Day 22: Glen Innes - Springfield Lakes
It wasn’t that long after dinner when Hughesy found himself safely tucked away in the sub-doona warmth pushing up Zs, and well after sunrise when I made my way gingerly into the new day.
While the night’s accommodation would have been quite satisfactory in the summer months, and there wasn’t much wrong with the place in any case, there was a distinct lack of insulation that meant we were heavily dependent on the heater in the cabin’s living room, and we weren’t inclined to wander far from the warmth as we gathered the goods and chattels and prepared to head into Glen Innes for breakfast.
The day’s game plan involved a wander around downtown Glen Innes after breakfast, followed by the drive through Tenterfield, Stanthorpe, Warwick and Cunningham’s Gap en route to the Ex-Neighbours and Springfield Lakes. First stop, as usual, was the Visitor Centre, where we found a kilted guide preparing t accompany a your bus to the local equivalent of Stonehenge.
Given rumours of a particularly outstanding Indian eatery in the vicinity, a substantial breakfast followed by minimal action on the lunch front before what threatened to be a substantial evening meal seemed the way to go, and we found Cuisine Cafe the ideal avenue to stock up on sustenance to keep us going through the day.
With the circuit of Grey Street’s historic buildings and streetscape out of the way it was back to the Visitor Centre to retrieve the car and off up the nearby hill where the Australian Standing Stones were set up as a Bicentenary national monument to honour Glen Innes's Celtic heritage. They’re an impressive sight and had attracted their fair share of visitors while Madam snapped away.
From there we hit Tenterfield, Wallangarra, Stanthorpe and Warwick in rapid succession before the not quite eagerly anticipated descent through Cunningham’s Gap. The ascent, a week and a half earlier, had involved a couple of lengthy delays, and while we expected things might run a little more smoothly on a Saturday afternoon we weren’t too optimistic about the prospects.
There was, as it turned out, a slight delay at the top of the range, but we got a clear, if not exactly rapid, run through to Aratula, where there was the chance to refuel and consider whether we were, in fact, in need of lunch.
As it turned out, while we could have indulged in something we were still fairly well sated after breakfast, so it was back onto the road for the run into unknown territory to the southwest of Brisbane.
This, as it turned out, was where the iPad came into its own as an aid to navigation.
The coincidence of inbuilt GPS technology and the Maps app didn’t quite work perfectly as we went through a succession of closely spaced roundabouts, but there was only one missed turn in an environment where the mistake was quickly corrected.
We arrived around three-forty-five to find WoWo Boy and the Little Tacker were terrorising other areas of the neighbourhood, which gave the opportunity for a casual tour through the new domicile, followed by an uninterrupted chance to catch up on news before Mum returned the two terrors to base and planning for the evening meal kicked in.
All we’d heard to date was a brief descriptor of best Indian ever, but I’d done preliminary research on the Urbanspoon app, and suspected the place under mention was the Punjab Curry Club, which had amazingly consistent favourable ratings.
Most places I’d checked out on Urbanspoon have attracted a mixture of comments, varying from the wildly enthusiastic to the avoid at all costs, and there aren’t too many I’ve looked at that have attracted nothing on the negative side of extremely favourable, but that was the case when I pointed the iPad towards Punjab Curry Club, and what arrived on the table after we’d collected the takeaway certainly justified the rave reviews.
The meal wasn’t quite ready when we arrived at the eatery, and the need to kill a few minutes prompted a wander through the nearby IGA, where I collected a six-pack of bottled water for the return home leg of the journey and Ex-Neighbour Bloke grabbed a quantity of bacon that caused a few complications the following day.
Given the fact that we had four reasonably hungry adults, two of them with substantial appetites to start with, the order was nothing short of substantial, and while the intervening period has dimmed Hughesy’s recall of the actual dishes involved (apart from the Lamb Saag, which was my contribution to the order, and rather bloody lovely it was) there was no doubting the quality and we fed the four of us to the point where there wasn’t room for any more as far as Hughesy was concerned although there was still something left on the table. Generous helpings, very high quality and extremely reasonably priced.
Given the chance I’ll definitely be back.