Central Queensland

21 May - Town of 1770

Nationally renowned as the only town in Australia with numbers in its name, ’1770’ has been a haunt of ours for many years. So we still haven’t really started our journey!

After almost a week here, we are well into this ’on the wallaby thing’. A hard day at the office for us is having to make an early tide sometime before midday. Fishing here has improved, to the extent that we’ve had to call a halt for our last two days because the freezer is getting full.

1770’s camping ground has been voted the best in the state and it is a well-deserved accolade. The facilities are ’ok’, the camp sites are ’average’ - sand, no slabs, no waste drains…. BUT the location and the atmosphere more than compensate!!! Tonight is the Friday before the fabulous “1770 Festival” which celebrates the anniversary of the landing of Cook and crew here on 24 May 1770. (Penny drops for the slow!!!) Accordingly, the camp is packed. The festival site is just outside the camp entrance and the anticipation is electric!

This is a very small town (pop 56), but is there really any such thing in Australia any more? Bundaberg is 120 km away and Gladstone about the same distance the other direction (north). Both are fairly large provincial cities with all the services of much larger cities. As a result, places like this are not really country towns any more.

So tonight, local weekenders have encroached on our quiet grey nomad world. They have children! Lots of them! Mostly well controlled. But we shall see. As a rule the ‘camp discipline’ in these crowded situations is rather effective at keeping the lid on things. The “boys” (aged between 20 and 60) camped behind us with the 90 cans of Bundy and Coke and their stereo system pumping, are another matter altogether!


23 May - 1770 and Byfield State Forest

As we suspected, the last couple of nights were a little wild in camp! On a smaller scale, our location was a little like camping between Side Show Alley and the Cattleman’s Bar at the Ekka. Last night, Saturday, was out of control until well after 3:00 am. One father took his own early morning vengeance on some of the worst perpetrators by giving his toddler a saucepan lid and a spoon to belt beside the can-littered camp of some of the local lads who were attempting to sleep it all off.

We were on the road fairly early (for us) for a long haul to Byfield State Forest, just north of Yeppoon.

You could hear a pin drop at forty paces at our campsite at Red Rock in the forest tonight. What a contrast! Mind you, the birds put on a bit of a turn on sunset and perhaps tomorrow morning could make us change our tune about the “serenity“.

We are here for a couple of nights, “rough’n it“… well, in our own style. It might be a good time to describe the way our ‘rig’ is set up for this long trip, where we expect to bush camp for most of the time.

When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, he had access to less computer power than we have in one of our two mobile phones. Eisenhower managed the invasion of Europe in 1944 with well less than 10% of the communications technology we carry. What would Ike have given to be able to zoom into street level maps and eye level photos of France? Would John Wayne have got lost somewhere near St Marie Eglise in “The Longest Day” if he had a GPS?

So what do we carry?

Two mobile phones
A Tomtom GPS
Two networked computers
A broadband network modem
Two digital cameras
A SD set-top-box
A DVD Player
CD/AM/FM Radio (two)
Portable AM/FM transistor Radio
FM Transmitter
Two handheld UHF radios
A car UHF (CB) Radio
Two inverters (150W and 600W)
Colour TV
B&W TV
Numerous chargers, memory cards and adaptors…

How else could we survive? Besides, we might need to invade Europe or fly to the moon…

On the domestic front, our van has:

An air conditioner
Microwave
Two 12V/240V/Gas fridges
Gas Cook top
Gas Oven
Electric water pump

To power all this, we use LPG gas and 240V connections when we are in Caravan Parks, or our internal battery that is charged while we drive along, or by our solar panel when we camp where there is no power.

To keep us amused we have a small library of second hand books, 300 DVD movies; 200 music CDs; more than 50 CD books and radio plays; a 16 ft Canadian canoe; outboard motor; crab pots; fishing gear, etc…

More than 100lt of fuel capacity move all this along and, to sustain us, about the same amount of water and slightly less beer.

Oh, and we almost forgot the telescope!!!

How else could we ever survive for 6 months?……

Little wonder Burke and Wills never made it!

South East Qld

The Journey Begins…..

30 April 3 May - Toogoolawah, Maidenwell, Maryborough and Amamoor

By way of a shake-down-cruise, we have been wandering about the Brisbane Valley and South Burnett area of South-East Queensland. We have about a week to kill waiting for the wedding of Paul’s cousin, Alys, in Maleny on 8 May. All this is due to us handing our house over to our house minders by the end of April as promised.

Much of this area is well known to us, but it has been a good way to start such a long trip. With six months to complete our anti-clockwise circumnavigation of the Australian Continent we are in no rush. In fact, we don’t seriously get under way until the end of May, following two weeks fishing at Hervey Bay and The Town of 1770.

The Labour Day long weekend has forced us to seek out-of-the-way camping sites away from beach and popular National Parks. Who ever stays the night in Toogoolawah or Maidenwell?

By Monday, the long weekend crowds were clogging the highway home. Cedar Grove Camping Grounds in the Amamoor State Forest was almost empty by the time we set up camp at lunchtime. It is a beautiful spot, but the rain has settled in, so it’s into the books, pre-recorded radio plays and DVDs.


14 May Torquay - Hervey Bay

Early entries in this blog are noticeably ‘irregular’ to say the least. Given that the south east of our own state of Queensland is ‘old ground’ for us, we have had little of significance to report.

Fishing is what the first couple of weeks of our trip is all about. Hervey Bay and The Town of 1770 have been regular winter holiday spots for us for several years now, so why break with the pattern?

Alys’ and Heath’s wedding and the associated social events were fantastic. Our home in the Maleny Showgrounds wasn’t exactly central to all the ‘action’, but we managed ok. Heath is South African and, given that our next big trip is to our friends’ and house-sitters’ wedding in Cape Town, we were appreciative of all the advice and hospitality offered by the South African contingent at the wedding.

Near death experiences are rare in our fairly well-controlled lives…. But, while out fishing in the unfamiliar territory of the mouth of the Mary River, we had a brush with disaster! Nice deep water at the mouth of creeks and rivers can be very productive fishing spots, so we dropped anchor and tried our luck. Immediately, it was clear that we couldn’t get our bait to the bottom in the current because the outgoing current was far too strong. Simple solution; up anchor and off. For once, our anchor actually held in the face of every effort to lift it. With the current increasing by the minute and the anchor actually pulling the side of our boat down, threatening complete inundation, it was time for drastic action! Out with the, extremely blunt, fishing knife and after some tense minutes and bad language… bye bye anchor, chain and 20 mtrs of rope.

Now all this wouldn’t have been so much of a problem, except for the fact that we had left the paddles for our motorised canoe and our life jackets back at camp. If the motor had failed us, we would have had an unscheduled trip to Fraser Island. However, given we’d had our “three things” of bad luck, we chanced it and are still here to tell the tale.

On the fishing front, things have been a bit grim. One large, one medium flathead and a few whiting are all we have taken home all week! Never mind. The weather has been fantastic and the seas calm.