Unfortunately the weather today has carried on from where it left off yesterday ie raining!! However, we were not to be deterred from driving inland to Toowoomba to see some more of the Queensland scenery. Ray & Lynda have again been very generous and chauffeured us around despite the miserable weather. We left the Gold Coast and headed towards Brisbane on the M1 turning off left to make our way past the huge reservoirs that were the source of the Brisbane floods earlier on in the year. We stopped at Fernvale for morning tea & coffee and as there was a rather fine bakery in town, we decided to buy some cakes to eat with morning refreshments. We parked up and was just making our way to a vacant picnic table when we spotted some lorikeets (small parrots) flying around displaying their vibrant coloured plumage. When we sat down one of the birds flew into a nearby tree and began squawking away. Lynda went to the car and returned with some bread to feed the birds, which soon rained down on us. Before we knew where we were, there were all sorts of birds around us including brightly coloured male & female lorikeets, minah birds and a couple of huge magpies.
The lorikeets were noisy as they squabbled over the bread Lynda had thrown down, whilst the minahs just mucked in quietly. Surprisingly, the magpies were like the vultures on a carcass, they waited to the end to see what was left, despite the fact that they were by far the biggest of all the birds around.
After being entertained by the birds we headed off to towards Hampton where we stopped for our picnic lunch at a spot just behind the local information centre. Regrettably the rain was now driving under the shelter we were in, but it did not stop us from having a great picnic. No birds here as they would probably have drowned if they were to fly around in this weather. The rain stopped and started all day long making driving conditions less than conducive to a drive in the country. Heading off to Toowoomba the rain eased somewhat and we stopped at one of the lookouts to enjoy what was a spectacular view across the valley, which would have been that much better if the drizzle and low cloud were not there. Within a couple of hours driving we had gone from the Gold Coast beaches through the hinterland across areas of largely tree free landscape and back into dense tree filled valleys. Quite an amazing spectrum of scenery really.
After leaving Toowoomba we passed through various small towns that could easily have been used to shoot westerns. Going through the area where there is a university that specialises in agriculture and animals, we passed through a very attractive town called Laidley which had the traditional Australian timber boarded houses, corrugated iron roofs and verandas with iron lattice work. Again they would not be out of place in an American Western.
From here we made the return journey to Ray & Lynda’s place in rain that varied from heavy to torrential, which made the driving hard going for both of them whilst we languished in the back, occasionally imitating a nodding dog. Eventually we reached home and Lynda then had to get stuck into making dinner, which was absolutely delicious. After which we were able to share some of our travel experiences before heading off to bed and a well deserved sleep. Tomorrow is our last day in Australia as we head off in the evening to Hong Kong and the final stopover of the holiday.
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