Coffs Harbour to Canberra

The school holidays have started so we have fled Coffs Harbour. It occurred to us that we can't really say we have 'done' Australia when we haven't visited the capital, so we decided to spend 4 weeks in Canberra. At over 800 km the journey was too long to do in a day, but with the Sydney megalopolis at a bit over the half way point we were in a quandary as to how to break it up. In the end we decided we would stay the night at an overnight rest area at Ourimbah, about 60 km north of Sydney. However, when we arrived at the rest area we found it was a designated 'driver reviver' stop, and was heaving with travellers taking advantage of the free tea, coffee and bikkies. There wasn't enough room for us to even stop, let alone pull up for the night. We were in a real quandary as there were no free camps any further south until well past Sydney, and very few caravan parks. After several frantic phone calls we managed to find a site at a caravan park at Camden, about 70km south of Sydney. They made sure to say that the office closed at 6pm and we had to be there before then, but we had a good run through the city (luckily we'd decided to travel on a weekend) and arrived in time, albeit feeling a bit frazzled.

With not much more than 200km to travel today we decided to take the scenic route, diverting from the Hume Highway to visit towns such as Picton, where we did the town walk including the lovely railway viaduct above, Mittagong and Moss Vale. The highlight of the journey was definitely Bowral, childhood home of the most famous of Australian cricketers Don Bradman. We spent a couple of hours at the Bradman museum, with its displays of all things cricket and Bradman related.

Once back on the highway we ran into a massive storm cell, with hail stones not much smaller than the balls that 'the Don' faced in his career. It was quite scary and like many other travellers we pulled off the road for a while until conditions calmed down a bit. We've given the car and van a thorough inspection and neither seems to have suffered any damage from the experience, but our nerves may take a couple of days to recover!

Family Christmas Get-Together

Last weekend we left the van at Coffs and headed down to Sydney for John's extended family Christmas get-together. This is the first time we've been in a position to attend this now-annual event, and enjoyed the chance to catch up with relatives that in some cases we hadn't seen for several years. There are certainly a lot of them these days, with nearly 50 people of all ages enjoying the occasion.

Once again John's sister Diane and her husband Steve provided us with terrific hospitality, we are looking forward to the day when we are finally in our own house and will be able to reciprocate. On Saturday we went walking with Diane in Brisbane Waters National Park, which sprawls across the area near Diane's house on the Central Coast, the weather was perfect for an interesting walk along several creeks and past lookouts and aboriginal carvings. Its amazing how much wonderful bushland in Australia can be found so close to suburbia.

A Land of Flooding Rains

In the famous poem by Dorothea Mackellar Australia is described as a land of  'droughts and flooding rains'. Well we've seen evidence of drought in our travels, and the Coffs Coast is now providing the flooding rains. Last night we experienced 160 mm in less than 12 hours, and this morning looks like there might be more coming. The noise of such heavy rain is magnified on the caravan roof, at one stage we had the tv turned up to 100% volume and still couldn't make out the program. We spent half the night lying in bed listening to it pound down on the roof just a couple of metres above our heads, and feeling thankful that we have an indoor loo in the van so we didn't have to dash across the park in the downpour.

Amazingly, this morning the park shows little evidence of the overnight storms, apart from some very miserable looking folk huddled outside their soggy tents. Obviously this area is used to having to cope with Dorothea's flooding rains!

We're still at Coffs Harbour watching our house move slowly towards completion. We still don't have a hand-over date, but it certainly won't be this year, so we'll head off on the road again once the school holidays approach, and return at the end of January to, hopefully, move in within a week or two.

Back at Coffs Harbour

We're now back at Coffs Harbour on the northern NSW coast, looking forward to the end of our travels around Australia. While we've been away for the last 6 months the builders were busy on our new house, it was very exciting for us to be able to see it for real instead of just in the photos they have regularly sent us.

We still don't have a hand-over date, and the thought of the Christmas break is looming larger in our minds. With all the trades shutting down for an extended period over Christmas and New Year, if we aren't in the house by mid-December then we probably won't be able to move in until February. Given Coffs is a big family holiday destination, the caravan parks here will fill with families and kids, as well as hiking their prices to stratospheric levels. Therefore if it comes to that we'll pack up and head off for a few weeks, to have one last caravan adventure before settling down.

Dubbo

 Dubbo is only about 140 km from Orange, but being out of the mountains has given us much more acceptable temperatures. Although a city of 34,000 people, it doesn't have a lot to offer the tourist, but the golf course has 27 holes so we've had 2 games to make sure we saw the whole course.

Dubbo's main claim to fame is the open range zoo, which has been showcasing Australian and exotic animals since 1977. We haven't been to a zoo for a few years so decided to have a day out with the animals. Our day started very early as we rose at 5:45 in order to join the 6:30 am guided walk. We were glad we did, as we got to see quite a bit  'behind the scenes', and it is in the morning that the animals are at their most active. The meerkat troupe definitely stole the show, they would have to be just about the cutest animals on the planet, but the giraffe with his long blue tongue would have come in a close second.

Orange

Orange is in the Great Dividing Range less than 300 kilometres west of Sydney. The city is large enough to support 3 golf courses, so naturally we couldn't resist a visit. Had we realised that the elevation makes Orange one of the coldest places in the state outside the alpine region then we mightn't have been so keen. Several nights where the temperature dropped below freezing, and days that haven't managed to struggle above 11 degrees, with a biting cold wind making it feel even lower, have rather moderated our enthusiasm!

The first couple of days we were here we took advantage of the at that stage balmy weather to do some walking. We firstly tackled the interesting town heritage walk, showcasing a large number of attractive and imposing houses in the posh end of town, and old industrial buildings (now universally converted to retail or residential spaces) and workers cottages in the less salubrious areas. There was also a memorial to the great bush poet Banjo Patterson, who was born nearby.

The following day we went to Mount Canobolas State Conservation Area, only 12 km from town, to do a bit of bushwalking. On the way we stopped at The Pinnacle, which has a sharp climb to a lookout offering fantastic views over the surrounding farmland and distant hills.

When we arrived in Orange we found that it was a long weekend here in NSW, with today being the state Labour Day holiday. Furthermore, when we went to the closest golf course to inquire about getting a game we discovered that the 3 courses run a tournament over the long weekend, with a round at each course over the 3 days. We debated the merits of entering the tournament, given the weather forecast of a cold change and rain coming on the Friday, but decided that as the rain was meant to clear away on Saturday morning we'd give it a go, stipulating late tee times on our entry form. Sure enough, on Friday afternoon the winds started to howl, the temperature dropped and the rain pelted down, 46 mm of it by the time it stopped in the wee hours of Saturday morning. We woke on Saturday to weather that was cold but clear, and congratulated ourselves on our planning. We checked the weather report again before heading off for our first round - a few showers in the morning (which never materialised), clearing to a sunny afternoon. Well someone at the weather bureau needs some remedial training, because about 3 holes into our round the skies opened and it rained pretty well the entire way round. At one stage we even had hail. We were wearing just about every possible item of clothing we have with us in the van and were still frozen to the bone. Needless to say our golf scores didn't impress. Luckily the next two afternoons were sunny, although still cool, but unfortunately our golf didn't improve enough to enable either of us to step anywhere near the winner's podium.

Griffith

In 1817 the explorer John Oxley described the area where Griffith is now situated as "uninhabitable and useless to civilised man". However in the late 19th century the government saw the potential for irrigation using the Murrumbidgee River, and in 1912 the water flowed and the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (or MIA) was born. Following World War I the population was given a boost as many farms were provided to soldier settlers, the memorial in Griffith's main street shows a World War I soldier with his hand on a plow handing over  a weapon to his son to go and fight in World War II.

 

The MIA is an abundant producer of citrus fruits and other fruit and vegetables. The area also produces 60% of NSW's grape harvest, with wineries specialising in botrytis style dessert wines. We did an interesting tour of a local mixed fruit farm, complete with tasting of the various farm products (although we cautiously restricted our intake of the prunes), and have been particularly impressed by the local mandarins bought at the Sunday market - much sweeter and juicier than the specimens normally obtained at a supermarket. We also did the rather dull heritage walk around town, and the rather more interesting local scenic drive.

 

Cocoparra National Park (John Oxley again: "abandoned...by every living creature that is capable of getting out of them" - not a man who could be described as a visionary) is only about 25km from Griffith and provided us with some good walks along creek beds and climbing up to exposed ridges with terrific views across the fertile and colourful fields of the MIA.

 

On the way back from Cocoparra NP we took a 50km detour to the town of Leeton, intending to visit the SunRice visitor centre, which supposedly had displays on the local rice industry. However, when we got there we found the centre had closed last year, it would have been nice if the Griffith tourist brochure had been updated and saved us the journey.

Nuriootpa

Nuriootpa is at the top of the Barossa Valley, probably South Australia's most famous wine district. We've visited the valley several times before, most recently when we stayed at Gawler (which is at the foot of the valley) last year, but also in previous South Australian holidays. The Barossa specialises in full bodied red wine, we usually only drink white so weren't really interested in visiting any of the 77 cellar doors listed on the tourist map we picked up (besides, you'd need to stay for at least a month to do justice to them all). We did, however, stop at a couple of cool climate wineries as we drove through the Clare Valley on the way here, picking up some lovely crisp Riesling, which is much more to our taste.

Instead of wineries we explored some of the marked walking trails around the valley, and had several lovely lunches in the numerous cafes, pubs and boutique breweries that always go hand in hand with any wine district. Unfortunately the weather hasn't been particularly kind to us here, so we only got in one of the games of golf we had planned, however that turned out to be a profitable one as, although we both played pretty ordinarily, Wendy managed a good shot on the one hole that really counts and came away with a $75 voucher for winning the pro-pin.

Port Pirie

We had 2 very long days driving southwards from Alice Springs, and have now spent a few days in Port Pirie in South Australia to recover. Port Pirie is on the eastern shore of the Spencer Gulf, and apart from being the service centre and export hub for the surrounding farming country it also hosts the world's largest lead smelter. This plant processes and exports multiple minerals apart from lead, and dominates the skyline for many kilometres around. We did the tour, which unfortunately didn't allow us to get out of the bus or take any photos, or even open the bus windows. Given all the workers had to wear breathing apparatus to guard against poisonous lead dust, perhaps not opening the bus windows was a good idea after all.

Inland from Port Pirie is the southern section of the Flinders Ranges. We spent some time exploring the northern parts of these ranges at the very start of our grey nomad adventures, and took the opportunity now to see what the southern ranges had to offer. The northern Flinders Ranges is very rugged and isolated, with a few mining and pastoral settlements clinging to the dry unforgiving land. Imagine our surprise to find that the southern Flinders Ranges is lush farmland and rolling hills, with prosperous towns offering cafes, wineries, olive groves and local produce for sale. Luckily for us it also offers several national parks with good walking through gorges and up to lookouts, so we got the best of both worlds in our couple of days exploration.

We're now discovering the downside of coming down to the southern part of Australia. Not only have we experienced our first rain showers in nearly 5 months, the forecast top temperature for tomorrow is barely more than the lowest overnight low we've experienced in that time!

Finishing Off in Alice

We've had a very busy and active time in Alice Springs. Apart from our journeys to Chambers Pillar and Rainbow Valley, we've had multiple trips to the west of Alice Springs. If we'd planned our time a bit better we would probably have actually taken the van out to the far end of the West MacDonnells and based ourselves there for a few days, but we didn't think of that soon enough. As it is we've covered over 1,500 km in our 11 days here, which is an awful lot considering the amount of driving we did to get here from Darwin (and the amount we'll be doing after leaving here to head south to our next destination).

Although it looks like the remnants of volcanic action, Gosse Bluff is actually the remains of an impact crater from a comet that hit around 142 million years ago. The original crater must have been impressive indeed, even with the erosion that has occurred over that incredible amount of time the crater walls stand stark above the surrounding flat plains. Not surprisingly the crater is a deeply spiritual sacred site for the local Aborigines, and access is restricted to a couple of lookouts and a short walking track inside the crater walls. On the same day we also visited Redbank Gorge, doing the walk down the rocky and sandy creek bed to a permanent waterhole. A group of European backpackers headed down the walk just before us, when we arrived at the waterhole they were taking it in turns to leap into the waterhole (modestly attired in bikinis and bathers) then rush shrieking back to dry land. Even here in the red centre the water is barely above freezing, not a pleasant swimming spot even on the hottest days. The backpackers willingly informed us it was there first bathing chance for a couple of days, luckily we weren't there to swim, just look at the scenery.

Finke Gorge National Park is about 138 km west of Alice Springs. The last 16 km is a 4wd track that largely goes along the bed of the Finke River. The last 4 km of this track is so rough that it took us 20 minutes, but at the end is one of the wonders of central Australia - Palm Valley. This narrow canyon is home to a remnant population of cabbage tree palms and cycads, left over from a much wetter ancient time. The creek side walk leads beside the palm groves, then returns along the cliff edge, providing panoramic views across the palm trees. The rest of the park is more usual desert country, the other walk we did was beside the dry creek bed once it exited the canyon, and over typical red, sandy country.

Ormiston Gorge, at the western end of the MacDonnell Ranges, has an international reputation as a classic central Australian destination. The red cliffs, dry landscape and rugged countryside provide the quintessential red centre experience. We first did a short walk to a lookout with a beautiful ghost gum tree bravely clinging to the rock edge, then tackled the 7km circuit walk, through the ranges next to the gorge, then back through the middle of the gorge. The gorge portion was extremely tiring, involving not only slogging through deep sand, but scrambling over tumbled rocks and even at one stage wading through a freezing cold water hole. Luckily the water was less than knee high, apparently at some times it laps the crotch....

Apart from all the driving and walking, we've found some time in Alice to do some maintenance on the car and to have a couple of games of golf at the superb Alice Springs golf course. We now feel that we've 'done' this central Australian oasis, and have plenty of wonderful memories to take away.

Chambers Pillar and Rainbow Valley

 It's been over 3 years since we were last in Alice Springs, but not a lot has changed in Australia's unofficial capital of Central Australia. Last time we were here we pretty well saw most of the sights available in town, and spent only a single day in each of the East and West MacDonnell Ranges. This visit we have planned to spend more time exploring the stunning landscapes that surround this city in the middle of the desert.

Chambers Pillar is about 160 km south of Alice Springs, accessed by a dirt road that deteriorates to a 4wd track for the last 40 kilometres. The photo at right (see if you can spot John waving) shows just how featureless the area around the pillar is, and gives an idea of how much of a landmark it is. The first white person to see Chambers Pillar was John McDouall Stuart, during his first attempt to cross Australia in 1860. It is a sandstone pillar that is capped by a hard iron-rich layer that has prevented the soft sandstone from eroding. Many travellers have carved their names into the base of the pillar, starting with the workers constructing the overland telegraph line in 1872, but this practice is now of course illegal and heavily discouraged. There is a walking track around the pillar and a platform built right against its base so you can get a close-up view of the historic (and not so historic) graffiti.

 

On the way down to Chambers Pillar we stopped at the Ewaninga Conservation Reserve, which protects rock engravings (petroglyphs) created by the original Aboriginal people of the area. The carvings are on a small rock outcrop next to a clay pan - in this dry climate the clay pan would hold water for a considerable period after any rain, making this a favoured site for longer stays by the Aboriginal people and giving them some leisure time for recording their beliefs in the soft sandstone. The meaning of the petroglyphs is sacred and cannot be revealed to people not initiated into Aboriginal lore.

 

Rainbow Valley is another area where hard capping protects soft white sandstone cliffs. Although probably only about 50km from Chambers Pillar, it is accessed by a completely different road from Alice Springs, so we visited here on a different day. The colour variation of the cliffs has been caused by water. In earlier, wetter times the red iron of the sandstone layers were dissolved and drawn to the surface during the dry season. The red minerals formed a dark, iron rich surface with the leached white layers below.

Like the rest of Australia, Spring has arrived in the red centre, and even this dry, sandy place is producing a profusion of wild flowers. You have to look a bit harder to find them, but when you look in the right places there is a surprising variety of colourful blooms, determinedly continuing the outback cycle of life.

Down the Stuart Hwy - Darwin to Alice

We've now left Darwin and done a couple of solid days travelling south down the 1500 km of the Stuart Highway to Alice Springs. We've travelled the northern half of this route quite a bit in the last few years, but we hadn't seen the part south of the Barkly Hwy turnoff towards Queensland since we first came up through the centre over three years ago.  Accordingly we decided to pull off the road and investigate the 'historical sites' we went past, and found that not only had we forgotten most of them, some had actually been installed new since we came this way last. It seems that the Engineering Society of Australia has been putting up lots of information boards recently, so we discovered new information on places such as the point where the north and south construction of the overland telegraph line joined in 1872, and one of the many wells dug along the overland telegraph route.

We also detoured into Newcastle Waters, the remains of a once thriving settlement that serviced the drovers taking cattle from the Northern Territory to the southern markets. With the advent of sealed roads and road trains the droving industry collapsed - the Drovers Park at Newcastle Waters has a memorial statue commemorating this quintessentially Australian activity.

The Tropic of Capricorn runs just north of Alice Springs, so we've now left the tropics for what we expect is the last time on our Around Australia trip. The desert climate means we'll be snuggling up under the doona at night for a while, rather than sleeping with just a sheet as we have been doing for the last week or so in Darwin.

Finishing Up in Darwin

After 3 months enjoying Darwin's superb dry season weather, we are about to hit the road again. The caravan park, which a week or two ago was full to bursting, is now showing lots of empty sites - the grey nomad exodus back south has begun.

Once again we have enjoyed playing lots of golf, and our handicaps are reflecting the good dry conditions. We have also enjoyed the friendliness of the DGC members, and have felt quite at home here.

Like last year, we have enjoyed quite a few theatrical outings in the last 3 months. We went to three productions at the Darwin Entertainment Centre, including the latest David Williamson offering and an amusing Bell Shakespeare production of Moliere's School for Wives. The last 2 weeks have been the Darwin festival, and we've really indulged, attending 7 performances. Like most festivals there have been hits and misses, Tripod and La Soiree probably being the highlights. The festival is split across two main venues, both offering fantastic outdoor dining, so we've not only been getting a culture fix but a food fix as well.

Yesterday we thought our departure might be delayed when our PC abruptly died. One minute we were happily playing mindless computer games, the next staring at what might as well have been a house brick. A frantic run around today now sees us proud owners of a brand new laptop, with all our data retrieved from the old one. Now all we have to do is try and figure out how to make all the programs look and behave in the same way we are used to!

A Visit to Government House

We'd like to say that we received a special embossed and engraved invitation to tea at Government House with the NT Administrator Her Honour the Honourable Sally Thomas AM, but the reality is that today was the annual Government House Open Day, so we went along for a sticky beak.

The first Government House was built on this site in 1871, but this was pretty well destroyed by termites, so a more appropriate building was erected, completed in 1879. Cyclones, Japanese bombing in World War II and just the ravages of time have seen this building renovated numerous times, but at core it is still the 1879 structure. We were allowed to wander through several of the rooms, including the dining room which was all set up for tonight's official banquet and the guest bedroom, complete with huge canopy bed with a set of stairs to climb up onto it! One of the nicest features of the house is the huge verandah that wraps around 3 sides, covered with louvres that allow cool breezes to flow through the building but keep out the sun and wet season rain.

The house is perched on top of a hill with fantastic views across Darwin Harbour. The gardens that cover the hillside are full of winding pathways, hidden nooks and seats taking advantage of the view, which we shared with half of Darwin who had also come along for a look.

Note in the above photo the colour of the sky and John's attire of t-shirt and shorts - now that's what a Winter's day should be like!

Fogg Dam

After nearly a month of playing golf and lolling about the caravan, yesterday we headed outside the Darwin city boundary to Fogg Dam, about 70 kilometres east. The dam was built in the 1950s to provide a year round water supply for an ambitious local rice growing project, by the time the project failed a few years later the wetlands created by the dam had become a dry season refuge for water birds so the area was proclaimed a conservation reserve.

The Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Service run free ranger activities in various national parks throughout the dry season. We've attended quite a few of these in our previous Darwin visits, the talk at Fogg Dam being one of the few new ones for this year. As usual, we were the only people in attendance at the talk, where the ranger gave us exhaustive details on the birds that inhabit the wetlands, in particular the large and noisy magpie geese. Appropriately there were several of these foraging in the waters below the lookout where the talk was held, along with various ducks, egrets, finches, a beautiful spoonbill and even some brolga. After the talk we did most of the walks on offer in the reserve, wandering through the woodlands and rainforest areas around the wetlands. The walk across the dam wall was closed, as a large saltwater crocodile has apparently decided to take up residence and has a habit of sunning himself on the roadway, we kept the car doors and windows firmly closed as we drove across.

On the way home we stopped for a pub lunch in Humpty Doo, surely one of the silliest place names in Australia!

Back in Darwin

For the third time in 4 years we have come to Darwin for the winter (or, as they call it here,'the dry'). With average maximum temperatures around 30 degrees, minimums around 20 degrees and 0 days of rain, it has the absolute best climate in Australia at this time of year, particularly for us keen golfers.

To get here we decided to just put our heads down and cover ground quickly, we travelled for 6 days out of the previous 7, covering nearly 3,000 kilometres. It is surprising how exhausting sitting in a car can be, and it probably isn't an exercise we will repeat. However, we can now take it easy for a few months, we intend to play lots of golf and relax in the sun.

We've updated our address list below to reflect the park we are staying at here, we haven't yet decided our movements once we leave Darwin.

Boulia

Boulia is in the far north west of Queensland, with the closest towns Winton 350 km to the east and Mt Isa 250 km northwards. It took us 2 days of driving to get here, stopping overnight in Longreach. Boulia is surrounded by Mitchell Grass plains, a vast semi-arid region with rich black soil that forms huge cracks when it dries out. As a consequence trees cannot take hold, so there is dense waving grass as far as the eye can see. The area is mainly pastoral, with cattle wandering freely by and over the road, which means that you have to be careful not to collect some beef-on-the-hoof. The flat plains are broken by the occasional 'jump-up', rock formations created when a layer of hard rock protects the softer rock underneath from eroding, leaving  spectacular flat topped hills poking out of the otherwise flat landscape. The drive here was much more interesting than it sounds, the grasslands being quite different to other landscapes we have seen on our Australian travels.

Boulia itself is a bit of a surprise, being a pretty little town of trees and green grass, despite being located near the edge of the Simpson Desert. It is famous for the phenomenon of the Min Min Lights, fuzzy lights that appear with no apparent explanation, and reportedly have even chased people. It probably isn't surprising therefore that the main local attraction is 'The Min Min Light Encounter' a surprisingly classy experience that tells stories of encounters with the Min Min using high-tech wizardry and animatronics. It certainly was an enjoyable experience, we even bought a tea-towel as a momento!

Emerald

We had intended to stay a few days at Emerald and a few at Blackwater, about 70 km closer to the coast, but we had been warned that with the mining boom in the area caravan park space was at a premium. When we tried to book in at Blackwater we were told they didn't have any room until at least August, so we ended up staying an extra day at Emerald and visiting the Blackwater attractions on a day trip.

Emerald itself didn't have a great deal to offer once we'd taken this photo of the 'world's biggest van Gogh Sunflower painting on an easel', an attraction whose entertainment value is rather limited. Of more interest to us was the fact that the caravan park backed onto the quite good local golf course, we took advantage with a couple of games.

On our day out to Blackwater we spent most of the time at the Blackdown Tablelands National Park, which sits perched above the surrounding flat plains on a sandstone escarpment. Several walks led to spectacular lookouts and both aboriginal and European historical sites. When European pioneers first came to the area to lush grasses and bush of the tablelands looked ideal for running cattle, however a lack of nutrients in the soil meant that cattle lost condition when grazed there, so now the old huts and stockyards have almost disappeared. As well as the walks we also did a 19 km 4-wd loop road, which at times tested the full capabilities of our Patrol.

After the national park we dropped in to the Blackwater International Coal Centre which 'explores the past, present and future of the Australian coal mining industry'. However, although relatively new the centre has obviously not been maintained (maybe because there are hardly any tourists in town because they have nowhere to stay) and instead of the advertised $16 per head admission price we provided only a gold coin donation. The displays were moderately interesting, although the video on carbon capture and storage did rather imply that this was a present reality rather than a hoped for future.

Carnarvon Gorge

Carnarvon National Park in central Queensland is home to one of the country's most impressive gorge systems. The last 12 kilometres of the access road to the adjacent caravan park is unsealed, so we were in two minds whether we would visit with our decidedly non-offroad caravan. However, we decided that the gorge really is on the must see list for any trip around Australia, so we took it slow and easy and the van seems to have survived the experience.

We spent 3 full days at Carnarvon Gorge, and did most of the available walks. On the first day we polished off the short walks, including Baloon Cave, a rock overhang with stencilled Aboriginal rock art.

On day 2, Wendy tackled the 6.4 km trail up Boolimba Bluff. John was concerned that the 'climb up 963 steps with several small ladders' would be too much for his delicate achilles tendon, so stayed at the van. The trail wasn't quite as tough as the trail notes suggested, however the 300m section of extreme uphill took Wendy 20 minutes to negotiate, and every step coming back down sent jolts through her knees. The view from the Bluff lookout made the effort worthwhile, the photo at the top of the blog shows the towering white sandstone cliffs that line the gorge.

The main trail at Carnarvon Gorge runs for nearly 10 kilometres from the visitor centre to the head of the gorge. There are also multiple side trails that branch off the main trail, so to do the whole set of trails would need 2 days, camping at the head of the gorge overnight. We have neither the equipment nor the inclination to camp out on a walk, so chose to walk the first 5km of the main trail, visiting the side gorges on the way back to make a total walk length of around 14km.

The main trail is reasonably flat, winding near and, several times, across the creek that runs down the base of the gorge. The three side trails we visited, however, were all reasonably steep with multiple steps (more jolting through the knees). The creek crossings were much easier than those we encountered at Main Range National Park a month ago, with large solid stepping stones, so we weren't ever really in danger of getting wet feet.

The first side trail led to a large aboriginal rock art site. The second side trail led up Ward's Canyon, a green oasis that is the only Australian home of the world's largest fern, the king fern, outside the coastal strip. The third side trail, to the 'Moss Garden' ended at a micro-climate of dripping rocks where the porous sandstone walls met a solid shale support. Water that may have fallen as rain thousands of years ago and that has seeped gradually through the sandstone meets the impermeable shale and oozes sideways, to emerge as a myriad drips. The line where the two rock types meet is marked by masses of mosses, ferns and lichens, fed by the constantly dripping water.

The total walk took us nearly 5 hours, and by the end we were quite exhausted. John's feet and Wendy's knees were well and truly walked out, and we had a very quiet and early night indeed. However, we loved our time at Carnarvon Gorge, and we are very pleased to have 'crossed it off the list'.

Mundubbera - Biloela

We've now come inland to central Queensland. Mundubbera is the centre of a citrus growing region, the nearby town of Gayndah has a 'big orange' and Mundubbera itself has an 'Enormous Ellendale' (a type of mandarin), however as 'big' things go neither is particularly big. We spent a couple of days here, long enough to have a game of golf and visit the nearby Auburn River National Park. We decided not to tackle the tough trail at the national park that descended into the gorge and back up again, instead we strolled along the cliff top to a moderately scenic lookout. The peregrine falcons that were supposed to nest in the cliff opposite must have moved on, as we couldn't spot the  'whitewash' marks that were supposed to be the tell tale sign.

From Mundubbera we moved a couple of hundred kilometres north to Biloela. On the way we stopped at the RM Williams Centre in the small township of Eidsvold. This has only been open for 18 months, and celebrates the life of the famous bushman who spent the last part of his life in the area. The entry fee was only $5 each, reflecting the rather sparse display, but we saw as much as we needed to.

We were quite busy in our couple of days in Biloela. We firstly visited Mt Scoria, a volcanic plug featuring many sided basalt columns. Supposedly it is known locally as the 'musical mountain' because the basalt columns at the top ring when hit with another rock, however climbing of the mountain is now discouraged, so we just did the short walk around the bottom.

Like so much of Queensland Biloela is host to a mine, in this case a coal mine just outside town. A significant part of the output is sent on a conveyor belt to the adjacent power stations, which supply around a third of Queensland's power needs. A steep road from the edge of town leads to a good lookout over both the huge open cut mine and the power stations.

We picked Biloela as somewhere to stay as it is the closest town to the Kroombit Tops National Park, however when we got here we found that there is no road to the park from here, and in fact we would have to go over 100km to access it. So instead we decided to visit Cania Gorge National Park, still a good 80km back southwards down the road we came here on. The gorge is eroded through sandstone, but the creek is now dammed above the gorge so there is very little flow. Gold was discovered in the gorge in the late 1800s, and there are still remnants of the mining operations scattered through the hills. The 'easy' 1.4 km walk around the old mine workings was a lot more uphill than we had expected, and so we probably shouldn't have been so surprised when the 'pleasant, easy' 6 km walk turned out to have something like 1,000 steps to negotiate. It was, however, still quite pleasant, visiting several caves, lookouts and rock overhangs. However, we abandoned our plans to also tackle the 'easy, scenic' 1.3 km circuit walk, particularly given the description of it 'meandering upwards'!

Maryborough

We've come down the Mary River Valley to Maryborough, which is close to the river mouth. This is the birthplace of P.L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins stories, and, although she left Maryborough at the age of 8, the town claims full credit.

Maryborough's original wealth was based on its status as a port city, and up until federation in 1901 was the port of entry for thousands of immigrants. There are many attractive old buildings reflecting this history. These days Maryborough is a tourism and agriculture centre, with sugar cane grown in the surrounding areas. Surprisingly, it also hosts some heavy industry, with many of Queensland's trains built in town.

Being savvy travellers, we were keen to front up for the free walking tour around town. The 'Mary Poppins' dressed guide was interesting and knowledgable about her home town. We were also lucky to be in town for the monthly family day in the local park. Although the drizzly weather meant that the promised brass band didn't appear, we added another boat trip notch to our belt with the half price cruise down the river.

The Maryborough local market is held weekly in the town centre, and has a good selection of local fresh produce. We went along on both Thursdays we were here and stocked up on cheap fresh fruit and veggies. On another day we visited Hervey Bay, a big tourist destination on the caost only about 30 km away, although we didn't really see the attraction of the town.

Unfortunately rain confined us to the van on a couple of our days here, but we still managed several games of golf, and for a change both played well enough to finally make a return on our green fees, to the order of 6 golf balls between us. It may not sound like much, but it is a big change to our usual result!

Tin Can Bay

Tin Can Bay is a fishing and boating village on a quiet inlet. The main tourist traffic comes for the fishing, as the beaches , which look attractive at high tide, reveal themselves as mud flats once the tide goes out. We came for a game of golf, and to check out the nearby Great Sandy National Park. We had also intended to do a day trip into nearby Gympie, but having been there last week from Imbil when we caught the Mary Valley Rattler steam train, we decided that it really wasn't worth a repeat visit.

The southern section of the Great Sandy NP stretches from Noosa Heads at the north of the Sunshine Coast to Rainbow Beach, a surfing and tourist town about 40km from Tin Can Bay. The park also covers Fraser Island, which spreads northwards from Rainbow Beach. We decided not to visit Fraser Island, but we did go and have a look at the car ferry. The car wash in Rainbow Beach had special cycles that washed and rust proofed the underside of your car, catering for all the beach driving done on the island and also the local mainland beaches. We stayed firmly on the official highways.

The Great Sandy NP proved to be slightly disappointing, as very little of it is actually accessible without embarking on a 5 day trek (or doing some beach driving), however we found a few short walks. The highlight was the Carlo Sandblow, a vast sand dune that is gradually marching inland, swallowing all vegetation in its path. The trek down to the edge wasn't too hard, but wading through the sand back up again proved a very tough test on our calves and ankles!

Imbil

Imbil is in the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast, about 40 km south of Gympie. When we first got here we thought it wasn't going to live up to its name, as the forecast was for showers and storms all week, however after some drizzle on the first day the weather bureau changed their minds, and it has been glorious sunshine for the rest of our stay. The main industry around here is timber, and Imbil is surrounded by forests and national parks, including the Imbil State Forest right on our doorstep. We have, of course, done quite a bit of walking, as well as spending time driving around the scenic countryside.

John will remember Imbil for his wildlife encounters. The caravan park we are staying at also has deer, and at some time in the past there have obviously been escapees, so feral deer now live in the surrounding forest. John was most surprised one night to encounter a full grown doe right outside the men's toilet block, luckily it responded appropriately to a gentle shoo. Not quite so pleasant was the leech that attached itself to John's foot during one of our forest walks. It somehow managed to slip through his sock to feast on his blood, swelling up to several times its initial size. The advice given in the national park brochure is to sprinkle it with salt, but lacking that we eventually got tired of waiting for it to gorge itself and drop off and Wendy rather squeamishly pulled it off with a tissue. The bleeding took quite a long time to stop, and after that John was much keener on the scenic drives than the forest walks!

The highlight of our stay was our day trip on the Mary Valley Rattler, a steam train that runs from Gympie to Imbil. The train runs along the line built in 1914 to service the towns of the Mary Valley. Services on the line ceased in 1994, but already locals were planning to run a tourist train service on the disused line. The Mary Valley Heritage Railway commenced operations in 1998 and has proved a popular attraction. One very interesting part of the day is watching the turntable used at Imbil to turn the locomotive around so it can do the return journey to Gympie. The engine only just fits on the turntable so the driver has to position it exactly, a feat achieved by the low-tech device of lining himself up with a piece of cloth tied to the railing!

Yarraman

Yarraman is a small town not much more than 100 km north of Toowoomba, and still up on the Darling Downs. It is not far from Kingaroy, famous last century in Australia as the home of peanut farmer turned Queensland State Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Queensland has come a long way since the days when Joh and the white shoe brigade ran the state like a personal fiefdom, but judging by the number of things in the area named after him the locals around here still remember him with a great deal of fondness. Peanut farming is still one of the mainstays of the local economy and we have enjoyed the local product, which tastes a lot fresher bought at the source rather than a supermarket.

The countryside here is very attractive, with rolling green hills, contented cows and lots of state forests and national parks. We have done several scenic drives, including a visit to The Palms National Park, a tiny patch of remnant rainforest filled with Piccabeen palms.

Yarraman at one stage was the terminus of a rail line, and there is still evidence around the town and surrounding countryside of the now-gone railway. The old station area provides the focus of an interesting town walk, and there is a tunnel about 40 km southwards that goes underneath the Great Dividing Range, joining the eastern and western watersheds. It is now home to a colony of bats, which didn't seem to appreciate our visit as hundreds of them flapped and swirled around us in the dark. Although none of them actually touched us you could feel the wind of their wings brushing just in front of you, we hurried through all crouched over and were very glad to get out the other side, it was a seriously creepy experience.

We also did a couple of other short walks around the township itself, including one which ran right past the back of our caravan park to the top of the nearby hill for a panoramic view of the area. The local market on Saturday morning was quite a disappointment though, with only a handful of stalls selling mainly second-hand tat rather than any fresh produce or hand made goods.

West of Yarraman is the Bunya Mountains National Park, with cool rainforests sheltering Bunya Pines, remnants of the once dominant Australian vegetation type with a history stretching back 200 million years. The national park is lush and green, with ferns, fungus and bubbling streams. Luckily the rainforest canopy protects the forest floor from the elements, as the day of our visit was cool and wet. We did several terrific walks, and although we could often hear the rain pattering on the leaves overhead little of it managed to filter down to our level.

Easter at Toowoomba

Once again we have come to Toowoomba in southern Queensland for Easter. We were here last year but given the weather then we decided that there were still things to see here, and we knew we could get a caravan site over the awkward Easter period. The weather has been much kinder to us this year and we have got several walks in.

Our first foray was to Mt Basalt Reserve, about 80 km south west of Toowoomba. The local map we had obtained from the caravan park was a bit 'artists impression thereof' so we had a bit of trouble finding it, but eventually we tracked it down. The reserve is only 10 hectares, so the walking trail wasn't particularly long, but we did a fairly sharp climb up each of two rocky peaks, being the remains of ancient volcanic plugs, to get a pleasant view of the surrounding rich Darling Downs farmland.

On Easter Monday we ventured south east to the Goomburra area of Main Range National Park. The 35 km access road was fairly narrow and we had to pull over every few seconds to pass the steady stream of campers, trailers, caravans and cars that were heading out so they could go back to work the next day (ha ha!). We chose to do a 6.5 km walk called 'The Cascades', which started out on an easy wheelchair friendly track before veering off to follow a creek upstream. What we hadn't twigged from the park brochure was that the walk didn't just follow the creek, it criss-crossed it at least a dozen times, and none of the crossings had a bridge. At first John managed to pick his way across strategic stones at each crossing, and Wendy, who is far less nimble, took off her shoes and socks and waded across. However, at about the third or fourth crossing John slipped off one of the rocks and went into the water up to his ankles, and Wendy got sick of stopping for 10 minutes every 50 metres, so after that we sacrificed our footwear and struggled across as best we could. The current was quite strong so even allowing for wet shoes we still had to cross carefully or risk being swept off our feet - wet shoes are one thing, wet clothes, camera and sandwiches are quite another! Our troubles didn't finish with the creek crossings, at one particularly muddy patch of the track Wendy tried to go around the bad bit and brushed through a nettle patch, ending up with painful nettle stings on her arms and legs. All in all the walk took us well over 3 hours to complete, which is an extraordinary amount of time for the distance. By the end we were wet, dirty and exhausted, and not even vaguely interested in the short walks to the nearby lookouts we had originally planned!

Apart from the walks we also played in the Easter tournament at the Toowoomba Golf Club, but neither of us did any better than last year. At least it meant we didn't have to stay for presentations!