As discussed earlier, we'd gotten a little bit of rain the night before, so we were up nice and early to walk home. Another nice casual walk out, amidst the early morning feel in the forest, still dripping from the storm the night before. Given our early start, we were actually back at the car by 9am! And it was a profitable walk too! Helen had been carrying her big tripod the whole weekend, but was feeling exhausted and tired on the walk home, and started offering money to matthew to carry it for her, which he was refusing. I jumped in and scored a quick 15$ for carrying it for about 1/3 of the walk home. Sure, it was more weight for me, but hell, easy money! Thanks Helen!

With a full day to get back to brisbane, we filled it by visited a cider maker outside Stanthorpe, and some fruit shops, and bakeries, and generally just munching our way home again :)

As a foot note, the next day, Matthew and I developed rather interesting looking blisters, which continued to grow and swell along some small grazes we both had. They continued to grow over the next couple of days, with the fluid inside rather irritating if they were burst open. After sending some enquiries around, we got some information from the herborium and the parks service that we had probably run into some fruit salad plant. (XXX get links here) Apparently this plant only grows in a very small part of girraween and bald rock parks, none of us had ever seen it before, or remembered brushing against it. Most of the online sources we found didn't even mention it as being an irritant. A ranger at parks remembered a school group at south bald rock who'd worked out the plant causing them problems simply because they were there long enough to find out! That was probably a rather memorable school trip for a few people :)

So, floods, blisters, rare plants eating us alive, and lots of rain. It was definitely a nice trip to get out walking with the family, but this was not one of my favourite walks :)