The day started somewhat cooler than the previous days. I awoke and the hatch over the bed seemed to have frost on it. A check of the BoM and it may have!
The caravan's airconditioning unit had to stop every now and then to defrost, but despite that, it did the job and warmed the van enough. Breakfast was once again porrige, this time with apricots, dates and almonds for Lea, and dates, almonds and sliced banana for me. While Lea did the breakfast dishes, I wandered out to look at birds. I saw a range of birds around the place, but the highlight had to be serveral pairs of nesting Red-rumped Parrots using the dead trees in the now mostly dry weir (this areas is currently in drought).
I wandered back to the van and we were all set to head out for the day. First stop was Ballandean where we hoped to visit the pharmacy to stock up on the usual painkillers, but they were closed until further notice, as was the general store (which also had a For Sale sign on it). So instead, we grabbed today's selfie with the Fruitasaurus which lives on the side of the highway.
I looked at the Girraween park map, and thought the Mount Norman Day Use area might have some nice views over the park, and while I have been there, it was in the mid-1980s on a school camp, so I don't remmeber much of it. As such, I set a route through the northern entrance of the park and off we went. It turns out, this involves 11km of 4wd track (much to Lea's distress) but wasn't difficult or technical, mostly because it has been so dry. The Day Use area has a couple of picnic tables, and somewhere to park you car, but then walks from there to various park features, including Mt Norman, which was 1-1.5 hours away on foot. There were no views at the Day Use area. We did however, stop to munch some tasty local apples.
After exiting the park via a shorter, well graded section of dirt road, I stopped to re-inflate the tyres in the driveway of the local water treatment plant, not expecting anyone to turn up. So of course, half way through the third tyre, someone turns up. I relocated to the other side of the road and finished the fourth tyre. We got about 300m down the road and had to stop for Camels on the road.
Astute readers will notice that I was halfway through reinflating the third tyre when I was disturbed. Oh to be an astute reader at the time, because it wasn't until we were on the decent down the narrow (but bitumen) road that I noticed the tyre pressure guage showing 31psi in the front left, not the 37psi the other tyres were reporting (Which reminds me, I need a better tyre guage or an inflator with guage built in). Anyway, we found somewhere to pull off the road at the bottom of the hill and I quickly brought that tyre up to match the rest.
The road came out in Wallangarra (the border town between Qld and NSW) and we proceeded north up the highway to Pyramids Rd, that leads to the Girraween Day Use Area. There's a whole new building housing information panels, and a scale model of the park and a big circular ramp down to the day-use-area. None of which I took photos of. But after having had a peek at that, we moved the car over to the picnic area and had our sandwiches, while being very closely watched by every butcherbird and currawong in the area (one young butcherbird stood at my feet collecting crumbs and making little pleading noises). Just in front of the car, a Red-necked Wallaby sat munching on a bush.
Having lunched, and watched all the birds head to the next picnic table with people at it, we set off down to the head of the walking trails. Consulting the sign, and Lea's willingness to tackle stairs, we opted for the Granite Arch trail. We've done that before, but it's a nice walk and who doesn't like a giant granite archway?
Along the way, we detoured a little to look at this large pool, noticing the curved tree branch forming a semi-circular reflection in the process.
In the same pool, a school of, probably fish, swam along in formation, their fins breaking the surface. They seemed to be hunting, possibly waterman bugs just under the surface of the water. None of them breached the surface enough to identify what they were, but it was interesting to watch.
After a while, and a few more side-tracks, we came across the Granite Arch, which is really two large boulders with a third one on top forming an archway.
When you pass through the arch, the track continues down on to the Bald Rock Creek Circuit, which was longer than we expected, but an easy walk none the less. Along the way we say many flowering wattles (a local variety), several Pied Currawongs and this Kookaburra with a punk hairdo.
A bit later we even found a small fish in a rock pool, but failed to get a photo. Around another bend got us a good view of one of the Pyramids.
On the way back to camp, we stopped at Heavenly Chocolate to buy, well, chocolates obviously, and in Ballandean we stopped for fuel ($2.19/L for ULP98) and also visited Stanthorpe for the aforementioned painkillers, and some sweet treats from Foxy's Bakery (an Apple Slice, and a Blueberry Bakewell - both delicious btw)
At camp, we set up the folding chairs under the awning since it was still warm outside, poured a couple of glasses of pink moscato, and munched on a bowl of chips (Siracha Kettle chips) while watching the small birds flitting about, including this Willie Wagtail that landed briefly on a stump right in front of where we were sitting.
Dinner was roast potato and carrot, a small ciabatta, and some peppercorn cheese from Stanthorpe Cheeses.
Tomorrow we might go to Sundown National Park.