Monday 22 April – Leaving Home
Leading up to today we had a very
social week catching up with family and friends. My favourite daughter, Amy, turns 23 years
old this week so we had a birthday lunch for her last Saturday with my
favourite son, Ryan, and Amy’s favourite boyfriend, Jamie. The worst thing about travelling is leaving
family and friends behind and missing out on birthdays and other milestones in
their lives. We try to time our travels
to minimise this but sadly we are away for some things.
Leaving the Gold Coast at 10:50am
we travelled north to Tewantin and the Noosa Caravan Park right beside where
Mum lives. We had a wonderful two days
with Mum, with a beautiful dinner at her place on the Monday, followed by
morning tea at the caravan, an early Mother’s Day lunch at Trios Restaurant
overlooking the Noosa River and a ‘leftovers’ dinner at Mum’s again on Tuesday
night ending in the start of a three week diet.
Wednesday saw us packing up and
leaving the caravan park at 9:30 am. We
drove 100 metres and parked the rig on the side of the road and went back to
Mum’s for fresh scones (no jam and coconut slice!) and coffee and some big lunch (leftovers). When the time came for us to leave neither of
us wanted to say goodbye. After many farewells and a few tears all around, we
set off on our 8 month trip anti-clockwise around Australia.
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| Boondooma Dam Lookout |
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| Campsite |
Tomorrow is Anzac Day and a
public holiday and there are many people making a long weekend of it by taking
the Friday off as well so places are quite busy. We travelled west through Gympie, had lunch
at Goomeri, then travelled through Murgon (tried to text Mark W at Cherbourg to
no avail) then turned right at Proston to arrive at our pretty camp at
Boondooma Dam. Our powered site (No 18 –
No 16 is better with unpowered sites with taps having the best views) is at the Lookout campground
perch high above the dam. As I write
this, it is after 5pm the sky is clear, there is no breeze at all and the sun
is setting in the west, as it tends to do in this part of Australia, and Julie
has just completed her very first cryptic crossword – the world is
perfect. The trees are lit up with that
beautiful late afternoon golden yellow as the birds slowly start to settle for
the night and the cool of the evening slowly starts to seep in. The distant cracking sound of the top coming
off a bottle of red wine (an earlier birthday present for me) can be heard as Julie sets
me up for Happy Hour and that very special time of the day that is the
signature dish of camping.
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| Campsite and our first of 8 full moons |
Boondooma Dam to Cania Gorge
We were able to get a bit of
phone reception by walking up a hill, putting left ring finger in right ear and
facing Mecca. This reception was used to
enquire about getting a van site in Cania Gorge. There are no National Park or Freedom camps in
Cania Gorge so we followed everyone’s advice and booked into Cania Gorge
Tourist Park (Top Tourist) for three nights.
The friendly owners advised they were busy but not full so we decided to
up stumps and move on.
The weather remains perfect with
clear skies day and night, warm days (up to 30 degrees) and cool nights (down
to 13 degrees). There is no wind and the
whole countryside is in perfect condition following the flooding rains in
January 2013. The journey to Cania Gorge
was via back roads most of which were single lane bitumen with graded dirt
either side. Many of the roads and
bridges were washed away in the floods and had just been repaired. Damaged crops and pastures were visible in
many places and flood debris was still high up in the trees often well above the top
of the car and caravan. We realise how
fortunate our decision was to go south and west on our first trip earlier this
year.
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| Boab trees on the way to Cania Gorge |
Arriving at Cania Gorge Tourist Park we were still travelling over washed away roads only partially repaired
with gouged out creeks and destroyed trees laid flat by the floods either side
of us. The van park is in perfect
condition, beautifully maintained and a credit to the hard work the owners have
done since the floods. The park is busy
with the ANZAC weekend campers with lots of young families enjoying the grassy
spaces and campfires. The Park has a
great feel about it with the Managers ensuring there are no noisy radios, TV’s, or generators at all. There is a family group nearby us who were warned by the
Manager today about the noise they made last night (we didn’t hear a thing) and
were told to turn off their radio they had on as they sat outside their
van. The result being that all that
can be heard is the many birds singing away, laughter of children playing and
Julie snoring as she “reads the Women’s Day”.
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| Morning campfire smoke at Cania Van Park |
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| Giants Chair Lookout |
First day here we were up early,
had breakfast and were off doing some of the Cania Gorge walks just after
7:30am. The first walk was Julie going
back to the van to get her hiking stick as I waited at the gate entrance to the
National Park. All up we did 10klm of
walks (Julie 11 klm) completing the Fern Tree Pool and Giant’s Chair circuit,
the Two Storey Cave circuit and Big Foot walk.
These were achieved in around four hours without seeing too many other
people. All were great walks on
well-defined sign marked tracks.
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| Fern Tree Pool |
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| Two Storey Cave (bats in photo below) |
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| Big Foot Rock to the upper right of Little Head in Hat |
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| King Orchid Crevice |
Second day in Cania Gorge saw us
start the same as the previous day minus Julie walking back to the van. 8.1klm of walking tracks took us to almost all the
remaining walks in Cania Gorge: Dripping Rock, The Overhang, Bloodwood Cave,
Dragon Cave and the Lookout. The only
walk left undone is 22 klm Castle Mountain Lookout that follows the ridge – this
walk will remain undone for the foreseeable future.
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| Damaged bridges from the January floods |
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| Dragon Cave - Julie felt a level of contentment and belonging |
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| Just 'cos |
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| The Overhang |
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| Bloodwood Cave |
Being Sunday and the end of the
long weekend, there is a constant stream of camper trailers, vans and tents
leaving the park. Each
vehicle is filled to the brim with camping gear and school kids, leaving the
camping grounds filled to the brim with grey-haired travellers and that
beautiful lull after the storm feeling that only we oldies can experience on a
late Sunday arvo. If any of you has misplaced a grandparent or two they are probably around here somewhere. We had planned to leave tomorrow
but have booked another day as we want to take the 10klm drive up the road to
Cania Dam/Lake and have a look around there.
Next Day –
Again the weather was perfect –
13 degrees overnight and high 20’s during the day with no clouds and light
winds. Today we travelled to Cania Dam just 10klm away and did the 1.4klm walk
through the old Shamrock mine site. In
the 1870’s gold was discovered here and the usual story followed with the small
town of Cania being established to service the mining. There being no planes at that time, it was a
ride-in ride-out mine site. Cania is now
below the surface of Cania Dam. The walk
was through eucalypt forest along a little creek and valley riddled with old
diggings and a few mine shafts. Some old
mining relics from those days are caged up and on display as well as an old
mineshaft covered over with the old hand winch for the bucket still there.
Being the only ones there, it was good to wander around by ourselves picturing
the gold rush days.
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| Cania Dam |
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| Cania Tourist Park |
Morning tea was at a lookout over
Cania Dam wall. There are beautiful
picnic grounds right on the water’s edge of the Dam. We then travelled back home on the way checking
out the second caravan park (Big 4) here.
For anyone coming to Cania Gorge the one we stayed at (Top Tourist) is
quiet and peaceful and located at the start of the walks. The Big 4 has water slides, water parks,
jumping castles, swimming pools, café, etc and is 10klm from the walks but
closer to the dam. So the trick would be
to camp where we are, drop the kids off after breakfast with some pocket money,
do the walks, go fishing, come back about 4pm pick up the kids and go back to
camp – everyone’s happy.
30 April – leaving Cania Gorge
and heading towards Carnarvon Gorge
Four nights at Cania Gorge
allowed us to do all the walks and see the local area with the afternoons free
to do the chores and relax. We are ready
to move on and are looking forward to the next part of the trip. We've had no phone or internet connection except for when we've been up the top of a hill during one of our walks and the mobile phone pings to let us know we have reception. We quickly skimmed our emails and any messages before heading back to the relative isolation of the bush. TV reception is limited to what is received via satellite in the van park and subsequently transmitted for the campers to receive. The quality is very poor.
Travelling from Cania Gorge
through Biloela and Banana to Moura it was obvious we were entering mining
country. Ours was the only car without a
big red flag affixed to the front bumper and its occupants without Visi-vests
on. The road was narrow and bumpy in
patches with road works going on every few kilometres. The landscape remained beautiful with the
road often disappearing way into the distance through pastures of metres high
grasses lapping the verges all the way.
Biloela is a large bustling
country town with all sorts of shopping and industrial stores – a good place to
get supplies or repairs done. We drove
through it heading for Moura – a run-down small town with many of its
businesses either closed down or open only a few days a week. We stopped here for lunch and had just the
best burger and salad sandwich at one of the few open cafés we could find. The little IGA is well stocked if you only
need a narrow range of things.
Eight kilometres the other side
of Moura is the Dawson River Rest Area (Freedom Camp). Well set up it offers flush toilets, coin
operated hot showers, table and chairs, boat ramp and camping space for about
30 or so caravans. It is run by
volunteers from Moura and is a great, and therefore popular, overnight camp for
travellers in this part of the region.
Caravan parks in the surrounding towns are mostly mining parks so this
represents a good option for like-minded travellers.
We camped here the night and were
able to get a site at the back with a bit of privacy. I saw a Spotless (cleaning company) come in
morning and night to clean and maintain the toilets too. A gold coin donation is all that is asked. Good Spot.
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| Dawson River Rest Area |
It was here that we thought we
had lost one of two water pumps in the van.
It runs everything except the drinking water. We were getting ready for dinner, washing up,
toilet flush and showers and, although it hummed away when turned on, no water
came out. After trying to get it to work
for about 30 minutes we resigned ourselves to having to use our backup manual
shower and gaining access to the water in the tank via the tap under the van. We expected to spend the next day phoning our
van supplier and working out where the nearest place is to have the pump
repaired which we knew would be hundreds of kilometres away.
We were all ready to start
washing up and organising showers when I just had another go at turning the
sink tap on and presto out came the water.
Oh Happy Days! This was our first
bush camp and the first time this pump had been used. I expect it needed repriming as it is working
fine now.
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| Morning Tea spot in the middle of nowhere on the way to Rolleston |
Next morning, with both pumps
working and spirits high, we set off towards Carnarvon Gorge. The roads continue to be under repair and the
countryside green and lush. We stopped
at the thriving metropolis of Rolleston, a two horse town in its heyday but now
a sleepy, dusty little place with fuel.
Filling up we turned south towards Carnarvon Gorge about 75 klm away. The road is sealed all the way except for the
last few kilometres.
