Maleny Trip, April 2009

Here are a bunch of pictures from our trip to Maleny. Gam took a couple of weeks off and we went up on Easter Monday, staying Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights at a B&B in Witta. I tried to post these the other day but our internet connection has been horrendous, thanks to iinet still not having got our new modem to us (we still love them, they're not Telstra!), and I was unable to upload. Thankfully the tech-savvy Gam has provided a fix until iinet- or at least their chosen courier- get their act together :)

It wasn't this depressing all the time, thankfully!

Monday:

It was pouring rain on Sunday night and it continued to pour on Monday. It bucketed down. Gam was convinced it was all part of a curse from the gods that ensured every time he took time off work it would rain incessantly. It didn't seem entirely crazy, since I can't remember the last time we had such heavy rain- and for so long! Needless to say it was a fairly awful trip up, but we later saw on the news that the poor bastards coming down the other side of the Bruce Highway took 4 hours to get from the Sunshine Coast to Brisbane! We had intended to walk some of the tracks in the Glasshouse Mountains, but of course that was all off thanks to the weather.

From the website (Obviously! "This is a bed and breakfast for ants! It needs to be at least... twice as big!")

The first thing we did after we got to Maleny was find the place we were staying- Middleton Manor. It was in Witta, rather than Maleny, but only a 10 minute drive. Very pretty indeed, despite the rain. We then drove to Maleny to try and fill in the 2 hours until we could check in and hide under the doona until the rain went away.



We first went to PS Books- Gam picked up an enormous tome containing the Bourne Trilogy that must've weighed a tonne, and I picked out 3 books that I've wanted to read for ages but never got around to, namely Margaret Attwood's The Handmaid's Tale and The Blind Assassin, and Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell, just in case someone's reading this a hundred years from now and wonders what I'm talking about). We didn't photograph our purchases but Gam snapped their L.Ron Hubbard collection on his new Blackberry! Subsequently we took ourselves to the IGA (which has better opening hours than supermarkets in Brisbane!) to buy some toothbrushes and then the Swiss Woodfire Bakery (or whatever it's called) to pick up a selection of what we hoped would be tasty baked goods...

The bathroom... ohhhhh the bathroom!


I do love a good bathroom, and this was the prettiest, cutest and best-heated bathroom ever!



Okay it looked nicer before we plonked our toothbrushes down, but you get the picture.

After driving back to Middleton Manor and being shown to our room (the 'Burgundy Room') by Viki, the proprietor, and admiring the view (despite Gam's cries of "It'll be raining the entire time we're here, you just watch!") I settled down to the business of turning on all the heaters (reverse cycle air-conditioning plus hotlights AND a wall-mounted fan heater thingy in the bathroom- win!!!) and running myself a hot bath. Ahhhhhh.

May I just say- two towels each, plus two bath mats and two hand towels... I was most impressed. There's nothing worse than having to re-use a soggy bathmat or a wet towel (well, yes there is, but let's not be pedantic), so I really appreciated that little touch, even though we only used one bathmat. In addition, it turned out that it wouldn't have mattered that we forgot to bring our toothbrushes- there were dinky little boxed toothbrush-and-toothpaste sets in the drawers! *Ahem* I took those little toothbrush sets home when we left because I thought they were not only cute but useful for us when we have guests who forget their toothbrushes.

By the time I'd finished my bath it was warm enough for me to laze around naked (it's hard to feel like you're on holiday unless you can wear nothing if you feel like it, I reckon) while Gam went and had a bath. I started on The Blind Assassin and had an experimental bite of the Linzer tart and the vanilla slice we purchased from the bakery. The Linzer tart (not torte- more a tart inspired by the Linzer torte, I guess) was ok, nothing to write home about. The vanilla slice was a dead loss. Horrid, sweetened fake cream took the place of the nice, sticky cornflour-thickened custard that makes the vanilla slice so great. Yuck yuck yuck. The pastry was ultra-crispy too. After one bite it went in the bin. Luckily Viki had left some crackers on the side table and a cheese platter with some grapes in the fridge for us, and since Gam doesn't really eat cheese (perhaps the occasional nibble of something safe like an aged cheddar or some jarlsberg), I got stuck into those. There was a fairly bland, cheddar-y cheese and a nice creamy, aged soft blue cheese. Not particularly stinky, but very tasty. The grapes were good too.

I suppose the rest of the room is important too...

One thing I should note is that Middleton Manor does have a bookcase full of books downstairs as well as a large-ish list of DVDs to cater for guests during such weather as we experienced on Monday. We didn't check out the 'library' because we had already bought a bunch of second-hand books, but the DVD selection consisted entirely of chick-flicks... I'm sure that's entirely appropriate for the romantic atmosphere that most B&Bs try and cultivate, but... surely a couple of classic action films or comedies wouldn't go astray?

... Especially the bed... For sleeping, I mean. You don't want to think about the other things people might have been doing in it before you got there, even if the sheets have been freshly laundered!


'Veronica' parked out the front in the rain.


The view from our balcony in the rain... still so pretty.

One more thing I noticed- and loved- immediately was that the air up there is so goddamn clean. Brisbane isn't a very big city, nor a very dirty one, but there is a very noticeable difference in air quality in the area. I may have raved about this before in a post on one of our previous trips to the area. Since getting back to Brisbane it's actually been rather depressing how bad the air is here... Clean air makes such a difference to your quality of life, not to mention your health.

We had a great sleep in the comfortable bed, although Gam was too hot because I'd had the heater on for so long prior to going to bed... oops!

It poured and poured and poured overnight, some of the heaviest and most sustained falls we've ever heard. It turned out that about 20cm of rain fell overnight, which was quite something.


Tuesday:

In the morning we had breakfast on the balcony, cooked for us by Viki. There was a 'menu' with basic but fairly classic breakfast choices. There were two courses, the first suited me (I had fresh fruit and yoghurt, while Gam had muesli) and the second suited Gam (bacon, eggs, tomato and toast). There was also the option of an omlette and maybe one or two other things (e.g. scrambled eggs or whatever). It didn't say whether the eggs were free range, so I couldn't bring myself to eat them... I did eat the bacon, even though I'm sure that wasn't free range... As far as hot breakfasts go it was ok but nothing special. Full marks for the glass of freshly squeezed orange juice- although Gam didn't like it ("too much pulp!") and wouldn't drink it despite my exhortations... so I enjoyed two glasses!


After breakfast we walked out onto the little paved courtyard area below the balcony and admired the yard with its nice big lawn. I said to Gam that the only thing missing from Middleton Manor was a resident animal- maybe a dog- to enjoy that nice lawn... as it turned out, Viki did have a dog- a very friendly dalmation named DJ- who we got to meet that afternoon!




We decided to go for a drive, without really having decided what do, and almost immediately happened upon a sign advertising tours at Maleny Dairy at 10:30am. It was 10:20am, perfect timing, so we followed the signs to the dairy... unfortunately, thanks to the spontaneity of it all, I'd left my gumboots at the B&B, but decided to hoof it through the mud anyway. And there was a lot of mud...

First up I got to meet 'Tex', a grizzled-looking 14-year-old fox terrier who obviously thought he owned the place. Tex made it his business to meet and greet Gam and I, as well as the four small children who showed up for the tour (along with two mothers), and proceeded to 'lead' the tour around as well as wee on a lot of things in a most officious manner. Apparently I bonded with the kids over Tex as well, as they proceeded to tell me all about their own pets and then later ask me questions that should have been directed to the tour guide... usually it's Gam who's a total kid-magnet, so that was a bit of a surprise... I had no idea what to do with them!

The tour guide seemed lovely too. She first of all took us to visit 'Lucy', a 4-week-old calf. Lucy showed no interest in anything but her meal, while the tour guide told us all about the process of getting the cows pregnant, separating them from their calves (thankfully it doesn't have to be done every year, just the once, she said) and then raising the female calves until they are old enough to be bred and produce milk... the issue of what happens to the male calves was kind of skirted ("they go to the market", she said, and left it at that), but I suppose that's fair given that they have nothing more to do with milk production than that.


Following our introduction to Lucy we all traipsed off to see where the cows and goats were milked and hear an explanation of the process and get to stick our fingers in one of the goat auto-milking thingummies (obviously it would have been cleaned afterwards) to see what it felt like. It was interesting but I suppose not interesting enough to take any photos, because neither Gam or I took any... personally I was looking forward to the goats! I love goats... it was a shame that we were there mere weeks prior to the goats giving birth- not only did I miss seeing all the cute little baby goats but I couldn't buy any of Maleny Dairy's delicious goat's milk yoghurt. Standing in for the baby goats was 5-month-old 'Annie'. Annie came when she was called by name... awww... just adding to my dream of having a pet goat one day... and was happy to oblige us all by drinking a large bottle of milk while we all took turns posing for photos with her.


Finally we were taken to 'the moovies'- a little tin shed containing a bunch of old dairy memorabilia from the farm- where we watched a nice little film of the farm's history. Then we all sat outside at the benches and were given a bottle of frankly pretty awful flavoured milk and a taste-test of some really yummy yoghurt. I got two tasters because Gam doesn't like yoghurt. I had apricot, which was very yummy but fairly generic, and goat's milk yoghurt, which I'd never tried before. It tastes just like the soft white chevre you can buy in roll-shaped packets, but has the texture of yoghurt. I think it would be great in dips and I'm really keen to get my hands on some. The flavoured milk had recently been reformulated so it was low fat in order to be able to be sold through school canteens in Queensland. Not only did it have the thin texture of low-fat milk (a lot of low fat flavoured milks have gum thickeners added for this reason), but it was ridiculously sweet thanks to the fact it contained invert syrup rather than sugar. I felt really bad about throwing it out, but neither Gam or I liked it- he tried the chocolate, while I had coffee-flavoured.

After visiting Maleny Dairy we first went for a drive to Mapleton and stopped at a tiny shop that advertised itself as a 'chocolatier'. They really didn't have much in the way of chocolate-y things, but we bought a couple of marzipan chocolates from their small selection and they were okay... We sat on a set of stairs somewhere and ate the chocolates while we admired the view... you're never short of a beautiful view when you're in the Blackall Ranges area.



We then drove back to Maleny and went to one of the three bookstores on Maple St (I think- the main street, anyway). I can't remember what it was called, but it was definitely the coolest. It was run by a really nice old guy and had some really great, out-of-the-0rdinary stuff (including some genuine collectables that we probably couldn't afford), but best of all he had a beautiful little poodle named Milly who kept him company at the store. She didn't have one of those silly haircuts that some people give their poodles, and she was sooo cute! I could have spent all day in there. Gam bought a book on submarines and I bought a 1960 copy of The Australian Woman's Mirror and a bunch of vintage knitting patterns... not that I'm capable of knitting anything more than a scarf, but I would like to get better at it and figure there's no harm in collecting classic patterns just in case I ever get good enough to make them. The Women's Mirror, as might be expected, is a total hoot and will get a whole post of its own.

When it was time for lunch we went to Colin James Fine Foods on Maple St. First we ducked into their little 'cheesearium' (for the life of me, ever since Gam used that word I can't remember the proper name for it, but I like 'cheesearium'!) and bought some kind of stinky French washed-rind cheese, some Port Salut and a hunk of calabrese salami. We were also after some of their gelati but I was so cold after buying the cheese that we had to go for a walk outside. We bought a couple of bread rolls at the Swiss bakery plus some Finn Crisp (rye crackers) at the IGA for later. Finally we got our gelato. I forget what Gam had, but it wasn't cookies and cream (his usual- it wasn't available), but I had cherry and cherry ripe. The cherry flavour was so similar to Shlix that I'd put money on them using the same mix (or whatever they use to make up gelato). I wasn't complaining- I love Shlix, and not only was the Colin James gelato delicious but my $4.50 for two scoops was at least equivalent to 3 scoops at Shlix. We ate in a park across the road.




Wanting to make the most of the weather in case it started raining again, we went for a drive to check out Lake Baroon. It looks like a great place to take a kayak out for a paddle, but the sign stated that if any part of the sign was underwater then doing so was prohibited. It was obvious that the rain had filled up the dam significantly overnight- the grassy embankment leading down to the water had obviously been freshly covered by the rising water.






Afterwards we went home and ate cheese (well, I ate cheese) and salami on our nice little balcony with a bottle of organic, preservative-free vegan (i.e. no fish bile, no casein, no egg white products) white wine... I know that makes us sound like total hippies, but the additives make a big difference to the taste and the preservatives (usually sulphur) often set off my hayfever... not to mention a lot of wines make me feel seedy even before I start to feel the effects of the alcohol (needless to say we don't drink a lot of wine as a result). Since trying the selection of organic/vegan/preservative-free wines we brought recently I'm a bit evangelical... they're inexpensive and worth seeking out!

I even convinced Gam to (grudgingly) pose for a photo for me!

I finished off The Blind Assassin (highly recommended- great story, impressive piece of writing) and started on The Handmaid's Tale, while Gam ambled his way through the enormous Bourne trilogy.

That night we had planned on checking out Finbar's Irish Pub in Maleny where, according to the tourist rag left in our room, we could get some tasty wood-fired pizza.

There were frogs everywhere that evening- I even saw a black one!

On our way there we hit a massive pothole. At first we thought a tire must have burst, then there was an extremely loud, metallic scraping sound coming from the left-hand side of the car. Despite me wishing and hoping very hard it didn't stop, and Gam pulled up around the first corner we came to. Given that it's a rural area and there were no streetlights and we'd left our torch at the B&B, we had no way of determining what, if anything was wrong, other than that we didn't have a flat tire. The noise was so bad I was worried that we'd somehow ripped something away from the undercarriage of the car- and it continued to make the noise whenever Gam moved it. There were dogs barking loudly from the yard of the house we'd pulled up outside, and a voice called out for them to quieten down, but when Gam called out 'Hello? Hello' the voice suddenly hushed. We had no choice but to go and knock on the door of the other house across the road and ask them for a torch. They obviously hadn't been expecting visitors- the gentleman who answered the door (and he was a gentleman!) had on a dressing gown over his pyjamas. He fetched us a torch and asked whether we'd like him to call RACQ. We said we'd call them ourselves. Gam tried calling RACQ and got stuck talking to a machine so he tried Volkswagen's Roadside Assist. They weren't particularly helpful either- they wanted to have the car towed (leaving us in a place with no taxis!). Thankfully by this time we had determined that the problem, whatever it was, lay in or behind the left rear wheel, and Gam tried moving the car one more time - there was a clunk and the noise was gone! After we had returned the torch and were on our way there was a noise in the wheel like there was a rock rattling around in there, so our best guess is that the rock must have got jammed somewhere where it could cause a horrid metallic scraping noise for a while before becoming dislodged. We were very relieved.

Finbar's was closed, despite their opening hours stating that they should be open at the time we showed up (after 7pm) and it looked like just about everywhere else was too. I'd spotted an Indian restaurant that was open- Punjabi Palace, I think it was called-so we went there and ordered a bunch of food. While we were waiting for the order we walked to the IGA and bought a box of chocolates to give to the old gentleman who'd helped us out by lending us a torch, figuring we'd drop by the next evening at a more decent hour.

While we were waiting for our order at the Punjabi Palace, being cooked by the good-looking Indian guy who I assume was the proprietor, the older (Aussie?) guy in what looked like traditional dress who was waiting tables and manning the counter brought us some freshly-cooked pappadums to snack on. Ten out of ten for service! I love pappadums. I also approved of the samosas, which were perfectly cooked, though still not nearly spicy enough. The proprietor recommended we buy some of his chilli pickle to add to our curries in case we wanted them hotter, and I dipped the samosas in that- it was pretty hot and very good. Since we got home I've been adding it to baked sweet potato and brown rice for a healthy, tasty lunch.


Wednesday:



On Wednesday we skipped breakfast and went to the Eumundi Markets via the back-route suggested to us by the old guy at the bookshop. As soon as the road turned to dirt Gam got a bit precious about what it might do to his baby (the car), but it was a good quality road even in spite of all the rain. Much more scenic than the highway, too.




We went to Eumundi Markets last August with Rachelle and her now-fiancé Chris and had a nice time, but this time it was frankly pretty awful thanks to the fact it was school holidays. The place was crawling with people, most of whom seemed to be smokers. We stopped at Lief Chocolates, after having thoroughly enjoyed their wares last time around, and weren't disappointed. Those guys do good chocolate. We also went to the Japanese food stall (the name of which escapes me) and bought gyoza, because we'd enjoyed some of those on our last visit too. Once again, the gyoza were delicious- I only wish we didn't have to visit the markets to eat them!

After leaving Eumundi Markets we drove to Montville and had poffertjes with jam and cream and an iced coffee for lunch at the Montville Coffee Pot. Despite being rather enamoured of these poffertjes the first time we had them, Gam has since taken to making them at home, which rather puts the Montville Coffee Pot's efforts in the shade. Nevertheless, they were tasty and were polished off in no time flat. I was well overdue for a coffee, too, and the Coffee Pot's iced coffee contained a much-needed shot of espresso along with its mountains of tasty whipped cream- the iced coffee wasn't too sweet, either, which I liked.

For dinner on our last night we had planned to go to the magnificently-named King Ludwig's German Restaurant, but it turned out 'King Ludwig' (actually, his name wasn't Ludwig) and his wife had gone on long service leave and closed up the restaurant until March 2010 to travel around Europe! That made it even more of a blow- it must be a good restaurant if he was doing well enough to be able to take a year's holiday. Plus I had worked myself up for some tasty German food...




In the end it was a matter of seeing what was open on the Wednesday night and just rolling the dice. We narrowed it down to two restaurants on the same road- it just so happened that the road was so dark we drove past the first one, and immediately the second one appeared on our left, so we turned in, parked and went and had dinner at Reserve Restaurant Cellar.



Reserve seemed posh enough to be filled with snooty waiters and rich people, but thankfully it wasn't. Instead we were served by a charming young French woman in a fitted shirt and baggy pants. She obviously knew her stuff when it came to the food, and while her service was perfectly attentive it was never intrusive. Spot on. Reserve was clearly no place for the vegetarian, so I ordered the eye fillet with parsnip purée, spinach and caramelised onions. Gam had the slow-cooked lamb shoulder and we shared a plate of deep-fried potato wedges with celery salt and a pot of lime/sour cream something-or-other to dip them in. Boy were those tasty- as were both our meals. I made a fairly gallant effort, I thought, to finish the entire eye fillet. Neither of us had any wine, nor any of the cocktails, as Gam was driving and I didn't feel like anything more than a soft drink. Mimie, our waiter, informed us that Reserve offers a pick-up and drop-off service to B&B guests so they can partake of the wines and cocktails on offer without having to worry about driving (taxis are scarce in the area). If there's a 'next time', perhaps we'll take advantage.







The passionfruit tart and honeycomb mascarpone I had for dessert was perfect but for two things- first, the tart was warmed, and I prefer that type of tart cold. Second, the pastry seemed not to have been blind-baked. I have no doubt that not blind-baking it might have been the proper thing to do, but I find pastry fairly inedible if it's not blind-baked. Given that I tend to view pastry as a vehicle for transporting the tasty filling of the tart from the oven/fridge to my plate I am always happy to discard it anyway, therefore it was of no consequence to my enjoyment of the meal. Mind you, after the eye fillet I had trouble getting dessert down. I think next time I'll have an entree and dessert rather than a main and dessert.

Gam thoroughly enjoyed his mocha fondant pudding- it should be noted that the camera on his Blackberry does neither dessert justice. For one thing, my mascarpone wasn't a sickly shade of green...

Our meal at Reserve was a lovely way to end our short stay. It's nice being able to go somewhere as beautiful and different from Brisbane as Maleny and still feel like you're still in civilisation.