Category Archives: Queensland

A resupply stop on our route west was Emerald, an agricultural cum coal mining town on the banks of the murky and often flooding Nogoa river. Apparently named for its rolling emerald pasture lands it was starting to look a little dry and not really emerald as we drove through. When looking for a spot in the cheap and cheerful caravan park in town, Kris mentioned that she thought there were comments on Wikicamps about a ‘permanent’ who had the TV on till 3am. ‘I’m sure it’s not here’ I said, ‘I mean, what are the odds?’. Pretty high as it turned out. We camped next to what I assumed was an abandoned caravan (no water connected). He turned out to be the Wiki-culprit, and for the record it wasn’t 3 am, it was 3:41 am the next morning when the TV went off. Next night, ear plugs.

Emerald Railway Station.

Emerald sports not only a Coles, a Woolies and a BCF (good for cheap gas refills), but also an impressive railway station AND the world’s largest easel. That’s right, a 25 m high painting easel (with a similarly proportioned painting of course). It’s a tribute to Van Gogh’s sunflowers, which were apparently a major crop for the town.  This oversized curio was almost as fascinating to me as the giant Gumboot in Tully a few weeks earlier.

Keeping fit on a stroll through the Botanic Gardens.

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The descent down from Blackdown Tableland was completed with caution, with fading brakes and the slightly cooked smell of brake pads reminding me to take a prudent ten minute break at the bottom to let everything cool down. A lazy 300 kilometres later saw our arrival at Takarakka Bush Resort, the rather pricey caravan park that services Carnarvon National Park (inexplicably, the National Park camp ground is only open during Queensland’s school holidays). Very exciting for us was the prospect that dad was joining us for the next four nights. He popped up from Sydney, a mere 1280 km away.

We had a wonderful three days at Carnarvon, walking to every nook and cranny within the park, and finishing each day with a beer and glass (or so) of red. We clocked up 47 km in total, 28 km of those on the last day.

The trail map said the main walk was 22 km. GPS doesn’t lie. We walked 28 km.

Heading off on our first day.

Boolimba Bluff – 935 steps up worth of view.

Local wildlife – one of several echidnas spotted on our walks.

I had been here as a gangly young teenager and it was a ‘must do’ bucket list item for Kris and myself. To my surprise, relief and absolute delight, the boys walked step-to-step with us without complaint. Their stamina and intestinal fortitude was amazing and has certainly improved since starting this odyssey in January, when every walk was met with grumbles. So much so that we nicked the acronym WWW to keep our sanity – Walking Without Whinging.  (K – in fact, Sam forged ahead of us most of the time just to be the first to explore some unknown gorge. He declared after visiting Warrumbah Creek Gorge below that it was the most magical place ever and he had to come back and would even jump out of the car the next day driving past to do so.  Fortunately it didn’t come to that and we were able to accommodate his desires for a return visit on Day 2.)

Warrumbah Creek Gorge – actually not part of a marked walking trail.

Highlights were Warrumbah Creek Gorge, a moss covered shady chasm which is part of one of the closer walks to our camp, as well as the spectacular views from Boolimba Bluff which overlooks Carnarvon Gorge. The Amphitheatre, Art Gallery and Boowinda Gorge were all fantastic as well, and were part of the main walking track that we left till the last day.

Carnarvon Creek.

The amphitheatre. The acoustics from these 50m walls were excellent!

The Art Gallery.

Boowinda Gorge.

K – James and I turned around not far after the Art Gallery clocking only a measly 21km. We took our time at each of the turn offs till the others caught us up!  Here we are at Wards Canyon.

Last stop for the day – The Moss Gardens.

A real treat on our middle ‘rest day’, was something I would probably have passed on; a sunset damper and billy tea at nearby Bandana Station. However, Dad suggested we go to this, and we all loved it, even the boys. Bruce and his daughter Olivia, multi-generational cattle farmers, offer up fresh damper, billy tea and cheese and biscuits. Beer and wine helped lubricate the evening.

After an introduction on the operation of their cattle property and a brief explanation of Australia’s cattle market, including the effect of the serious drought further west, they broke into a mix of singing and story telling.  These ranged from a yarn about the colourful Kenniff’s, the last of Australia’s bushrangers, as well as his neighbour Frank and a particular mad cow escapee, as well as a few bush songs, finished off a little oddly with ‘Flying Purple People Eater’ and then a cracking rendition of Jim Haynes ‘Since Sheryl Went Feral’, which had the boys in stitches.  All this with a stunning sunset lighting up 30 or so kilometres of sandstone escarpment wall on the distant horizon.

Sam resting after indulging in cheese and bickies at the Bandana Station sunset.

The boys at the site of a WWII era C47 crash between Rolleston and Carnarvon Gorge.

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To fill up on National Park goodness before we head into the dry bleak interior, we headed to Blackdown Tableland National Park, a short 134 km hop from Mt Hay. A completely unremarkable trip unless you include passing through the township of Dingo, bad jokes aside, it would be a unique address to have. The road up to the plateau was 8km of unrelenting 10% plus gradient. Steep, very curvy and NOT recommended for caravans, yes yes, we’ve seen all this before. It was not a problem, although (nerd alert here) I was watching my exhaust gas temperature gauge climb to over 550 degrees! Poor old Betsy was working hard getting five and a half tons up the mountain. It turned out that going down two days later was far more perilous and nerve wracking as the car brakes started to fade, even with the big diesel in second and sometimes first gear! Luckily there was nothing larger than a brush turkey to avoid on the way down.

Mook Mook lookout, just a short walk from camp.

Arriving by lunch, we were able to squeeze in a short walk to some rock art. Just some hand prints, and after Kakadu, disappointing. Dinner was pork burritos, James’ second favourite dinner, why? Because the next day was his eighth birthday! He had a written plan prepared for how he wanted his big day to pan out, including cuddles in bed, presents, extra extra tablet time, a walk, his favourite dinner (Carbonara), cake and a movie!

A very happy bush birthday boy.

James enjoying his new Lego kit. Sam was very keen to help build it!

He scored snacks and some Lego and can now finally wear his very groovy kangaroo skin hat that we bought back in Kuranda. Hopefully this stays put on his head (his last hat, my old heritage listed scout hat, has been lost and recovered more times than I can count!).

With the boys engrossed in Minecraft, I walked out to Mook Mook, a look out that reveals a magnificent view over the range, complete with that rare remote travelers commodity, reception. Our afternoon walk was to Rainbow Falls, a very pretty droplet waterfall and plunge pool, surrounded by ferns. Apart from dropping my car keys into the water, we all had a great day (thankfully the chipped key and the remote still work).

James enjoyed his day, ending it with a Spiderman movie and a mini-birthday cake (K – the plan was to share the big cake with Pa the next night at Carnarvon). The only downside to eating anything tasty outside was the ever-present threat of currawongs. always gathered en-mass and poised ready to swoop cake from unsuspecting hands.

A beautiful bird call, but the currawongs were always ready to pounce!

Each night we had a camp fire, using seasoned rose wood fence posts brought from Mt Hay. I kept a few of the nicer samples for dad to take home to turn into cheese knives and the like. The wood is incredibly hard and fine-grained. It is so hard it resists termites and almost resists burning. At least the coals for marshmallows were excellent.

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Take a step back in time. It’s about 1983, and I have strong memories of fossicking for Thunder Eggs somewhere in mid southern Queensland. This memory has been plaguing me for some weeks, because I thought it’s somewhere the boys would love to visit. My only frustration is, I can’t remember the name of the place, or the location and unfortunately, Queensland is rather large. Inevitably, it’s Kris with all her Wikicamps wisdom to the rescue with a nonchalant, ‘Oh, we should go to Mt Hay so the boys can fossick for thunder eggs’ – ‘That’s it’ I cry! And the puzzle is over. It’s 277 km from our last camp at Carmila, which gives us ample time for shopping in Rockhampton on the way. The road to Rocky is humorously punctuated with signs at various intervals such as ‘Only 3 Hours to Rocky Kids’, or ‘Stay Alive and Play Trivia’, then… ‘What’s the highest Mountain in Queensland?’ If you don’t crash, you get to find out the answer in a few more kilometers (it’s Mt Bartle Frere doncha know – I didn’t).

We arrived at Mt Hay late in the afternoon, and of course the boys would not let me rest because they just HAD to start fossicking right away. The owner, Don, has been here since the age of six, and still has obvious enthusiasm for his thunder eggs and for gem stones in general. He even remembered the bloke called Dallas that showed me around as a boy; ‘yeah, I remember Dallas, tall, blond hair, funny bloke’. Thunder eggs formed here about 120 million years ago when gas bubbles were present in the molten rhyolite lava. The gas pockets filled with siliceous liquids containing trace impurities which slowly cooled to form thunder eggs, voilà! Don now uses a front end loader to dump dirt containing the eggs from the old volcano onto the ground near the camp site. This makes it all ‘safe’, but curiously it seems to mean that only small thunder eggs are left for the tourists. The larger commercially saleable tennis ball sized ones seem to fall out of the scoop before they get to the fossicking pad. Oh well, the boys and I had a great time, and Don cut more than our fair share of eggs.

The boys were quite happy when two school groups turned up on excursions for the afternoon. Sam and James with their previous afternoon and mornings “experience” were now deemed experts and spent the afternoon helping Don answer the never ending chorus of “Is this a thunder egg?”. Apparently they lightened his load as he rewarded them both with a treat on the house – anything they wanted from the ice cream cabinet or the drinks fridge. Doesn’t get much better than that!

Our final collection of cut Thunder Eggs.

Chillaxing at Mt Hay campsite.

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After a quick detour into Mackay for fuel. We paused at Sarina for a sugar mill tour. I was initially disappointed that it was a ‘mini-sized mill’, but this turned out to be more interesting as you can see the cane being crushed, concentrated, cleaned, processed and finally refined. The tour wraps up with samples of fairy floss for the boys and vodka, schnapps and rum samples for any willing grownups. I was interested to note that sugar and milk are prepared in a similar way, i.e. milk has all the fat removed then added back to form each product with different fat content. Sugar is similar, it is refined to white  sugar before being converted back to raw and brown sugar by adding molasses – which is the first thing to be removed. Needless to say I passed on the rum at $200 a litre.

Next ‘third’ down the coast, and 100 kilometres from Mackay was a free camp at Carmila. Our friends the Lonergans had recommended this to us via a dedicated ‘Big Lap’ traveling page on Facebook. Kris found it on Wikicamps and we found it via our GPS without fuss – technology at work!

K – Our lovely campsite – the first night at 9pm I suddenly realised I couldn’t hear the waves very well so went outside to see, no sea in sight by the light of our torches!

We picked a lovely spot between two shady trees and proceeded to spend the next two days relaxing, fishing, reading, playing on the beach with the boys (who moved on from building cities to clay mining), fishing, walking out across the impressively wide tidal flats (660m walk out to the low tide mark according to the phone’s GPS), oh and fishing.

Whilst I lost tackle to a monster bite within 10 minutes of my first cast, James won the day by catching three jewfish that we gave a good home on the coals. Sunday 6th September, being fathers day, meant more jobs – this time an oil change on the truck. No rest for the weary! One thing that really stood out were the incredible night skies. Billions of tiny potential dots of life on an inky black canvas.

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