{"id":3885,"date":"2022-11-09T11:31:55","date_gmt":"2022-11-09T11:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=3885"},"modified":"2025-12-24T22:27:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T22:27:47","slug":"4-stanthorpe-and-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=3885","title":{"rendered":"4. STANTHORPE AND BACK."},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, now it’s time for our first foray away from.\u00a0 We have arranged to visit Glenda’s cousin Beryl in Stanthorpe out in the Granite County.\u00a0 But first we have a two night stay, glamping at Mount Cotton.\u00a0 We need to go south on the M1 motorway, AKA The Bruce Highway in these parts.\u00a0 Its length is approximately 1,679 kilometres; luckily we don’t need all of it!.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Just thought I’d mention that!<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Not stopping here Barry!<\/p>\n

The lady in the convenience store next door recommended we try the curiously named IndigiScapes Environmental Education Centre Cafe.\u00a0 That caused some confusion.\u00a0 “Is that in Digiscapes? – I can’t find that on the map!”\u00a0 “No.\u00a0 It’s easy.\u00a0 Left out of here.\u00a0 Second right.\u00a0 Left at the end then right and left and right again.\u00a0 Then it’s on the right after 6 or 7 kms.\u00a0 You can’t miss it!”\u00a0 And, fair dos, we didn’t.<\/p>\n

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This is more our style of pit stop!<\/p>\n

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OK.\u00a0 So we turned it into lunch with a savoury muffin and salad, a cake and cream and a coffee.\u00a0 $27 in total!\u00a0 Last of the big spenders!\u00a0 And it came with spectators:<\/p>\n

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Water dragons, kookaburras plus a lot of noisy mynah birds and a butcher bird called Barry.\u00a0 Really!\u00a0 And all of them were prepared to help out with the food!<\/p>\n

The final leg of the journey (12 kms) took us to the Sirromet winery where we had an executive pavilion booked.\u00a0 Basically a large tent on legs!<\/p>\n

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With a great view over a lake with water lillies and ducks.\u00a0 Luckily the breeze kept any mozzies at home.<\/p>\n

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Super dinner in the Tuscan restaurant overlooking the on-site, open-air concert arena.\u00a0 Breakfast is a DIY job delivered in a basket with a zipped up lid.\u00a0 Within 20 seconds of it arriving the local crow had its beak on the zip.<\/p>\n

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They have learnt to open the container to make our breakfast their breakfast.\u00a0 Good luck with that mate!\u00a0 The estate supported a large colony of wallabies, although they were quite shy.\u00a0 I’ve got a fair collection of pictures of patches of ground where a wallaby had been a few milli-seconds before.\u00a0 But persistence pays off!<\/p>\n

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Incidentally, here’s a question.\u00a0 Why did Mr TE Morris, who started the winery,\u00a0 call it Sirromet?<\/p>\n

After an afternoon’s sightseeing around the Redland Bay area we headed off the next morning\u00a0 for Stanthorpe.\u00a0 \u00a0As the sat nav kept reminding us, the preferred (much quicker) route was via Beaudesert and Warwick, crossing the Great Dividing Range near Aratula.\u00a0 However, we were determined to head further south via Rathdowney with it’s lovely Jacaranda trees …<\/p>\n

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… crossing the range at Mt Lindesay …<\/p>\n

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… into Northern New South Wales via the mountain rainforest …<\/p>\n

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Coffee at Woodenbong before launching off towards Stanthorpe on the narrow, winding, part-gravel road via Legume.\u00a0 Shock, horror!\u00a0 Since we last used this road it has been widened, straightened, re-surfaced and given safety barriers.\u00a0 It’s now a normal country road – a road without challenge, or it will be when the upgrade is complete!\u00a0 However, it is still very rural though.<\/p>\n

It was really good to be able to catch up with John and Beryl who we haven’t seen since 2019 courtesy of Covid.\u00a0 They made us very welcome despite a full scale invasion of Tapps!<\/p>\n

Jack and Benji arrived at the Christmas Tree Farm in Stanthorpe …<\/p>\n

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To select the right size tree …<\/p>\n

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Nope.\u00a0 Five years too early!<\/p>\n

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That’s getting closer!<\/p>\n

We then went to move some rocks about in the Girraween National Park…<\/p>\n

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We rearranged them into an arch…<\/p>\n

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… job done!\u00a0 There were some great photo-opportunities.\u00a0 Jack in a tree …<\/p>\n

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All of us together…<\/p>\n

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I’ve never seen as much water in the park before.\u00a0 I even tried a little paddle (by mistake)!<\/p>\n

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And we came face to face with a huge male grey kangaroo – about two metres tall…<\/p>\n

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As he was standing between us and his family,\u00a0 we didn’t argue with him!<\/p>\n

Robin had already visited the park before breakfast and climbed “The Pyramid”…<\/p>\n

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Back in town, walking along the banks of the creek in Stanthorpe…<\/p>\n

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… we found a colony of the dreaded fruit bats.<\/p>\n

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Although it’s almost summer, Stanthorpe is pretty cold.\u00a0 Definitely long trousers and thermal undies weather!\u00a0 There was even a frost the morning before we arrived.\u00a0 The Granite Country is at high altitude and the temperature is at least 500 degrees colder than on the coast.\u00a0 Great to visit, but also quite nice to retreat to warmer climes!<\/p>\n

We returned “home” by another indirect route via Ma-Ma Creek, Gatton and Somerset Dam.\u00a0 The dam is as full as we have ever seen it.\u00a0 Last time we were here it was less than 20% full.<\/span><\/p>\n

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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)!\u00a0 The remaining 20% capacity is reserved for flood mitigation.\u00a0 In addition,\u00a0 there is FURTHER capacity of a mere 524,000 megalitres before water spills over the dam.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

And that’s just the starting point, because the Somerset Dam spills over into the <\/span>Wivenhoe Dam which is “full” at 1.2 million megalitres.\u00a0 However this dam has a total capacity of over 3 million megalitres.\u00a0 About 15 times the size of Kielder.<\/p>\n

I did say it was complicated!<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

From there it was a race against time to get home before dark.\u00a0 We made it with 15 minutes to spare!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, now it’s time for our first foray away from.\u00a0 We have arranged to visit Glenda’s cousin Beryl in Stanthorpe out in the Granite County.\u00a0 But first we have a two night stay, glamping at Mount Cotton.\u00a0 We need to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3885"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3931,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3885\/revisions\/3931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}