A Puzzling Haiku

Imbil1, a small town in Queensland Australia, is the home of the “best vanilla slice” in all of Australia (or so it claims). For the uninitiated like myself, the vanilla slice2 is a custard dessert layered between two thin sheets of flaky pastry. It’s pretty darn tootin’ yummy, if you ask me. And apparently I’m not alone in that opinion, as it’s a popular dessert found in most bakeries I visited - and I visited A LOT of bakeries. Yet none came close to Imbil’s perfection of heavenly flakiness.

But Imbil isn’t known just for its pastry, it’s also home to the most unique jigsaw puzzle museum I’ve ever seen. (Actually it’s the only jigsaw puzzle museum I’ve seen.) It’s difficult to describe the beauty and magnificence of this museum, and any attempt to do the impossible will be, well, impossible.

John, the proprieter of “Puzzles on Yabba”, isn’t content with having the best jigsaw puzzle museum in Australia. He’s going for the Big Show, the best in the World. And it’s worth a trip. Hubby and I took our grandkids there for a fun outing before we ransacked the ice cream store and vanilla slice bakery. I thought the museum was just a filler-activity - one of those things you do quickly, like eating your vegetables so you can gobble down dessert. I have to admit, I totally forgot all about the vanilla slice. The museum was that good.

John, the Magnificient, had rooms labeled “Australian”, “African”, “Tahiti”, “3-D”, “Glow in the Dark” and “Lord of the Rings”. The labyrinth of rooms underneath his house went on forever and ever. And he’s building more rooms.

But before you book your ticket to Imbil, let me give two cautions: first, you need to understand you’ll be underneath John’s house. I’ll admit I had my apprehensions when we walked toward the entrance - it didn’t look like any museum I’d ever visited before. (And it wasn’t!) I wondered if we’d ever come out alive. (And we did!)

Second, you have to wrap your head around the fact that it’s a gallery of jigsaw puzzles. You gotta take that seriously. You can’t just blow off the idea as crazy, because believe-you-me, John, the Puzzle Guy, is totally 100% serious about his puzzles. He’s assembled puzzles with over 40,000 pieces, and when we were there, he was currently working on a 60,000 piece puzzle. He knows puzzles and he knows how to display them to their best advantage. He even knows the math to determine what’s needed to put these unbelievable gems together (ppm = pieces per minute; pph = pieces per hour).

Here are a few pictures of our visit. Pretty much everything you see in these photos are jigsaw puzzles John personally assembled - even the 3-D ones.

Although I admit it was a little eccentric, I was captivated because puzzling has been one of the activities that has helped me survive long seasons of ministry. Working in a church environment in the past, and now in a teaching/training ministry, I need a way to help my brain decompress; go offline; turn off. Puzzling helps reboot my brain. I’m sure neuroscience can explain why puzzling is good for brain-health, but I just know the hobby provides a much needed rest stop for my busy and overloaded mind.

As I was eating my ice cream, daydreaming about the vanilla slice that I’d eat next, I wrote a haiku. At this point, I was still fully committed to my “Year of the Haiku” 2025 Challenge. This isn’t one of my best haikus, but what can you expect of a brain incapcitated from a sugar high?

After eating Imbil’s vanilla slice, I dare you to do better.

Haiku # 39 (February 9th)
     Puzzle gallery -
     the walls tell stories of joy;
     wonder fills the space.
     A man's diary -
     days spent arranging the world's
     beauty piece by piece.