Ulysses Rally – Heading Home – It’s All About the People

After the Grand Parade on the Saturday of the Ulysses Rally we started heading home, even though the event didn’t finish until the Sunday.  Our plan was to spend some time with people who mean a lot to us but rarely get to see.

It was lovely riding through the cane fields.

Our first stop was only a couple of hours down the road visiting some friends that Mick first met when he was working in a mine in Western Australia in the early 80s.  We have always kept in touch, despite the geographical distance between us.

We had to travel up a minor road.

Our friends live on a small property which adjoins a state forest which has remnants of old rainforest, with some rather rare plants.

We had a lovely wander.

There were some lovely little water spiders.

Also, lots of butterflies, which were rather hard to photograph.

We had to be careful not to walk into the orb weavers.

Dragonflies were both blue and red.

The grasses looked stunning in the late afternoon sun.

However, there are also snakes and plants that sting.  I’m not sure that I’d be comfortable there without a local’s knowledge.

The following day we visited a waterfall with a deep swimming hole.

The photo doesn’t give the true effect of how deep the waterfall is.

The gorge down stream is really pretty.

After we said our goodbyes our next stop was at Toowoomba. Our first job was to find a bike shop to replace the sidecar tyre.  Oops!! I wonder how long it had been like that?  We were lucky to find a friendly mechanic with a tyre in  stock, so we were ready to finish our journey.

The reason we called into Toowoomba to visit my aunt, who is also my Godmother and my uncle.  We really enjoyed our time with them.  We were given a great tour of Toowoomba. 

The gardens are not at the peak at the moment, but they were still nice to visit.

A hidden gem we would never have found was the Japanese Garden, looking a picture.

No tour of Toowoomba would be complete without visiting Picnic Point with its stunning lookout to Table Mountain and on to the east.

A couple of the locals kept an eye on us.

After lunch us girls hit the shops and the boys headed off to secret men’s business.

The expert (my uncle) show how it is done.

Mick took like to it like a duck to water, under the eye of an old hand.

He had a lovely afternoon playing croquet, something totally different to what he normally would do.

There was another little bonus with this visit as Kris from Tag Along Teddies just happens to work at the retirement village where my aunt and uncle live.  It was lovely to meet another lady I’ve never met, but know so well.  Like all bloggers we’ve met, Kris is just as lovely and bubbly as she sounds on her blog.  We even remembered to take a photo.

As our visit was on a Tuesday we were unable to visit Kris’ favourite patchwork shop nearby. However, that may have been a good thing, as I didn’t have much room to carry anything on the bike.

All too soon it was time to say our farewells and keep on our way home.  Hopefully we will be back before too much time passes.