DAY 4 KINKA BEACH... A VISIT TO THE GARDEN CENTRE

We pretty much had the day to ourselves as John and Barb were meeting up with some friends for morning tea.

As Steve had never been to the Tanby Garden Centre, I though a visit there would make a nice outing for us.  I knew that he would enjoy it there as he has a real interest in gardening.  

The Tanby Garden Centre had it's humble beginnings as the longest established turf farm in Central Queensland and has evolved and diversified from the turf farm until its present day as a total Garden Centre. 

The turf farm has always been known for growing easy maintenance quality turf which is very suitable for our region but as the turf farm is watered from dam water and in the drought years the dam levels fell, irrigation became a huge problem.  This issue along with the new Kinka Beach Road giving the farm main road frontage to traffic traveling between Emu Park and Yeppoon  allowed the owners David and Joanna Scott the opportunity to consider the possibility of expansion to create a one stop shop for all gardening and landscaping requirements.  It was a venture that would both compliment their turf business and also benefit from it..

 

The Garden Centre  is positioned on over 2 acres in the middle of turf paddocks and has a plant nursery of over 1200 square metres focused solely on plants suitable for Central Queensland.

The owners plan for the purpose built garden centre came from a vision that it would be an open and inviting space that would not only be enjoyable but inspirational, functional and viable.  The open side "Atrium" came to life following a visit to the ruins of ancient Pompeii where the ownder David was taken in by the simple but effective concept of a roof shaped to catch water in a central "impluvium". A second building was then designed for the shop and a space was allocated for the nursery.  These ideas all unfolded around their kitchen table  and it wasn't long before this new concept was developed for Yeppoon.

The expansion of their buisness began with the introduction of bulk soils, sands and mulches.  As a turf farmer, the owner David knew there was a need for a good organic affordable soil to put under turf, so he developed "turfsoil" which is now widely accepted as the standard.  

Construction of the new infrastructure for the Garden Centre began in 2009, but it was took a couple of years before the final steps were take to open their doors as a centre.

Stocking their Garden Centre was a big leap into the unknown world of retail for them, so the decision was made to join the Plants Plus group to get assistance from the experts.  It wasn't until September 2011 that it all come to fruition and, the Tanby Garden Centre was opened.   Even today it is still very much a work in progress.

Even though we weren't specifically going to buy any plants, for us to visit the centre was an outing, a slow down time and we were looking forward to enjoying a relaxing stroll through the centre.  There was lots of beautiful flowering plants,  vegetable seedlings, chooks to visit, and we loved finding both the fish and turtles in the Atrium's Impluvium.   Steve especially enjoyed looking at all the beautiful cactus plants, and spied a couple that he wouldn't mind getting one day.  

I love all the eye candy and particularly enjoyed photographing some of the beautiful plants that were in flower.  We spent a good couple of hours just wandering around the Centre. 

There are so many little nooks and crannies in this centre to explore and whilst Steve was interested in the cactus and native plants,  I delighted in checking out all the colourful plants and garden accessories.

In fact I have seen a few lovely bird baths here and that is something that I think I would like in my garden once we transition to the Sunny Coast...

The beauty about coming to a place like this is that it never remains the same.  The experience is different every time you visit.  The stock has changed, there are new plants and new home decor items so it never gets boring.  The last place for us to visit is their shop which is full of home decor ideas and items, along with your basic garden tools etc.

Love the chooks...

It is a good thing that we are downsizing as it would have been very easy to get carried away in this little shop.  There were so many very beautiful ceramic pieces that would definitely add class to any home...

I did fall in love with this jug

I also got Steve to photograph this tray as I thought this might be  a worthwhile investment for us when we get our new patio setup for our Sunny Coast Home...

We spent a lovely morning there and Steve did enjoy it as much as I thought he would.   It was getting closer to lunch time now, so we decided to head into Yeppoon and have a bite to eat.  It also put us closer to undercover parking for when the massive storm that was predicted came through...   As we got to the end of Tanby Road coming into Yeppoon, Bunnings was directly in front of us, and Steve was keen to stop off there and pick up a carpet tile to make a mat for the step of the caravan to help reduce the amount of rubbish and sand that was being carried into the van. 

As we had a little time up our sleeve we decided to step and get their little chore done and dusted.  We parked right next to this rather flash Harley Davidson motorbike so I took a shap shot of it.

His favourite shop

We are needing to get some guttering work done at our place and therefore have to pick some paint colour for the prep work to be done before the guttering is installed.  We decided whilst we were here to check out some paint colours and get a few paint samples to try and make our job a little easier...

I also noticed this rather unique chess set sitting on the counter in the paint dept and couldn't help photographing it.  Most of the chess pieces were made out of bolts and screws.  Quite ingenious....

It took us a little bit to find the aisle with the matting in.   Secretly I think that Steve just wanted to browse as much as he could where I am the sort of person to get in there and do what I have to do and then leave...

From Bunnings we headed into the main street of Yeppoon to find somewhere to have lunch.  Normally we would head to Whisk for lunch but it appeared to be closed today so we found this other quaint little cafe and decided to try it out instead.  Once we walked up the stairs and saw that it was pretty busy, we knew that we had made a good choice.  The evidence of a good restaurant or cafe is pretty clear when the place is packed with patrons..

We were to discover that everything served in this cafe is made on premises including all their cakes and desserts.  They looked amazing too.  We decided to share out meal today which would then enable us to share a dessert as well...  There were too many options to choose from and we knew we were going to have a hard time deciding...

The outook from Flour Cafe was great.  You sat up overlooking the main street and if you sat at the bar table you could look out to the Ocean..

We decided to order the Garlic Prawn Bruschetta for lunch and share it and then for dessert we couldn't go past the Raspberry Log.   Steve ordered a hot chocolate and I had a Coke no sugar and we enjoyed these whilst waiting for our lunch..

Our meal looked so good when it arrived.  The presentation was gorgeous but even better it tasted amazing...

The dessert was amazing.  Just melted in your mouth and we enjoyed every mouthful. 

Whilst we were eating our lunch though we were also checking the BOM site to see what was happening with the storm.  It was definitely heading our way and the centre was very very black.  We were trying to decide how long we had to go before we needed to head for safety.

There appeared to be three separate storm cells within the region all coming from different directions.  As the storm got closer to us we realized that it wouldn't hit us in Yeppoon and the three cells would meet up somewhere between Rocky and the Capricorn Coast so therefore the hail (which is what we were worried about) would have probably dropped before making it to us. 

We had also received a text from the friend who looks after our home letting us know that they had hail in town but it was only the size of marbles and had appeared not to have done any damage.

Keeping an eye on the storms...

After coming to the conclusion that there would be no hail in this storm for us, we decided to head back to our caravan before the rain did indeed come. 

We got back to the van with just minutes to spare before the heavens unleashed and  torrential rain fell.  Meanwhile we were safely tucked in our van and enjoying the sound of rain on our roof.  We don't often get rain up here so we enjoy it when it does fall.  We just don't enjoy the storms and the damage they can do.  

 

After the rain we caught up with John and Barb for a drink.  They had been speaking to Barb's brother and he warned them about the hail that was expected, so they hightailed it into Yeppoon and parked under the shopping centre so they were out of harms way.  

 

We are not catching up for dinner with John and Barb tonight, they are heading into the Yeppoon Sailing Club for dinner to celebrate their 15th wedding anniversary and also catch up with Barb's brother and sister in law for dinner...

 

Tomorrow we plan to have a pretty chilled out day at home at the caravan park.  My friend Eleanore is coming down for a visit...