Well, now it’s time for our first foray away from. We have arranged to visit Glenda’s cousin Beryl in Stanthorpe out in the Granite County. But first we have a two night stay, glamping at Mount Cotton. We need to go south on the M1 motorway, AKA The Bruce Highway in these parts. Its length is approximately 1,679 kilometres; luckily we don’t need all of it!.
The highway is named after a popular former Queensland and federal politician, Harry Bruce. He was the state Minister for Works in the mid-1930s. Just thought I’d mention that!
South of the Gateway Bridge over the Brisbane River, we branched off the busy motorway and drove on the more peaceful roads to Capalaba where we hesitated at a rather dismal road-side coffee shop. Not stopping here Barry!
The lady in the convenience store next door recommended we try the curiously named IndigiScapes Environmental Education Centre Cafe. That caused some confusion. “Is that in Digiscapes? – I can’t find that on the map!” “No. It’s easy. Left out of here. Second right. Left at the end then right and left and right again. Then it’s on the right after 6 or 7 kms. You can’t miss it!” And, fair dos, we didn’t.
This is more our style of pit stop!
OK. So we turned it into lunch with a savoury muffin and salad, a cake and cream and a coffee. $27 in total! Last of the big spenders! And it came with spectators:
Water dragons, kookaburras plus a lot of noisy mynah birds and a butcher bird called Barry. Really! And all of them were prepared to help out with the food!
The final leg of the journey (12 kms) took us to the Sirromet winery where we had an executive pavilion booked. Basically a large tent on legs!
With a great view over a lake with water lillies and ducks. Luckily the breeze kept any mozzies at home.
Super dinner in the Tuscan restaurant overlooking the on-site, open-air concert arena. Breakfast is a DIY job delivered in a basket with a zipped up lid. Within 20 seconds of it arriving the local crow had its beak on the zip.
They have learnt to open the container to make our breakfast their breakfast. Good luck with that mate! The estate supported a large colony of wallabies, although they were quite shy. I’ve got a fair collection of pictures of patches of ground where a wallaby had been a few milli-seconds before. But persistence pays off!
Incidentally, here’s a question. Why did Mr TE Morris, who started the winery, call it Sirromet?
After an afternoon’s sightseeing around the Redland Bay area we headed off the next morning for Stanthorpe. As the sat nav kept reminding us, the preferred (much quicker) route was via Beaudesert and Warwick, crossing the Great Dividing Range near Aratula. However, we were determined to head further south via Rathdowney with it’s lovely Jacaranda trees …
… crossing the range at Mt Lindesay …
… into Northern New South Wales via the mountain rainforest …
Coffee at Woodenbong before launching off towards Stanthorpe on the narrow, winding, part-gravel road via Legume. Shock, horror! Since we last used this road it has been widened, straightened, re-surfaced and given safety barriers. It’s now a normal country road – a road without challenge, or it will be when the upgrade is complete! However, it is still very rural though.
It was really good to be able to catch up with John and Beryl who we haven’t seen since 2019 courtesy of Covid. They made us very welcome despite a full scale invasion of Tapps!
Jack and Benji arrived at the Christmas Tree Farm in Stanthorpe …
To select the right size tree …
Nope. Five years too early!
That’s getting closer!
We then went to move some rocks about in the Girraween National Park…
We rearranged them into an arch…
… job done! There were some great photo-opportunities. Jack in a tree …
All of us together…
I’ve never seen as much water in the park before. I even tried a little paddle (by mistake)!
And we came face to face with a huge male grey kangaroo – about two metres tall…
As he was standing between us and his family, we didn’t argue with him!
Robin had already visited the park before breakfast and climbed “The Pyramid”…
Back in town, walking along the banks of the creek in Stanthorpe…
… we found a colony of the dreaded fruit bats.
Although it’s almost summer, Stanthorpe is pretty cold. Definitely long trousers and thermal undies weather! There was even a frost the morning before we arrived. The Granite Country is at high altitude and the temperature is at least 500 degrees colder than on the coast. Great to visit, but also quite nice to retreat to warmer climes!
We returned “home” by another indirect route via Ma-Ma Creek, Gatton and Somerset Dam. The dam is as full as we have ever seen it. Last time we were here it was less than 20% full.
The interesting (and complicated!) thing about this dam is that is is deemed to be “full” when it reaches 80% full (as it is now)! The remaining 20% capacity is reserved for flood mitigation. In addition, there is FURTHER capacity of a mere 524,000 megalitres before water spills over the dam. And to put that in context, that ADDITIONAL capacity is about two and a half times the total capacity of Kielder Reservoir (200,000 megalitres) – the biggest man-made reservoir in Europe.
And that’s just the starting point, because the Somerset Dam spills over into the Wivenhoe Dam which is “full” at 1.2 million megalitres. However this dam has a total capacity of over 3 million megalitres. About 15 times the size of Kielder.
I did say it was complicated!
Even if I’ve got some of the figures wrong, at the moment, there’s a great deal of water lurking about for drinking, boating and fishing – and a lot of extra capacity to minimise flooding downstream in the Brisbane River!
From there it was a race against time to get home before dark. We made it with 15 minutes to spare!
Marie and I have been to a concert at Sirromet, and also dined there, but never glamped. Sirromet Wines were joint sponsors of the Brisbane Beer and Beef Club (I am the club’s MC), until Covid hit, and they lost most of their markets i.e. China. So they cut back on sponsorship. Now have Andrew Peace Wines from Victoria as a sponsor.
Once again, you have visited places very close to home ie Indigiscapes, that we have never been to, despite being only about 20 minutes down the road. And also Sirromet winery, which is TE Morris in reverse, so must get there some day for lunch or dinner in the restaurant. I look forward to your blog, to check out other local places we can visit.