Aussie Road Trip Day Two Tuesday 16th July

A detour to Queen Mary Falls.....

BARB

The day panned out quite differently from our original plans .... but spontaneity is the name of the game when on holidays.

When I went to settle our account at the Warwick motel, the nice man behind the counter advised me to not miss the chance to see the Queen Mary Falls while we were in the area. This involved a detour via Killarney, through to Dagg's Falls, Queen Mary Falls and on to Carr's Lookout for an amazing panorama of the Scenic Rim and the headwaters of the Condomine river.

Wow! Wow! Wow!

I'm so glad we took his advice. The drive there was around 35 minutes and very pretty, but the falls themselves were magnificent.

We stopped at the Queen Mary Falls Cafe for morning tea and I was delighted to find that they'd already yarn-bombed their trees in preparation for the Jumpers & Jazz Festival in Warwick (and district) next weekend. The cream tea was awesome! When I complimented them on the delicious scones, the lady admitted that her eleven year old daughter was actually responsible for baking the scones!


Roameo appreciated the yarn-bombed trees

I appreciated the delicious scones!

John viewing Daggs Falls

A gorgeous day

Barb bravely holding Roameo at Queen Mary Falls

We drove further up the mountain (over 850 metres elevation) to Carr's lookout. What a wonderful view! It was worth the scary drive on very narrow roads through stands of ghost gums and straying livestock.

We ended up bypassing Warwick and driving to Stanthorpe via Legume (yes that's a town). The road petered out to several tens of kilometres of dirt once we hit the NSW border, but when we crossed back into Queensland it immediately returned to bitumen with proper line markings!

We decided to find a winery to have lunch, ending up at Lucas Estate just outside Stanthorpe. There we had a very nice platter of home baked bread, a variety of cheeses, olives, homemade chutneys and relishes. Mmmnnnn!

Diet not going so well today.

Feeling quite replete  we agreed that it was pointless to visit further wineries, and we pushed on towards Tenterfield.

Where is the Tenterfield Saddler? Or is that just a figment of Peter Allen's imagination? We didn't see it, but did stop briefly to admire Stannum House .... a very lovely old brick building with iron lacework on the verandahs.

On on to Glen Innes. We found our motel without much ado despite our GPS refusing to work ever since we left Maleny (John: but my super incredible new phone filled the gap). Luckily they had a room for us even though the internet booking did not appear to have been received. Pah! Technology! John says I should've had a printout of the booking as I do for all the ones booked through Booking.Com. Who knew?

We're here .... and despite the fact that John has managed to set off the fire alarm (using the toaster) and spill his red wine .... the room will suffice and seems blessedly warm. Four degress predicted overnight.

IN MY DEFENCE (writes John) the toaster, cutlery and crockery came with the room, how was I to know it came with a functioning burnt toast alarm (ok - smoke) as well? NSW roads seem not to be as well maintained as Queensland.  Steve Irwin Way, all is forgiven.