Glass House Mountains

We're back to the coast. First we made some visits, to Garth and Florane in Brisbane, and to Len and Renee at the organic farm.

The girl in the photo is a new friend I made, Molly from Hongkong. She's also a wwoofer at the moment, and we had nice talk together.

At Len's place we could stay for one night, and we showed our gratitude by cooking an Italian meal for 6 people: gnocchi al forno with tomatoe-mozarella salad. It looked good and it tasted good, too!

Yesterday we visited the big market in Caboolture (Alex bought himself a nice leather hat) and the Heritage Museum where they showcase historic buildings of the area. "Historic" and "heritage" here means about 100 years old. Yes, Australia is a young country as far as towns and buildings are concerned.

Then we came through the picturesque Glass House Mountains area. This is an area at the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane where a dozen strange-looking peaks rise up into the sky. They are the hard-rock cores of extinct volcanoes, so-called volcanic plugs. We climbed one of them, Mount Ngungun (253 m).

Today we had a long beach walk at Dicky Beach near Caloundra. Then we paid a visit to the cartoon-style and XXL-sized Ettamogah Pub.

Finally we visited the Ginger Factory in Yandina. It is a tourist attraction but also a working factory. They cook ginger with sugar and water into syrup there, from which then various derived products can be made, such as confectionary, sauces, and marmalades. They claim to be the biggest such factory in the world and the only one in Australia.