A drive in the countryside

It was nice to finally get a day where Karen and I could do whatever we felt like; we haven’t had one of those for a several months. We decided to just jump in the car and go for a drive. As it turned out, we headed down the Ipswich Motorway/Warrego Highway and turned onto the Brisbane Valley Highway towards Fernvale and Esk. We drove up past Fernvale and the Wivenhoe Dam, through Esk and turned off towards the Somerset Dam and Kilcoy. The countryside out there is absolutely bone dry, though it did drizzle a bit while we were driving through. We stopped at the Caboonbah Homestead: not much to see there. Cattle were grazing in the mostly dry bed of the Brisbane River. We were hoping to catch another glimpse of the Wivenhoe Dam, so we turned down the Wivenhoe-Somerset Road and headed back towards Fernvale. Remarkably, neither of us had ever been to Mount Glorious, so instead of going all the way back to Fernvale, we got onto the Northbrook Creek Road which took us up into the D’Aguilar Range. We stopped in Mount Glorious for lunch, at a little place called Coffee in the Forest. Coffee in the Forest is owned by Ken and Shirley Olley, who are better known for the production of organic honey, and there are numerous honey-based products for sale in their cafe. I can highly recommend the Ambrosia (honey mead). We bought a bottle of it after eating our meal of spring rolls, garlic rice, salad and sweet and sour sauce (the sweet component, of course, being provided by a honey base). Then we headed back to Brisbane via Samford. We stopped at the Eden Bistro in Bardon, having been recommended by Clinton, for coffee and cake. Very nice. Lovely view, too. Not yet satisfied that our day’s journey was circuitous enough, we explored various parts of Fig Tree Pocket and Chapel Hill, before finally returning home. A great day.