This was going to be a day of having a food tour of the relatively nearby areas of the Tablelands, but unfortunately my mum woke up with vertigo and decided to stay at the house for the day. My stepdad decided to stay with her, and my sister decided she'd rather sunbathe, so it ended up just being me and my aunt who went out for the day.
We drove first to the Nerada Tea plantation, where there's a little visitor centre. I don't like tea, but learning a bit about its production would be interesting. The centre was closed, however. On the plus side, a couple of cars parked outside the gate and people staring up at a tree with cameras, told us there was something to look at - tree kangaroos!
Next we went to Gallo's Dairyland, the visitor centre/cafe/shop of a working dairy farm that produces cheeses and chocolates. I'd never had a cheese board before, and wow was the one we had for lunch good. There was camembert, 'heritage', which was a hard yellow cheese similar to cheddar, 'rainforest', a slightly softer cheese that was kind of sour-cream-and-chive like, 'macadamia' and 'tilsit', the latter again being somewhat like cheddar but a bit sweeter. You can tell I don't know anything about cheese if I'm comparing things to cheddar.
The macadamia, though... I actually went "Oh my god" out loud at the first bite as the nutty taste flooded my mouth. It was a soft and mellow nutty flavour, but not at all subtle; it was as strong as the nutty gelato I love, but in a cheese. Strange, but very good. Both my and my aunt's favourite on that board by far. We got a board to take away too, so the rest of the family could try it when we got back. (My aunt has a little fridge in the back of her car - very useful!)
Next came the tough bit - deciding which chocolates to buy! They had a variety of bars and little bags of one type or another, and a display case of individual ones to pick and choose. I got myself several of the latter - a caramel, pistachio, marzipan, ginger, hazelnut, and cherry coconut. The shop also sold a range of other locally-produced products, including a little brick of honeycomb, thick and oozing with honey... we'd already paid, so didn't buy that, but later wished we had.
After Gallo's Dairyland we went to the town of Yungaburra. Driving through, it looks like a really nice place to wander round and explore and it's a shame we didn't have time to do that properly. It's quirky and quaint and artsy and creative and just nice. We parked the car and started walking up a street, and came across a quirky little clothes shop and went in. I don't want to describe it as 'hippie', but my vocabulary is limited enough that 'quirky' and 'hippie' are the best words I have for it. The clothes were bright and colourful, loose and flowing and cool and the kind of stuff you can layer up. The shop also sold things like mala beads and bags made of hemp, had incense burning and a couple of little have-a-go-at-weaving looms outside. The Scottish owner Carol ("without an 'E'") even chatted to us about the benefits of not wearing bras.
The bookshop a little further up the street was what my aunt really wanted to show me. Ohhh, it was wonderful! A proper independent bookshop with narrow aisles between shelves made of a myriad of different types and styles and designs of units, with books piled up and overflowing haphazardly here, there and everywhere. There are chairs dotted around for one to sit down and read in, or a crate with a cushion on if you prefer, all sorts of funny knick-knacks hung from the ceiling, and even a tiny cafe in the back. An organised mess, and utterly charming. I even came across a copy of an account of the 1693 Salem witch trials written by a minister involved, whose name I recognised as I'd read a fascinating book about it all earlier this year. I ended up buying a beautifully-written memoir about life in a town in Tuscany over the course of a year.
We drove next to Yungaburra's Avenue of Honour, a war memorial for the Afganistan War. It's a beautiful place on the shores of Lake Tinaroo. There's an avenue of flame trees, one tree for each Australian soldier killed in the conflict, a plaque for the sniffer dogs killed with their names and a poem (I thought of all those poor horses in other wars too), rosemary bushes for remembrance, and a single pine tree to commemorate the WWI Gallipoli campaign (the Battle of Lone Pine was fought by Australians). In Australia and New Zealand, they mark Armistice Day on November 11th, but ANZAC Day is a more deeply-held event, held each year on April 25th, the anniversary of the landing of the ANZACs at Gallipoli. It was originally to commemorate the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who fought at Gallipoli, thousands of which died, but now is for all Australians and New Zealanders who served and died in all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations. It's actually a public holiday. Earlier this year we discovered we had a distant relative in the ANZACs at Gallipoli, which stunned my aunt.
Unlike most war memorials at home, this was a living one, not just a block of stone with names on. There were trees and rosemary bushes, a path to walk around and benches to sit on. It was next to a beautiful lake where people swim and kayak, with a campsite and children's playground just opposite. It was lovely.
After that we drove to another foodie stop, the teahouse at Lake Barrine, where we had cake - lumberjack cake, which is made of apples and dates, and carrot-and-ginger cake. Yum! The latter had a topping of grated carrot mixed with orange zest, which was delicious. Each came with a slice of watermelon too, which was different but nice. On the way to and from the car we passed through a small part of the gardens there, and caught the most wonderful floral smell. After a few moments searching for its source, it turned out to be a plant with teeny tiny white flowers on. They looked and smelled like miniature freesias, my favourite flower.
Our final visit before going back to the house was The Crystal Caves in Atherton town centre. It's located in an ordinary shop unit on Main Street, and the shop itself is wonderful, but at the back of the shop is the entrance to an artificial cave system, full of all sorts and shapes and sizes of crystals. We didn't have time to go round it, sadly, but we'd been in when I came over in 2012. It was awesome. So cool. Brilliant. I loved it. This time, we just looked at all the beautiful things in the shop, and I cracked a geode. They had baskets of individual geodes from a few mines around the world, available for you to buy and crack open. I couldn't not do it. I now have the two halves of my very own, unique, beautiful clear quartz geode which, after 44-million years in the making, I was the first person to see!
All in all, it was a great day! :)
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