We watched the balloon being inflated which was awesome. During this time the owner of the balloon, Rob, told the bleary eyed passengers that this was the largest hot air balloon in the southern hemisphere standing approximately 13 stories tall at a cost of around $140,000. It held 18 passengers and the basket alone weighed 900 kilo’s. The power of the burners was something to behold. Rob proceeded to tell the passengers that with just one of the four burners running, a frozen chicken could be cooked in 4 seconds.

As the sun popped over the horizon, we were away. Staying low to the ground for the first few minutes, our pilot Jason challenged anyone to grab a leaf from one of the trees with the reward of a free bottle of champagne. Josh and Luke were both leaning out of the basket at about 150 feet from the ground with Josh managing to grab a single leaf. Jason then lit up the burners and took us to an altitude of 1500 meters. Sailing peacefully over farms and small towns, the views were spectacular. The boys were able to see Surfers Paradise in the distance, hints of Brisbane CBD and the entire stretch of Mount Tamborine. There were two things that surprised the chefs about this experience. The first was the temperature, although it was freezing on the ground, it was expected to be even colder in the air however the heat from the burners warmed everyone up. The other surprise was the noise. It seemed to be both really peaceful and quiet when floating calmly or really noisy when the burners ignited. After about an hour in the air, we started to make our descent. Traveling down quickly we picked a paddock to land in and set the course. The ground got closer very quickly and after a few bounces, the basket landed safely…………….all be it on its side. We hopped out, packed up and headed down to O’Rielly’s winery for some breakfast.

We arrived at the winery on the middle of mountains to a few ghost stories and some well cooked bacon and eggs. The great staff there set up a nice table and chairs along a creek bed for the BBQ Bachelors to cook up another great dish, duck breasts with poached pears and walnut salad. It was a spectacular day and after cooking we packed up and headed to Gumnuts Farm Resort. We were greeted by our host Kate who first took us on a tour looking for a cow named Daisy who proved too elusive for us. The chefs then went to try their hand at whip cracking, boomerang throwing and clay shooting. J-Mac mastered the whip quickly while left handed Luke struggled. The shooting escalated quickly into competition between the boys with Luke winning this round hitting 2 out of 5 targets leaving Josh embarrassed with a consistency record of zero from 5 attempts. We then proceeded to horse riding with Josh riding the biggest horse on the farm named Hercules and Luke on the placid Elvis. We toured around the farm and managed to get the horses into a slow trot.

After dismounting the horses we found a nice quiet place to cook the final dish.