Aratula Winter Harvest Festival and the Scenic Rim

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Our first weekend trip was out to the Scenic Rim. It wasn't somewhere I'd thought of going but Amy was given tickets to a food festival by the company she worked for at the time so we thought why not make a full weekend of it!

Aratula was a very quick 1hr 20min drive from the city and so we timed our arrival for just before lunch. The Winter Harvest Festival is, as the name suggests, all about food! And so we wandered the inside stalls sampling local honey and cheese before going outside in the sun to try local butchers produce including some delicious snags and sliders (that's sausages and posh little burgers!). And then we found the bar! The brewery's of the area where out in force and they all seemed to have awesome names for their beers, I thoroughly enjoyed the Wolf Scratch Pale Ale and the Finger Lime IPA. As the afternoon moved on, the entertainment started... country bands and a tractor pulling competition! After buying a bottle of wine from another local producer we left the festival to ensure we got to Lake Moogerah before the sun went down. We made it in plenty of time and so had a time to walk over the dam that holds the lake back and up into the Moogerah Peaks National Park. T

The next morning or day started by getting to the top of Mount French, an ancient volcano that stands along in the surrounding flat plains. No need for exhausting climbs though as the road took us pretty much to the top and we only had a short walk to get to the lookouts. We drove onto the Main Range National Park stopping at a couple of lookouts on the way before ending up at Queen Mary Falls. At the falls is a great short walk, taking about 1 hour we passed various lookouts of the 40m falls before going right down to the base so we could feel the spray against our faces! Opposite the car park for the falls is a great little cafe (where we each had a delicious milkshake) but is also populated by lots of King Parrots and Scarlet Rosella's. And so like the impressionable tourists we are Amy and I loaded our hands up with sunflower seeds and fed the abirds! Further on the journey through the National Park were another couple of waterfalls, the best of which was Browns Falls. This waterfall isn't taller or bigger than Queen Mary but is an little adventure to get to! The 'trail' to get to the base is essentially a 'make your own path ' and on quite a few occasions we were left with no choice but to wade through the river! Just after the falls we crossed the border between New South Wales and Queensland which meant it was time to turn around and head back home.

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