Dave has an Autumn Safari class booked for next weekend, and, autumn occurring but once a year, he hasn’t been down to Tenterfield in a while, so we thought we should trip down and check that all the Good Spots were still, well, there and good.
So we left at 8am, thinking we could do the round trip and get back with takeaway to feed the kids dinner – but this was not to be – I shall explain…
We left Brisbane, drove through fairly poor weather, but no actual rain that I recall and got down to Stanthorpe and were very good! We only stopped at one winery as we were completely out of White Chocolate Liqueur, so a quick walk around the entire huge range they have and short chat with the host – took no time at all!

Castle Glen Liqueurs - the premises are spectacular!
Then we were off again, running south. We reached Tenterfield and lunch was a big feed at the Blue Belle Cafe… so full! No colours on the trees yet. Damn! So we decided to continue a reasonable distance to see where the colours start. Bungulla, Bolivia, Deepwater and Dundee showed nothing and finally Glen Innes showed signs of colour, and its clear that there is a good chance of colour for next weekend. Phew. From there we *should* have headed back into Tenterfield and checked out some details there. But we got distracted – oops!
Firstly, we had come too far and were unable to get back to Brisbane in time for for the planned take out with the kids session. Damn. A quick phone call fixed that.
Second, we realised that east of Glen Innes there are a whole bunch of National Park areas! So, eastward, heading for Grafton we went. We drove the absolutely beautiful Gwydir Highway through gorgeous country. We stopped at various points in both the Gibraltar Range and Washpool National Parks, including the lovely Boundary Falls and the spectacular Raspberry Lookout, but they were all brief stops as we had a long way to go and really didn’t want to sleep in the car!
Eventually we reached what is called ‘civilisation’. Apart from flush toilets, I much prefer the bush! But we drove through Grafton and Lismore and Casino and as darkness was falling we decided the Summerland Way wasn’t a wise choice, so we headed out to the coast and the Pacific Highway in the hope that the traffic wouldn’t be too bad. We did fairly well – only one traffic pile up around roadworks which only delayed us 10 minutes with selfish people who insist on whizzing ahead to merge, rather than just getting in the only open lane.
A quick dinner of Pizza Capers at Robina (yum yum!) and we headed home.
A wonderful day – 10PM and 947km later and we were home, to sleep in our own bed…

Track of scouting trip, March 4th