Irrepressible Tangent

Brisbane is a great location; it’s centered between the Gold and Sunshine Coasts with all the beautiful beaches that can be found on both; Dream World, Sea World, Wet-n-Wild, and Warner Brother’s Movie World are within a half hour drive of the city; there’s tons of parkland surrounding the city and a number of easily accessible Wildlife Parks including Australia Zoo. All this makes it easy to arrange really great day trips in and around Brisbane.

A slightly more adult day trip I’d recommend is a tour of the wineries on Tamborine Mountain. Mount Tamborine is just 62km from Brisbane, and getting there is a gorgeous drive. The great thing about touring the wineries on Tamborine Mountain is the wine. At every venue you’re offered a chance to sample the vintner’s varietals, and you’re offered purchase discounts. Several of the wineries also offer little educational moments providing detail about things like the differences between wooded, lightly wooded and unwooded Chardonnay and even better an opportunity to actually taste the difference to determine which you might prefer, or how to select a good dessert wine…

The really stand out wineries on my tour were Heritage Wines and Tamborine Estate Wines. They were well set up for the tour and ready with plenty of tasting samples on hand, and relevant questions to determine what you might actually enjoy sampling. Tamborine Estates offered one of the better wine education programs that I saw that day, and I ended up buying a nice dessert wine from them for their trouble. Heritage Wines, in addition to serving up delightful wines and offering a great selection of tasting samples, also offered a bit of uniqueness in terms of the building in which it’s located. It’s housed in a really beautiful building that was originally The Infant Saviour Catholic Church of Burleigh Heads which was saved from demolition and re-located to Mount Tamborine. The restorations to the building are really remarkable and it’s a lovely place to lunch, with views overlooking rainforest and the Ocean in the distance.

Even though the day of the tour was a bit overcast for a portion of the tour, this didn’t detract from the beautiful vistas up on Mt. Tamborine, and the whole trip would have been worth it just for the chance to take it all in.

Even if you’re not interested in wine, Tamborine Mountain is a great place to visit. As part of the Gold Coast Hinterland, the mountain offers gorgeous views of the Gold Coast, Brisbane, and Mt. Warning. The area is home to several National Parks with walking tracks and picnic/BBQ areas, and is surrounded by several lovely waterfalls including Cameron Falls, the Witches Falls and Cedar Creek Falls. With craft and antique shops, galleries, tea rooms and little restaurants, there’s plenty to do up at Mount Tamborine, even hang gliding for the adventuresome. So if you’re looking for a relaxing way to spend a Saturday, take a drive and enjoy.

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Tags: Brisbane, Daytrip, Mount Tamborine, Tamborine Mountain, Wineries

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 12:58 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.