A DAY IN THE COUNTRY...

We spent a lovely day out in the country this week with our good friends Ian and Kathy Forward.
It was actually our wedding anniversary and we decided to go for a drive up to O'Reilly's for lunch and a bush walk.....
We left home around 9.45am and headed off.... They have had quite a bit of rain down here so the countryside is very lush and green at the moment so the drive in itself was really quite pretty.  We had a brief stop on the way up to have a look down through the valley,  it was nice but the trees are growing up now so photo wise it wasn't quite as good...

Day's outing with our good friends Ian and Kathy

Beautiful countryside out behind Brisbane

Wild flowers on the side of the road....

The trees are have grown and are now blocking some of the view but still beautiful

 From here we continued up the range until we arrived at the Alpaca Farm.  Our daughter Sarah had informed us that the view from their back deck was stunning and it was a good place to stop and have a cup of coffee, so we decided to take her advice and do exactly that...
We weren't disappointed,  not only was the view stunning,  the alpacas were kind of cute too.  They have the most expressive eyes,  you can't help falling just a little in love with these creatures...

Feeding the Alpacas

A cutie

Saying hello to Roy - named by our kids when they last visited

Steve taking charge of the camera today....

Our morning tea stop...

Morning tea with these good friends....

 The views from their back verandah were really quite stunning...

 We had a lovely walk around their gardens and then enjoyed a lovely cup of coffee with home made lamingtons, and home made scones with fresh jam and cream, very nice indeed....

 Enjoying our morning tea.....

Not only was our hot chocolate great but the take away cups were pretty too...

The lamingtons were huge.... too much for one person...

Straight from the oven and delicious....

TThese little tin creatures looked on whilst we enjoyed our morning tea...

We left here about 11.30am and still had about another 12-14 kms to go to get to O'Reilly's. The drive was beautiful although very slow as this road is really for one way traffic only, so we had to pull over several times to let other vehicles past...
It was all good we were not in a hurry. On our way up we did stop off at Kamarun's Lookout in the Lamington National Park, as the views here are normally really spectacular with 360degree views of the scenic rim.  Today it was drizzling with rain so the whole of the top was overcast with a lot of mist hanging around.  That in itself though had a certain beauty, and we were still glad we had stopped off.  We did take a few photos, but decided that we would pop back in here again on our way down to see if we see more than....

The mountains and valley are covered in mist

Checking out the landscape... which mountain is where....

Beautiful and green...

Misty mountains

Steve and Kathy getting our bearings...

celebrating our wedding anniversary together...

 We didn't have much further to go until we got to O'Reilly's which was to be our lunch destination.  We had initially planned to go for a nice bush walk before lunch to walk off our morning tea, but when we arrived up there, it was still drizzling with rain, so we thought we would have our lunch first and then hope that it would clear up whilst we were eating so that we could enjoy a walk or two in the afternoon.  Fotunately for us it did clear and we were able to enjoy a couple of lovely walks.

Again we had our lunch out on the back deck of the Cafe,  the view was different this time,  much thicker rainforest jungle but still pretty and the bird life was amazing.  The birds all joined us for lunch..... We were told not to feed them, but they landed right on the rails right next to where we were sitting and eating....

sitting out on the back deck at O'Reilly's

 Some of the wildlife that visited us whilst we were having our lunch....

This little fellow was enjoying his own lunch whilst he visited us...

Blue bower bird came to visit also..

 By the time we had finished eating our lunch, the rain had stopped.  It was still overcast and also a little cool but it was refreshing and nice for the middle of summer.  We walked around and had a look at the plane that had been lost in the jungle out here, and we also visited the little church.  We then went over to where the birds were being fed.

 From here we walked over to the little Catholic church and had a look inside

Steve at the entrance to the church

Inside the church

It even had a stained glass window....

 Appartently they are in the middle of restoring the plane that came down in the rainforest here and it is now on permanent display

 There were lots of people feeding the birds so we just watched and took a few photos of course, but there were so many different parrots...

Beautiful little red breasted finches too....

 From here we headed down to the rainforest to go for a walk.  We were keen to do the tree tops walk and also go for a walk through the Mountain Gardens. 

 Heading off on our walk into the rainforest...

Beautiful colours in the rainforest...

 It was a pretty easy walk with timber board walks a lot of the way...

 Heading onto the tree top walk.  Only six people were allowed on any one span of this walk at any given time.....
Half way along you could climb up into a tree house,  there were two different levels, but it would only hold 2 or max of 3 people.  Steve decided that he wanted to climb up and check out the view... We had to wait for a little while as there were already three people up there. 

Kathy heading onto the tree tops walk

Steve heading up to the climbing platform...

Climbing the ladder up  and up and up to the viewing platforms....

The views from high up in the tree tops..

Close up of the moss or algae growing in the rainforest...

views from up in the tree tops

 After we did the tree top walk we then went to walk around the Mountain Garden walk which was just lovely...

Lots and lots of beautiful ferns, crows nests and staghorns. 

Little figurines like this one were scattered around the gardens.

Amazing abundance of birdlife throughout the gardens.

 We stood for quite a while and watched this little bird take a bath.  He was entertaining to watch and continued splashing around in the bird bath for a good five minutes or more before he noticed us and flew off...

 This part of the garden was beautiful with lots of large boulders, and ferns, moss and orchids growing everywhere.
There were also wild bush hydrangeas growing in here as well and really made for some pretty backdrops...

Exploring the Mountain garden

Kathy and Steve checking out the hydrangeas - some had very small petals whilst others were large...

These fern trees took our fancy also.... Obviously there have been people through here with way more free time than most of us because this tree was quite decorated with lot and lot of plaits....

Time to leave these beautiful gardens...

 By now it was getting close to 4 pm and probably really about time to start about thinking of heading home as we had a good two hour drive ahead of us.  As we headed back to the meeting area and where the birds were being fed we enjoyed a few more surprise in the bush.... I am always amazed at the beautiful colours, the animals and the beauty of just being out in the natural world.  Such peace and tranquility...

Amazingly tall trees that reach up into the heavens

We even spied these little guys enjoying a feed..

This one reminded me of an eagles foot....

a curtain of vines...

more amazing birdlife in the rain forest...

More wildlife spotted....

 Time to leave this wonderful place.  We really have had an amazing time up here and I am so thankful and grateful that we live in such a beautiful country.

Beautiful drive through the rain forest,,,, Slow going so so beautiful, we just enjoyed the whole drive,....

By now the sun was out and the sky was blue and because we really weren't in any sort of hurry we decided to go back and have a look at Kamarun's Lookout again before heading down the mountain.....
What a contrast to this mornings visit where you could barely see anything to this afternoon where the views were just stunning...

Kamarun's Lookout - Lamington National Park

Kamarun's Lookout - Lamington National Park

 We could even see the ocean from different angles this afternoon.  Such a beautiful area of our country and it is right inside our back door.  Feeling very blessed indeed...

So glad that we made the effort to revisit this beautiful lookout... 
From here it was straight back to Brisbane but we had not finished celebrating... We had such a good day together that we decided to head to Hoggies for an anniversay dinner...
Great meal too.  There steak is always divine.  Steve had the steak and prawns...  I had the steak and calamari.   It was a lovely way to finish off our special day, and we got to do it all with our wonderful friends whom we will be traveling around Australia with later this year....

I still have masses of catching up to do from 2016, and there are some things I really want to record like the children's birthday so I am going to try extra hard in the next week or so to try and catch up these important events in our lives....