The main lounge at Spicers Peak Lodge in Queensland. Source: Supplied ANGELA Saurine tackles a seven-course degustation dinner at the luxurious Spicers Peak Lodge in Queensland's Scenic Rim.
Four courses into our seven-course degustation dinner, I begin to struggle. So far, we have had a dish consisting of celeriac with mushroom, another made of veal tongue with whey shallots and parsnip and a salmon dish with black sesame, watercress and creme fraîche, otherwise known as soured cream with butterfat.
All are served with matching wines, which the sommelier describes in detail.
To me, each carefully crafted and colourful dish looks more like something you would expect to see on the wall of a modern art gallery than on
a plate.
As I tuck into the pork belly with scallops, corn and avocado, I feel my stomach start to expand.
But there is still another meat dish to come. Next up is the beef, which has been slow cooked for four hours, served with beetroot and grains.
To my relief, after that we have a "pre-dessert" mango dish, served with lavender.
"If you were somewhere fancy you'd call it a palate cleanser," says our 21-year-old chef Mark Collings, who is from New Zealand.
Finally, it comes time for dessert: banana with yoghurt and chai.
Exhausted from my own gluttony, I practically roll down the corridor to my room and contentedly drift off to sleep to the sound of the crackling open fire.
The 12-suite Spicers Peak Lodge is one of seven Spicers properties - six in Queensland and one in the Hunter Valley in NSW.
Before my stay at the lodge, in Queensland's Scenic Rim, I had heard the properties described as "restaurants with beds". From my experience, it would certainly seem apt.
Spicers Peak Lodge Source: Supplied On top of a mountain At 1150m above sea level, it is the highest non-alpine lodge in Australia, and thus can be quite chilly in winter.
One of the real talking points of the lodge is that many of the ingredients served at The Peak restaurant are sourced on the property.
The next morning we set off on a bush tucker walk with the quietly spoken "old bushie" Russell Moreton, who wears an Akubra hat and sports a big grey moustache.
As we pass cows grazing in the lush green paddock, Moreton stops to point out plants Aborigines would eat, including ground orchids and black wattle seeds. He encourages us to try sweet mini apples hanging from a bush, explains how you can mix pollen with flour to make damper and shows us the lake where the watercress we had for dinner the previous night grew.
"The chefs often get me to pick stuff for them," he says. "The whole of Australia is like a big grocery store."
Russell spent 30 years living in a swag, doing maintenance work in remote indigenous communities in the Torres Strait Islands and on cattle stations in the Great Sandy Desert.
But he wanted to get out of the building game - the paperwork was driving him mad.
When his sister came to Spicers for a holiday the man who took her for a walk said he was retiring and Moreton put his hand up for the job.
He read everything he could about the area's Aboriginal history and tells us fascinating tales about the violent tribes who once lived there.
"Nobody died of natural causes," he says, "If a woman stepped near someone's belongings she'd be clubbed
to death."
English botanist and explorer Alan Cunningham was the first white man to cross the range in 1827 and was followed by timber cutters soon after.
Guide Russell Moreton during a bush tucker walk at Spicers Peak Lodge at Maryvale in the Scenic Rim in the Southern Downs region in Queensland. Picture: Angela Saurine Source: Supplied Early pioneers the Leslie brothers, who were looking for new areas to graze cattle, came after the discovery of Cunninghams Gap - a passage through the Great Dividing Range - and Spicers Gap in 1847.
By 1848, there was an Aboriginal protection officer working in the area and many Aboriginal women became midwives who were credited with saving the lives of countless colonial women.
Sadly, the last of the area's Aborigines died in the 1930s.
Spicers Peak Lodge was opened by Judy and Graham Turner nearly a decade ago as a retreat to escape the pressures of modern life.
Spicers Peak Lodge Fine Dining Source: Supplied Built of natural materials including blackbutt, Oregon pinewood and bluestone, with high ceilings, a loft, grand piano and large stone fireplaces, it reminds me of a lodge in Alaska or Canada.
There is also a day spa where you can get treatments with hot volcanic stones and choose from aromatherapy blends featuring lemongrass, rosemary, eucalyptus, ginger and peppermint.
Spicers Peak is part of the Luxury Lodges of Australia collection, but it doesn't have quite the same "pinch me" factor as other luxury lodges I've visited, including qualia on Hamilton Island and Saffire in Tasmania.
Spicers Peak Lodge Fine Dining
But while it isn't exactly budget accommodation, it also doesn't have the same price tag as those 6-star offerings.
The writer travelled as a guest of Tourism Queensland
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