Second day of the trip, but the first full day of just doing holiday things. We woke around 6:30ish after a fairly cold night and the A/C went on straight away to warm the van. I got up and prepped some porrige for breakfast, and tried out the new mystery bag of coffee I included on my last order. It is labelled "Beer Hops" and upon opening it, it does indeed smell hoppy. A very light roast, which I'm going to have to adjust my grinder for tomorrow morning, but it was enough this morning to try it out. Definite hops flavour profile, that is odd on the first sip, but quite tasty the more you drink it.
I also went for a short wander to look for birds in the morning light, and found some Yellow-rumped Thornbills, White-bellied Cuckoo-shrikes, a Jacky Winter, and a few other birds.
Out initial plan for today was to go to Girraween, do a walk, visit Heavenly Chocolates, and that was going to be about it. But Lea wasn't up to a strenuous walk this morning, and as it turned out, the chocolate place doesn't open until Fri (Fri-Mon). So a new plan was in order.
First up was a trip to Stanthorpe proper, to find a bakery for bread (for lunch sandwiches) and a supermarket/deli for some sandwich toppings (since I forgot to pack the ones I'd planned to bring with me). Foxey's Bakery in Stanthorpe is where we ended up, and I can recommend it. We got a caramalised onion soughdough, and were tempted by the large range of pastries but didn't purchose those this visit.
After purchasing supplies, it was back to the van to make sandwiches and decide where to head out to. There's a Cherry Café over the highway from the caravan park, so we went there first, but they were closed. Next to a nearby Cheese vendor, but they were also closed. So we went further to the Jersey Girls Café and cheese factory, which was open. Here we opted for the cheese tasting platter which came with tasting notes.
We bought five cheeses, so clearly the tasting platter worked.
While tasting our cheeses, I perused a local guide and saw there was something called Donnelly's Castle, not far down the road. Off we went to check it out. It turned out to be a collection of massive granite boulders on a hilltop, some balancing on each other, some forming crevasses and caves. A very interesting place to visit and wander around. Also a reasonable selection of birds.
After Donnelly's Castle, we stopped in at Castle Glen to look at their various liqueuers. It is still very much the same as it has always been (60's tourism kitch) but the products as smooth and tasty. We ended up with some Advocaat (to make Fluffy Ducks), Pecan Hazelnut Liqueur, and a 1999 Late Harvest Semillion dessert wine.
It was now very much lunchtime, so we went back to Stanthorpe to a small park to have our sandwiches (Shaved leg ham, Mersey Valley Pickled Onion Cheese, Ploughman's Chutney on Caramalised Onion Sourdough) in the sun. Very nearby was Mt Marlay, and apparently there is a lookout up there. So after lunch, we drove down the road, and took the first Tourist Drive we came across. This turned out not to go to Mt Marlay, but rather in to NSW towards Bald Rock. That seemed like a bad idea, but just as we came to that conclusion we saw a sign to a Lavendar Farm only 6km further on. It is the wrong season for lavendar flowers, but that didn't stop us checking the place out, having a coffee (or tea in Lea's case) and purchasing some dried lavendar and some local farm honey. When we left, I bothered to put Mt Morlay Lookout in to the GPS rather than just guessing where we were going.
The view from the lookout over Stanthorpe isn't bad, but it's a view of the town, so also not particularly exciting either. Since it was only around 2ish, we decided to check out the Granite Belt Maze. This is a privately run attraction, and actually contains three mazes (two aimed more at children, but we did them anyway). The price of entry is probably a wee steeper than I would expect, but having said that, we enjoyed our visit. They give you a riddle to solve for the big maze, with letters to find at all the dead-ends in the maze, so it's not just about getting from the start to the end. A nice twist on the maze solving game and quite fun.
However, we were pretty much done after our a-maze-ing time, and decided to head back to camp where we went for a wander down to the (mostly dry) creek, and I crossed over to the other side to see if I could spot any interesting birds. Instead, I found about half a dozen Eastern Grey Kangaroos in a very lush green field.
On the bird front, I spied the usual Dusky Moorhen, Pacific Black Ducks, and Welcome swallows, but also Superb Fairywrens, White-browed Scrubwrens, White-plumed Honeyeaters, Wood Ducks, probably a Brown Honeyeater, Willie Wagtail and this Black-fronted Dotteral.
I returned to the van, processed some photos and eventually reheated the leftover curry from last night to have for dinner tonight (followed by leftover Apple Crumble and Custard). By then it was dark outside, and unlike last night that was overcast, tonight the skies were clear. This meant that it was time to dig the tripod out of the back of the car, and affix the 15mm fisheye for some Milky Way photography.
And that's it for Day 2. Tomorrow we'll likely do Girraween and the chocolate shop, probably.