Last chance for a Sunday drive.

Easter is almost here, that means school holidays. Also thousands of visitors are expected to pour in from all over the world for the Commonwealth Games, 4th to 15th April. Locals are being implored to have a game plan. Stay off the roads, don’t use the public transport, walk, bike or just stay at home. Many locals are getting out-of-town. Some have put their houses up for Airbnb whilst they are away. The general consensus is that it will be chaos…

So I decided, on a whim, to have a day out. A Sunday drive, while I can still get on the road.

Because of all the recent rain The hinterland waterfalls should be spectacular, so let’s drive up to Springbrook and take some photos.

The road is narrow and windy but very few cars are on the road. Strange, I think, on such a glorious day. Then the signs start to appear ROAD CLOSED. Oh well we will just see how far we can  get.

Well that is definitely the end of the road. I ask this bloke purposely striding from somewhere behind all those barricades what the story is. He tells me the bridge was washed away by cyclone Debbie that hugely destructive cyclone that tore through the area last March, (we were in New Zealand at that time) that was a whole year ago and still not fixed. The waterfalls are on the other side of the non-existent bridge. It will be a 30-40 minute detour to get to them.

Then I spot his mate.He looks exhausted, and so he should be, he has just walked since 7-30am up and over and around the mountain. It is now 2-00pm. “You could get to the waterfalls up that way” he says, with a grin. They are in training for the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea and they are planning to treck it later this year.

Instead we spot this interesting little bridge, seemingly going nowhere, so we sit down to have a sketching session.Just back a few hundred metres from the closure I’d noticed “Polly’s Kitchen”. We’d been before, but many years ago. Time to go with the flow, forget the waterfalls and have lunch.

It is a delightful Queenslander house converted into a café with large shady verandahs looking out across the valley. No photo of the house or our meal, I’m slipping a bit on the photography front, as I was busy sketching this lovely little gazebos while waiting for the meal. I just loved the way the sun was highlighting the foliageThe gazebos is used for weddings, but no wedding today. It is on the banks of a stream and the original was washed away in the March 2017 floods. After a tasty lunch of corn and coriander fritters, salad and chips followed by apple pie and ice-cream we wandered down to have a look at the stream.It does look very tranquil today, but looking up I could see all the debris deposited way above my head by the flood waters last March.

Time to head home as I am now trying to fit in a walk around the block each afternoon.

It is just on sunset as I power past Pelican Lake, well actually I only strolled and then came to a full stop to catch this beautiful sunset.There are still 10 days before the invasion of the hordes so maybe I will fit in another trip to the hinterland before then

I hope you have all had a pleasant weekend and I also hope the weather is improving in the Northern Hemisphere.