Day Trips with Barb and Ron

On Tuesday, Ron and I took a drive to Bribie Island. It's about a 35 minute drive each way from their place. It's a sleepy little town, not as built up as Hilton Head...but a relaxing place to visit. We had some FABULOUS fish 'n' chips. We chose our own fish, and they fried it up for us; Snapper was the fish of choice today, YUM. We ate along the water front, and walked around a bit. We ran into Terry and Craig; family friends. They came over for dinner that night with Riley, Terry's son and Ron and Barb's grandson. After dinner we played a great board game called Compatibility, which is a great group game! Bribie was relaxing and dinner with the family was a lot of fun too!

So Wednesday, Zoe is in Brisbane today through Saturday for a work conference. (I'll join her on Thursday and Friday night.) Barb and Ron; my fearless tour guides, took me for a car trip around to see some sights. We set out at 8:45am and got back around 3:30pm. First stop, Eumundi Markets. There were many neat vendors to check out. I found some native made things, however I found that Australia has the famous, "Made in China," too! How lucky!




The second stop was Kondalilla Falls. Brisbane has had SOOOOOO much rain lately. On Monday, they set a new record for the amount of rain falling in 1 day; the last record was set 13 years ago! Ron and Barb had over 70mills that day, and other places had over 160! Crazy......well, as a result the highest part of the falls were closed. We were able to walk around the lower part, which was nice too. Ron said this area of the falls usually only has a trickle of water...so seeing this brings hope to lesser water restrictions. (At the moment each person is limited to about 140 liters a day! Level 5 restrictions would raise this to about 170 liters/day.)

The third stop was to a nice little cafe' overlooking the Glasshouse Mountains. These "mountains" are the remains of volcanoes millions of years ago. Over the years, they have worn away, so only the core remains. They are quite a site to see. When we drove to see Simon, we could see them, and yesterday when we went to Bribie Island, there were places to see them as well. This location proved to have the best view!

The fourth place, just behind our little cafe', was a subtropical rain forest. I've never walked through a rain forest before, so this was a treat. It actually sprinkled while we walked through the circuit. There were HUGE trees....we saw the famous Gum Trees....600 years old, (or says the sign...), and I saw my first wallaby...the picture isn't great, but he's there, I promise!

Tomorrow I'm taking the train into the city to meet up with Zoe in the city...and another adventure awaits!