and volcanic peaks.Grab your backpack, fill your water flask and get ready to conquer Mt Goolman, Mt Blaine and Flinders Peak with this guide.1. For lookout wanderers – Mt Goolman LookoutIf you’re still building up to the Mt Goolman summit, you can still settle for getting a good glimpse of it, taking the Mt Goolman Lookout track.

A house straight from a fairy tale...Brickstone House, one of Ipswich's majestic heritage beauties, harks back to an era of romance and grandeur.This heritage-listed landmark that conjures a magical fairy tale ambience with its lavish heritage features and fittings, attic rooms and secret garden.

A cute cottage in the heart of Ipswich is reinvented thanks to one creative couple’s “terrifiying and exciting” new project. It's not the first time Brisbane’s Sara Taghaode and Andrew Crane have stepped into unchartered territory for the sake of a new challenge.

How many of Ipswich's 277 birds have you seen?If you have a love for birds, Ipswich is definitely a place to visit, boasting 277 recorded species, from Willy Wagtails often seen in backyard gardens to majestic raptors soaring high above. 

The Ipswich region is home to some colourful and also quite cheeky birdlife - including many species you won’t find along the coastal regions of south-east Queensland. Above: Mount Mort's Laurie Smith (@Laurie7521 on Instagram) captured a galah feeding its not-so-small young one.

It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to learn more and more films, including big budget masterpieces, are being shot at Ipswich. The city’s mix of old and new, urban and rural, is proving to be a major drawcard for all sorts of film productions.An ever-growing list of Hollywood heavyweights have called Ipswich their temporary home, including Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman!The Railway ManJonathan Teplitzky’s war film, The Railway Man, brought A-listers Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Jeremy Irvine and Stellan Skarsgard to Ipswich in 2013. The film shot a number of scenes in Ipswich, including torture sequences at Queensland Museum Rail Workshops (established in the historic railway yards site at North Ipswich). Colin Firth plays a former British army officer and POW. His character discovers the Japanese interpreter who tortured him during the war is still alive and he and his wife, played by Nicole Kidman, set out to find and confront him.The film won a number of awards including Best Adapted Screenplay at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Awards.

I first heard the legend of Blackstone Castle when I was fifteen and my Nanna had joined the local historical society. So, with our imaginations full of visions of turrets and drawbridges my grand parents and I headed to Blackstone where we took a walk up the hill in search of the lost castle.We wandered up a dusty track and reached the summit of the hill to find...well, not very much actually, just a single half-collapsed brick wall and some rusty old car bodies. Not exactly the Welsh castle I had been imagining, but intriguing none the less. Skip forward (cough) twenty odd years. I've been to Wales and back, I've seen a few castles but I am still just as fascinated about our "castle". How did Ipswich have and lose a castle, who built it, what's really left of it?HistoryFortunately for me, in 2015 the Ipswich Art Gallery held an exhibiton "Brynhyfryd – lost castle of Blackstone Hill" which bought together a collection objects from Brynhyfryd, including decorative objects, furniture, family heirlooms and other parts of the building retrieved from demolition. The exhibition also featured photographs of the building in its glory days and was accompanied by a history of its rise and fall.