Saturday 25 August 2018

15 - Queensland inner central areas 08/2018



Entry 15 – Queensland inner central lands. – 13/8/18 – 26/8/18

Leaving Cania Gorge National Park we propped about 34 kilometres down the road at Monto, restocking our fridge, pantry and fuel supplies. Cania Gorge had been a phone free location and with Monto connected to the electronic world, enabling us to catch up with all our internet and phone requirements.

Our thoughts over the last month had been to continue travelling north west, exploring inland Queensland regions. During the last few days we had waned from thoughts of inland regions due to the consequences of the current severe drought conditions leaving the country side looking lifeless and unappealing. The weather for the last three weeks had been to our liking with day time temperatures of about 24 C which was our primary reason for travelling to this region of Australia. The ongoing discussion of various ideas provided thoughts for heading back to the Hervey Bay regions and spending time at the beach side location of Inskip Point near Rainbow Beach and surrounding locations sounded the most appealing.

With the excitement of returning to an area we first experienced in 2013 we sent a text to a lovely NSW couple we first met there whom we had caught up with four times since at other locations in Australia.

Text; - “Where the bloody hell are you? We are heading to Inskip Point! Meet you there?”

One minute later, Mary was in the process of typing up another text to one of our special home neighbours notifying our plans when the phone rang.

Answer; - “We are on our way to Emerald, (about 450 kilometres NW of our present location,) where we are going to spend a couple of weeks red claw hunting. Come on up!”

Our immediate thoughts, we hadn’t partaken in this red claw stuff.

Our response; - “See you tomorrow.”

Mary then proceeded to finish her text to our neighbour; - “Sorry, change of plans. We are now heading to Emerald.”

We do “so” enjoy the versatility of our caravan lifestyle!

Assessing travel routes to Emerald we decided to travel through an unexplored area for us, Dawson Hwy, Biloelia – Rolleston – Springsure – Emerald. It wasn’t long before we encountered a steady flow of mining vehicles. As it transpired along this route there were a number of coal mines. Other than dealing with a steady flow of heavy vehicles in both directions the bitumen road was in poor condition with the bitumen edges looking like a badly corrugated dirt road with uneven peaks. It was one of the more unnerving roads we have experienced, particularly when moving over to the left of the road with oncoming vehicles. The uneven ridges were bouncing us back towards the oncoming vehicles where we found ourselves braking to a near stop, if no heavy vehicles were on our tail.


Several times we needed to negotiate animals searching for feed along the road sides.


Mid-day the following day we arrived at Lake Maraboon about 20 kilometres out of Emerald, booking into the caravan park for a week. Our other travelling colleagues were close by, within yelling distance. We spent the rest of the day, late into the evening chattering away with Mick & Jen, catching up with one another’s news.

The large-ish Lake Maraboon caravan park exists primarily due to the presence of Red Claw in the lake with a high volume of caravaners carrying boats mounted on their tow vehicle roof tops with disassembled boat trailers. Each morning boats travel out to various locations around the lakes 274-kilometre shoreline to check traps for red claw catches, resetting for inspection the next morning. Mornings we sat outside eating breakfast watching the boats heading out.




Australian red-claw lobster, “freshwater crayfish”, are native to northern Queensland and Northern Territory. Other locations it is present, from being introduced the red-claw is deemed unwanted including Lake Maraboon, thus there are no limits on the volume of catches other than in its native regions. It seemed most people returned with a catch, with Mick & Jen returning with regular catches of around 40 and a nearby neighbour with 90 from one nights set traps.


Lake Maraboon caravan park would have been one of the happiest caravan park environments we had experienced. Happy hour was a great friendly time.


We enjoyed watching a variety of birds flying about at camp. In the back ground we regularly heard the sound of Brolga’s screeching. One day Mick took Steve out on the lake to a far away shore where they viewed many Pelicans and 100’s of Brolga’s further back above the heads of the Pelicans.





Another bonus staying at a location near a main town, (Emerald,) for an extended period, enabled us to get our mail forwarded. We have our mail forwarded to a post office, paying a little extra enabling us to track our mails movement. On this occasion it was 3 months of mail, arriving from Adelaide in 3 days. With our mail sorted it was time to resume to plan D or H or thereabouts and we started to head SE towards the Hervey Bay regions. During our travels, whenever the route suited we would choose a non-primary road to travel along where we could slow down and enjoy the country side driving at a more leisurely pace. This day away from the primary road, that more sedate pace may have saved us from sustaining vehicle damage. From the time we saw one kangaroo with intentions to jump out in front of us, hard braking including some tyre squealing dropping our speed as quickly as possible from 83 kph down to 23 kph one kangaroo disappeared under the driver’s side corner roo bar, still hopping frantically away. Picture attached showing the position of kangaroo and still travelling at a speed of 51 kph, under hard braking. Complements of our dash cam.


Another hazard incurred on some back roads are narrow bridges wide enough for only one vehicle at a time with no railing.




Two days later we arrived at our planned destination, Isla Gorge. Our granddaughter is named Isla and Steve had spotted a green blob on the map called Isla Gorge National Park, so Isla Gorge N.P. was a calling. What a gem did Isla “two,” turn out to be. The views were breath taking with no photograph able to show the dramatic scenery seen through our eyes.





View from caravan door



Our first night at Isla Gorge we had a little picnic watching the sun set.

Isla Gorge was part of the Dawson Range of Central Queensland Sandstone Belt which includes our loved Carnarvon National Park. Isla Gorge does not have any sanctioned walking trails due to the steep rugged terrain quite different to the accessible Carnarvon N.P. There were a couple of short well-worn walking tracks, along the ridges with steep drop offs we delighted in walking with picturesque views.
Steve walking along the ridge track


After leaving Isla Gorge we spent three days driving, with plenty of breaks exploring some of the offerings along our route. About 400 kilometres down the road we arrived at our next planned destination of Inskip Point near Rainbow Beach overlooking the southern point of Fraser Island. The weather forecast for the next week looked promising with predicted daily temperatures in the mid 20’s with one day of possible rain.

Monday 13 August 2018

14 - Inland from Hervey Bay / Cania Gorge




We had experienced many of Hervey Bays publicized highlights over our 8-night stay. It was time to head bush again into a more sedate relaxed atmosphere. As a hypothetical destination we made our way towards Cania Gorge National Park about 250 kilometres drive from Hervey Bay.

Our first stop was at Childers where we walked around the town’s main shopping area stopping at the information centre. As it transpired, Childers information centre was located downstairs in the renovated “Palace Hostel,” a backpacker hostel which was devastated by fire in the year 2000. Fifteen people died whom are now known as “The Palace Fifteen.” Located upstairs was a memorial wall with 15 boxes, each one dedicated to those individual victims with photos provided by their grieving families from around the globe. A volunteer talked us through the memorial and how it came about. We found ourselves overcome with emotion from the sadness of the fire and had to remove ourselves from the room. We sat outside on the buildings beautifully presented balcony, recomposing ourselves, reading the acquired literature for available options in the area. One of the literature pamphlets showed some of the back packers had jumped from that balcony, to escape the fire and it had been rebuilt using the original iron lacework. We inspected the towns free camp which was so packed you couldn’t lift up your arms between all the vehicles. For us Childers felt unappealing and we decided to move on.
A bit further along the road we stopped for the day at Biggenden in a much-appreciated quiet RV park. We walked around town in the afternoon and again the following morning, enjoying the casual relaxed country atmosphere.

We continued ambling along travelling down some narrow back roads observing the country side, deviating to view a couple of early 19th century, built rail bridges. One constructed of concrete, “Chowey Bridge,” and the other, “Ideraway Upside Down Bridge.” We did have the need to be alert for cows as well as kangaroos hopping out in front of us.




We inspected a couple of possible freedom camp locations along the way, finding them unappealing due to overcrowding, continuing till we located a quiet road side stop. It was a bit like a road trip with locations we would have considered for an extended stay, over crowded with other campers, unappetizing to us. We did spend time walking around some of the small country towns with some photos of Mundubbera’s viewings.



We were still winding back finding driving any distance greater than a hundred kilometres to be tiring. Disappointingly we were missing the inspiration to stay at any of the stop over locations for any period of time in this region. Possibly partly due to the very dry, lifeless feeling country side and unsurprising to us, that same week, the Federal Government announcing drought relief help for all the farmers located in the inland regions of Queensland and NSW. After about 35 kilometres we called it quits for another day camping at the RM WILLIAMS AUSTRALIAN BUSH LEARNING CENTRE. It was $10 for the night which was in-between those who prefer the comforts of a caravan park and those who prefer no cost camping transpiring with only two other caravans staying the night. We did utilize the camp kitchen and enjoyed watching the night time sound and light show for our $10. We enjoyed time in the centre reading the literature and viewing the current local artist displays.




We had a good day with Mary finding a swing to her liking. Steve rode a flying fox finding it somewhat more strenuous to hang on, than his flying fox riding days, from a couple of decades earlier in life.

Our next stop about 65 kilometres along at Monto was to be our last stop over before making our way to our planned destination of Cania Gorge located about 34 kilometres up the road from Monto. We walked around Monto township where we saw a sad soul waiting out the front of the old court building and enjoyed a lively happy hour gathering lasting well into the evening.

There were a few non-thoughtful caravan owners, parking their caravans where they ought not be.
Then there were those who would utilise any means to address the negligence of un-thoughtful caravaners moving them along.
Fortunately for those caravaners, there were some restraints in place around “Mary’s” train!

Of note the old rail lines and sleepers were in the process of being removed and some of the local townships were utilizing the towns old neglected rail sidings to provide cheap RV parking areas to attract people to the declining towns with the railway no longer in existence.

When leaving Monto, we visited the country butcher for some meat. We purchased one T bone, which lasted the two of us for three meals.
We thought Cania Gorge National Park sounded like a good location to explore. Our research showed it was a bit like a mini - less spectacular version of Carnarvon National Park which was located about a couple of hundred kilometres NW. We had previously camped at Carnarvon a couple of times mesmerised each time by its magnificence. No camping was permitted in Cania Gorge National Park with our next best option to stay in a caravan park next to the National Park. The caravan park provided basic amenities within a great bush setting. Each day at 4 pm they put some bird seed out attracting some of the locals.





Only one pair of king parrots participated in the 4 pm bird feeding display. Our second night onwards at feeding time (which we didn’t return to,) up to 7 king parrots appeared in the tree above us with some landing on our caravan roof loudly walking around to get our attention to come out side. Steve went outside to obtain a photo and the first photo shows a king parrot landing on Steve’s hand photo bombing the picture. The king parrots seemed to be targeting us, not pestering any other people around us whom were all coming out for a look. It may well have been they just liked to have their photos taken?

There were a selection of eight different walks in the National Park, most with a start point about 900 to 1800 metres from the caravan park. Generally, people drove from the caravan park to the walks carparks start point. We chose to walk along a walking track from the caravan park to the different walks location, utilizing the flat terrain to warm up and wind down, aiding our bodies.













For us Cania Gorge provided good scenery, plenty of bird life and offered a variety of walking tracks, all aiding to a friendly people environment with plenty of smiles and happy greetings. We enjoyed a week at Cania Gorge before we thought it might be time to resume our journeyings.