Colliding Worlds 4 The Rockslides

Colliding Worlds 4 The Rockslides

I love to play with colliding worlds. It sounds violent, but it's just another name for networlds. I write quite a lot of stories in different series, genres and at different levels. Sometimes, just for fun, I let my worlds collide.

The other colliding worlds posts have been about characters or objects from one of my books showing up in a book from a different series. This post is a little different, because here are two cases of my fictional characters visiting a real place.
The Rockslides is situated on Crystal Creek in Queensland. I think it's in the Palmers Ranges National Park. When I last visited it, which is several years ago, it was not far from a place called The Frosty Mango and there was a rough car park with a mango tree and a rocky path which led to a series of pools, tiny waterfalls and smooth rock channels that gave the place its name. I loved the Rockslides, even though it had cane toad tadpoles in the pools, so when I wanted a magical-seeming but real place for Patrick Carroll to take Ro Maven, that's one I chose.

This is Ro's first sight of the place...

I stepped off the trail and onto a long, gray slope of rock, with trees growing right out of it. There were hills on either side, and the high valley echoed with the dashing, splashing sound of water as a mass of little waterfalls and cascades fell over the smooth rocks and into a series of pools.

Reading the rest of that description, which must have been written shortly after I was there in reality, takes me back... 

Ro and Patrick are from Boy Down Under, which was published in 2004

I needed another magical place for Court in Between (2019 - upcoming). In the Fairy in the Bed series, some of the characters use gateways to travel between Over Here and Over There. There are a few known gateways: one is in a copse near Peckerdale Grene Tower, one is the Fimble Road cottage, one a Vouch-Safe destination cottage, one near St Botolph's Church. There's also a dangerous underwater one in Bass Strait, the one through The Harvest Hob pub in Adelaide and the castle bridge gate which debouches at a terrace in Sydney. I wanted one in Queensland, so I picked the Rockslides. Here it is...

 He took the vintage van to the rockslides gateway, parked by the mango tree and climbed the path to Big Crystal Creek. When he stepped through gateway into over there, he went to the falls pool...