Australia, Queensland, Gympie: Visiting Cooloola Berries is a Great Way to Enjoy a Day with the Family and Friends

It has been a while since I have written a posting to the Compassionate World Traveler Site. I do apologise for that. It is not that I have not traveled, or even had some compassionate visiting experiences in the world since my last posting in 2014. On the contrary, I have had many.

Since then I have started volunteering at the local Tourist Information Office. I have also completed a Certificate III in Tourism and every month for the last 18 months, I have visited places around my new adopted community with my fellow volunteers. Maybe it is this transformation of the personal travel experience from being the visiting traveler myself to at the same time being an advisor to the tourists visiting the local area that has been the changing factor for me expecting more of my own personal travel experiences than before. For me, even the whole concept of travel has had a profound transformation. It turns out that what I now want is to feel that the places I visit and the people I meet there truly connect with me and my compassionate nature. That helps to heighten the personal experience and I as a traveler am bound to leave with some new knowledge, a refreshed mind and a renewed conviction that the world we live in is indeed, a great place to be. So, the new attitude has taken its time to reform but now that I have found my way, it feels as a right time to blog once more.

I cannot praise highly enough of our recent experience at the Cooloola Berries Family Farm in Gympie, Queensland in Australia. What a way to spend a day with grandkids and enjoy the fresh produce of the local area and the compassionate nature of the owners Kim and Jason.

They run this farm with their whole family with the warmth and care that really makes the visitor feel at home. I felt like I was in Finland as a child, picking strawberries and running around the field like a free spirit. Even my daughter commented very similarly, saying that it really felt like it because the children were able to have such an unrestricted wide space where they were allowed to just play and pick and eat as many berries as they felt like. The adults could sit at the café tasting food and observe it all in relaxation. No need to run around herding the kids and shouting 'no, nos'. The little cabby house, the tractor and the berries were entertaining enough for a long while for our children.

Not only the simplicity of the play but at this place they make their own #tastesunshine ice-cream in the house. We went on a Saturday, which is of course a Cooloola Berries Pancake Day, ice-cream included. Of course there is lots of other food possibilities as well but we wanted to feel the freshness and experience the delight of being alive on that day. So pancakes it was:

Kim told me that the café buyes the basic ice-cream from Bulla and then they have a machine that blends the berries and other ingredients to the mix and ola, a new special natural in-house flavor is created. Of course, I and my grandson chose strawberries. My daughter chose to have chocolate and my granddaughter ate the mango and ginger ice-cream. What can be better than that? And there we were, enjoying a very memorable day, siting on some strawberry material covered chairs in the shed area while looking over the strawberry fields. It nearly made me poetic and wanting to sing some old Beatles songs about 'Strawberry Fields Forever'. The comments I heard around me were: 'Next time when we come, we will try this, instead'. It feels like we now have found that special place to come and celebrate anything and everything we used to have in our former place of residence.

Getting there was a bit tricky, though, because of the distance from the Gympie town past the adorable rural landscape. The distance turned out to be 25kms through the Tin Can Bay Road and then taking the Wolvi turn and following the little strawberry signs that guided our way to the farm. Driving there proved to be an experience itself. I found it very enjoyable and invigorating.

So, there you have it. Check it out though their WEBSITE. The strawberry season is through June to December and the blueberries are ripe in December. Enjoy and share.