April Autumn Magic
By Chris Bray. Photos by Gloria Wade.
On a lovely sunny Autumn morning, albeit chilly to start with, we gathered at Macleans Bridge. Greg, Vyvyan and Colin’s Elans, Mikes M-100, Steve’s Esprit, Tim’s late Europa and Clive’s Elise were rearing to go.
Mike led us down some lovely country roads, enjoyable for the drivers and the beautiful scenery was a delight for passengers. We travelled via Tamborine Village on the Beaudesert-Boonah Road, stopping for an entertaining coffee break at Flavours Cafe. It was great to see Daryl and Moira join us there with their lovely granddaughters.
When we were comfortably full of coffee and delights we were treated to an informative talk by the cafe proprietor, who sounded a bit of a “Jack of all trades” and also an ex race car driver of saloon cars, I believe he said.
He explained how he had renovated the cafe’s historical building, putting back many of its missing original features. The building was used almost a century ago as the offices for a prosperous Butter Factory of the time, which was situated opposite. Milk/cream was supplied by the many local dairy farms in the region, of which most are now long gone.
Mike in the meantime was a little perturbed about the prospect of us all getting our planned lunch at The Rosevale Retreat Hotel, where the landlord seemed to be retreating from his hospitality duties, apparently being hung over after much merriment the night before – courtesy of the local rodeo celebrations. He apparently was not very willing to accommodate us with lunch as arranged. It was decided to play safe and, after a phone call, the day was saved by The Peak Hotel.
We bade Daryl and Moira goodbye at this point, as we continued our journey with a detour to the lunch venue at Peaks Crossing. Again nice sections of countryside were traversed covering, Boonah; Mt Alford; Lake Moogerah (which looked very choppy that day); Kalbar and Peak Crossing.
A pleasant lunch was had by all. It was good to have Craig and Caroline and Wybe and Angela join us for lunch. Wybe in his beautiful looking 1960 Elite, but alas Craig’s Elan had to stay at home. Caroline had hurt her back and needed the comforts of a modern Merc.
After much chatting we all finally went our merry way home.
Many thanks to John Barram [the instigator] Mike and Maggie [our back up and leaders for
the day] Clive [man of many skills] for making the run possible.
