Ginger Without Borders

Dawn’s animal experiences at the Australia Zoo were the focus of our trip to Caloundra, which was chosen as out sleeping site solely because it was 20 minutes from the Zoo. Caloundra is a seaside resort (hence our resort apartment) and the south end of the Australian tourist mecca known as the Sunshine Coast. After our first day at the Zoo, Dawn was hungry enough (and I guess there was no rugby on the telly) that she decided to join me for dinner. Our resort did not actually sit on the beach. It and a number of the other resorts faced an inlet that separates the mainland from Bribie Island, one of the three sand islands that shelter Moreton Bay. We walked down the concrete boardwalk the town had built along the seawall for the Inlet. It was lined with covered picnic tables and electric cooking stations where locals would fry fish. Every table was occupied on the Queens Birthday Holiday. But this was the Sunday night before that event, so we really didn’t notice anyone at the tables.

Just past the tables, there was a commercial section of perhaps seven different restaurants (including the Italian cafe that where I would elect to eat my Queen’s Birthday Holiday dinner) and lots of loud music due to the several bars that also shared the space (think an upscale food court). Here is where my Vodafone SIM card paid off. Since the WiFi at the resort has not been “sorted out”, I used some data from my phone plan to research restaurants. The entrance to my first choice was hidden from the boardwalk but my map showed me the entrance on a side street. Tides Waterfront Dining was built above the “food court” at street level and was remarkable quiet given the action on the street below.

Turns out the Tides had won the 2018 award for the best contemporary restaurant in Queensland. The travel gods were good to us in this instance because, although they were busy for a Sunday night, they had a table available. We then had one of the best meals EVER. The food was amazing. Dawn had tender duck brest with lots of pitted whole cherries in the sauce and my barramundi filet had a spectacular cream sauce (this was my third barramundi in Australia – the Brisbane ones were good but no match). We decided to gamble on the dessert since the rest of the meal had been so good. It was a chocolate mouse with creme anglaise dressed in a tall glass with nuts and crumbled meringue cookies. And that description does not in any way do justice to how decadently good it was! We savored every bite and, as is our custom, used our fingers to scrape out every remaining morsel left on the glass. Our only complaint was the serving glass was too long for us to reach the bits at the bottom.

I go into such detail about our dinner to illustrate a travel lesson that Dawn and I find to be too often true on our travels.  The lesson is that one rarely gets great accomodations and great meals on the same day.  You have read about our experiences with the resort.  So I had to give the dinner equal time. And when Tuesday came (Tides was closed for the Queen’s Birthday Holiday), we both knew exactly where we were going to dinner and exactly what we were having for dessert. Dawn even knew what she was having for dinner. I at least was adventurous for my main course.

But we had a day to fill first, so we decided to see the beach side of Caloundra, since our Tides waiter had recommended a place on the beach for breakfast. It was also an open air restaurant and Dawn said it was her best breakfast in Australia. This is a photo of the place looking toward the inlet.

During Lena’s time in Australia, she stayed at a home in the Glass House Mountains owned by the man who started her high school summer exchange program.  So our road tour of the day was to drive South from Coloundra past the Australia Zoo and into the Mountains.  They are not a mountain range but rather a series of uniquely shaped remainders of a volcanic event, similar to our Pilot Mountain and Hanging Rock.  They are sacred to the Jinibara and Kabi Kabi native tribes, who request that visitors don’t climb those towering cliffs. James Cook named them Glass House because their shape reminded him of the industrial cones of brick in England which produced glass.

A travel blog I read about the area also recommended a visit to a subtropical rainforest north of the Glass House Mountains. So after visiting the overlook for the Glass House Mountains in the heat of a 95 degree day, we climbed over 2,000 feet to the Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve. We entered into the cool mountain protection of the tropical rainforest with strict instructions to stay on the path because of the damage human traffic does to the forest floor.

The volunteers at the very well done visitor center gave us a tutorial on the many types of birds that lived in the forest (a birding group even pointed out some of the birds we had only heard up until that point) and said we might be lucky enough to see a red-legged pademelon (a type of wallaby). They are the smaller cousin of the kangaroo. We weren’t many steps into the forest before we saw an adult pademelon a number of yards from the trail. Before long, we were seeing them every five minutes. Dawn even startled one when she came around one of those large tree trunks beside the path. We saw a mom and a joey sticking his head out of her pouch. But the best picture came from an adult snacking on one of the nuts produced by the trees of the forest.

And before we headed back to Coloundra and our final dinner at Tides, we climbed to the observation tower for the visitors center for one last look at the Glass House Mountains. One side note: the visitors center had a sign telling visitors to check for leaches after leaving the forest and offering assistance to remove them. We had none but were reminded that Australia has many different creatures of which one needs to be aware. Just as travel has many different experiences one needs to learn.

PS. Lena, tell Kingston that there is a lot of really good food in Australia and we are spending your inheritance enjoying it. We are in a contest to see whether all our walking or all our eating is winning, and Dawn is enjoying both with me so she has no reason to kill me yet.