Gold Coast to the Far Carnarvon's (Carnarvon Gorge)

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.

Boondooma Dam Lookout

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. 

Campsite and our first of 8 full moons

 Aah – to be on the road again!  Why don't you all come and join us!

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. 

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”.

Morning campfire smoke at Cania Van Park

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.

Fern Tree Pool

Two Storey Cave (bats in photo below)

Big Foot Rock to the upper right of Little Head in Hat

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.

Damaged bridges from the January floods

Dragon Cave - Julie felt a level of contentment and belonging

Just 'cos

The Overhang

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.

Cania Dam

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.  

Dawson River Rest Area

Road Trains must like the campers here as they blow their horn loudly as they pass late afternoon and early evening.  After that just the roar of their motors and 18 gear changes seems to be enough acknowledgment of our presence until about midnight.

 

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.

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.