One of the nicest parts about living at Birdwood Sanctuary Estate is that it is an escape from city life but still a part of Toowoomba.

There are full size grocery stores, banks, medical centres and so on within a short drive, and plenty of restaurants, movies, fashion, books, crafts and more scattered throughout Toowoomba. All the major retailers (Bunnings, Myers, Coles, Lincraft and so on) have stores in Toowoomba and there are still plenty of locally owned and operated stores.

We recommend lunch at The Chocolate Cottage, and dinner at Platform 9. There are plenty of international restaurants too and of course the Weiss Smorgasbord is famous. And for takeaway lunches, breakfasts and fabulous organic and local produce we love Toowoomba Organic Food Market.

There are 155,000+ people living in Toowoomba and 228,000 in the Darling Downs region - enough to have all sorts of sporting clubs, crafts, and other recreational activities on offer.

Toowoomba is often called the education capital of Queensland - for good reason - there are plenty of private and public schools (including a great state primary school at Gowrie Junction which has a bus running from the entrance of Birdwood Sanctuary Estate), and the University of Southern Queensland has it's main campus in Toowoomba.