It doesn’t take long to realise that this is what it’s all about as you weave up the windy roads of Mount Tamborine in Queensland’s Scenic Rim and cast your eyes over the golden and misty hillscapes and quiet lakes lying serenely at the bottom of their peaks. After months on end of staying chained to the rhythm of the city and all of its busyness, it’s a very welcome change of scenery.
I was apprehensive at first of a solo travel trip, I usually have my partner or my family by my side to reassure me when I’m not too sure what to do, or where to pay the bill at restaurants, or driving in unknown territory or to talk to people when my social battery is at its lowest. This time, I had to figure those things out for myself.
I headed to the Scenic Rim, a region just 90 minutes outside of Brisbane, for two nights to explore Eat Local Month. What began as a week-long event in 2011 has since grown into a buzzy month-long extravaganza showcasing the best of the local offerings every June, with tons of family-friendly events, educational seminars, foodie experiences, concluding with the Winter Harvest Festival on the last weekend of the month.
Thankfully, the Scenic Rim is a forgiving place to find your feet. It wasn’t long before conversations with local producers, farmers, chefs and business owners began to replace the awkwardness I had expected. Rural towns are known for their easy hospitality, but here it felt less like customer service and more like being welcomed into someone’s home.
Read on to see everything I did in Queensland’s Scenic Rim…
The welcome that made me relax
After a busy morning of travel from Sydney, coffee and brunch was a necessity! I took my first solo meal stop at Picnic Real Food Bar in Tamborine Mountain. Run by Brenda Fawdon, a seasoned cook who opened her first restaurant, Primavera, at 21-years-old.
“Real food”, she says, sits at the centre of everything here, but Brenda seems to sit at the centre of the community too. In the few minutes I waited to order, several locals came through the door looking for her.
“Is Brenda here? There she is. How are you, love?”
Brenda was a delight, telling me all about how she and her business partner Sonja Drexler co-founded the North Stores Eco-Friendly Precinct, where they operate the cafe, how they survived through the COVID-19 pandemic, and where they’re at today, while I chowed down on their buckwheat and rice flour waffles with rhubarb and mascarpone and cured my sleepiness with their Mayde maple matcha.
Once I felt a bit more human again, I popped on over to Loborn for a little buzz that coffee and matcha couldn’t give me. Meeting with the lovely owner and head distiller Tom Drewett, he gave me a private tasting of their amaro, gin and red vermouth (my personal favourite).
The small-batch distillery was founded by Tom in 2024 with the idea of reinventing the classic Italian aperitif, Amaro, with a distinctly Aussie flavour using local botanicals. Cin cin to that!
A bit of TLC
Then, if my nerves weren’t already calmed enough, I made my way on over to SOL Elements Bathhouse and Spa.
The floating Japanese-style bathhouse was something I had never experienced. A whole suite to myself, fit with an infrared sauna, a cold plunge pool, shower, body scrub station, teas and natural energy drinks to choose from, and a private thermal pool out on the balcony to unwind in as I watched ducks weave through the maze of lily pads on the moat that surrounded the place.
The infrared sauna in particular was a favourite. It’s designed to be used as part of a two-step hot-and-cold therapy process, alternating between the sauna and plunge pool, which I’m sure is lovely. I, however, spent my time curled into a ball with my skin pressed against the toasty wood, feeling as though I had been wrapped in a warm blanket that blocked out the rest of the world.
“That was the best thing I’ve ever done,” was, word for word, my answer when the lady on reception asked how I had found it on the way out. I couldn’t help but think how much my partner would have loved it too, and as it turns out you can have up to 4 people in a private suite, and there’s even a dog-friendly one if your pooch needs a pamper! So its safe to say I’ll be back.
Now, it was time to make my way to my accommodation and have a rest before dinner.
An oasis close to the city
This is the part I was perhaps the most excited for. I’ve never understood when people say they don’t care where they stay on holiday because they’ll be out most of the time anyway. The room is hands down one of the best parts! And this one certainly delivered.
It’s hard to believe this place is only a 90-minute drive from Brisbane and the Gold Coast. Tucked away in the quiet countryside of Wyaralong is Wander at The Overflow Estate 1895 – a 1200-acre property that hosts five self-contained ‘WanderPods’ all in their own little secluded pockets on the land. I had the Moy WanderPod, set amongst the trees with its own bath on the veranda that overlooks Lake Wyaralong.
Fit with a kitchen, living room, bathroom and bedroom with floor to ceiling views of the landscape, it had everything I needed to rest and recover. They even provided a polaroid camera with film so I could take home small snippets of my stay.
I’ve never had a hotel room all to myself, and while I thought it may feel lonely or boring, that thought was quickly washed away as soon as I curled up next to the combustion fireplace with a book and a thick, heavy blanket.
A dinner to remember
I’ve also never sat at a restaurant and had dinner by myself, even with all the buzz on social media recently about taking yourself on solo-dates and enjoying your own company, I’d always assumed it would feel more awkward than empowering.
That first solo dinner took place at Roastbeef and the Frog, although it didn’t stay solo for long. Chef Olivier Boudon collected me from my pod before a quick 2-minute drive to the restaurant on the estate, and showed me around the sprawling property, including its old homestead and vineyard, where the grapes used in many of the wines are grown.
The name is hilariously derived from the chefs’ origins, with Jake Hatch ‘Roastbeef’ hailing from Devon in England, while Olivier, naturally, is ‘The Frog’ from France.
Warm, wonderfully entertaining and armed with no shortage of stories, Olivier soon joined me at the table. Sommelier Hamish Briner and fellow chef Jake Hatch later pulled up chairs once their hard work was done, turning what I had expected to be a quiet dinner alone into one of the most memorable nights of the trip.
Over several glasses of wine, the trio traded stories about the restaurant, its loyal regulars and the families who travel from Brisbane and beyond to eat there. There’s no wonder why they have such loyal regulars.
Their approach to food is refreshingly straightforward: “simple food” is good food. Olivier spoke about how there’s no point piling too much into a dish until you can no longer understand what you’re tasting, and the menu proves his point.
Nestled on a vast and scenic estate, the wrap-around windows lend themselves to a beautiful view that immerses you in all its glory while you wine and dine on a hearty steak, their warm baguette with creamy truffle butter or succulent and garlicky escargots.
Not only is their food hearty, but so is their hospitality. After I’d devoured my sand crab and Tarome crayfish lasagne, they even packed up an extra serving for me to take home to Sydney so my partner could experience a little of its magic too.
From paddock to plate
After a much-needed sleep (that was aided by the wines the previous night), I set out for the Forage to Feast experience at Tommerups Dairy Farm, an event created for the Scenic Rim Eat Local Month. There, I met with the Tommerups family, Kay, Dave, Harry and his girlfriend Lauren, who have had the working farm in their family for six generations.
Along with other visitors on the day, we took to a paddock managed by the youngest of those six generations, Harry, where we picked our own organic vegetables that we then took back to be prepared for lunch by the Wild Canary Bistro team using only what we had pulled from the earth ourselves.
Before we could eat, however, we had to earn our appetite.
First came the pigs, where a litter of squealing piglets clamoured for their mother’s milk while she wore the hilarious expression of a mum who had quite simply had enough. We smashed pumpkins for them to devour, then visited the free-ranging chickens before heading to the creamery, where the farm’s Jersey cows are milked and their rich milk transformed into fresh dairy products.
Getting around the property meant carpooling, and for a moment I hovered at the edge of the group, working out who looked like they wouldn’t mind a stranger climbing into their back seat. Two lovely women offered up a spot, and somewhere between paddocks, one of them, Nambok, told me about her nearby farm stay, Clandulla Cottages.
We then made our way back and learnt how to churn and wash butter before digging into the glorious feast.
This part I was nervous for. Choosing a seat at a table of strangers and making conversation should be easy enough for someone who interviews people for a living, but without a list of questions in front of me, I can become surprisingly shy. Especially since everyone else had come in a group, either as friends, couples or family.
As usual, I needn’t have worried. Before long, I was chatting with two women from Beaudesert, a couple from Brisbane and another pair who owned The Old Laravale School, a nearby former schoolhouse they had transformed into a group retreat for arts, crafts and creative weekends.
Then away I drove with a delicious lemon tart in hand, as well as a coffee-flavoured ice cream and tub of fresh yoghurt made from the hard work of the family and their cows we had seen earlier. Truly paddock to plate.
One last night in Boonah
After a quick reset back in my room, I was picked up by Green Frog Cars, a rural taxi service in the area, for another evening of excellent food.
At The Commercial Hotel is where I met venue manager Tracey who showed me around the recently refurbished dining room and accommodation before taking me behind the scenes to see where they brew their beers, as well as their deliciously crisp ginger beer and hard lemonade in-house. A small but important note: the ginger beer is dangerously good, and they have somehow also turned it into sorbet… which I’m still thinking about.
Then it was time for one last solo dinner, this time at the very lovely Blume. As I was seated in a corner that had a great view of the quaint, homely-decorated restaurant, I wondered if others there had wondered why I was by myself. Maybe it appeared I had been stood up by a selfish date?
Oh well… as soon as their beautifully crafted winter set menu started rolling out, that inner-monologue dissipated as I got swept up in the flavours. Who has time to think about themselves when they have succulent beef short ribs, cheesy gougère and yuzu curd ice cream in front of them? It’s safe to say I went to sleep that night with a very happy belly.
The perfect ending
My last stop before dropping off my rental car, who I had nicknamed ‘Big Red’, was to Elderflower Farm for another Eat Local event where we could pick our own edible flowers to decorate cupcakes with.
Walking onto the property alone and seeing groups of families and couples, I felt that familiar flash of being the odd one out. But after two days of introducing myself to strangers, the social muscle I had been working was noticeably stronger.
A small group of us were guided through the garden beds by owner Rachel, who pointed out which flowers were edible and encouraged us to pick as many as we wanted, before we carried them back to the table to press into our buttercream-smothered cupcakes.
They run limited and ticketed flower picking events throughout the year, where you can have your own chance at working that creative muscle as well as meet others, or hang out with their resident golden retriever, Winnie, who didn’t say no to a lick of buttercream when offered.
Before I left, I had a wander through the rest of the property. There’s a stall selling fresh local produce, a cafe with enough games to keep restless kids occupied and a shop where Rachel sells everything from homegrown edible flowers, cordials, knick-knacks and homewares. I picked up a bottle of the elderflower cordial, which I found out is delicious mixed with gin.
What travelling alone taught me
As I boarded my flight back to Sydney, I was already planning my next trip to the Scenic Rim. What began as a nervous, solo three days in the countryside had turned into something I hadn’t expected to need.
The Scenic Rim is unmistakably built for slow lunches with people you love over good food, and allowing kids to let loose in paddocks – and it does that brilliantly. But it turns out the same hospitality that makes it ideal for a family holiday or a couples’ weekend away also makes it work as somewhere to go alone too.
I went in anxious about solo travel. I left thinking the Scenic Rim might just be proof that the right place can change your mind regardless of who, if anyone, you bring with you.
Check out Scenic Rim Eat Local Month at www.eatlocalmonth.com.au
