We were ready to roll. Our 20 point pre-departure “flight check” had been completed (gas off; TV aerial down; brake system connection; ….) Lea was patiently awaiting the driver in Skiv. As I started the engine, my door not yet closed, a large huntsman spider disturbed by all this unexpected activity suddenly appeared, crawling as fast as its long legs could carry it down the inside of the driver’s door.
Lea can move with extreme rapidity when she has to, the problem on this occasion was that she was held fast by her safety belt! With her feet already running on the floorboard and her fingers scrabbling desperately for the release button all I could hear was a number of guttural sounds before her door opened and she last seen was running into the blue yonder.
I consider it fortunate that I had my hat on at the time because one quick slap enabled me to dislodge the arthropod before it took refuge inside Skiv.
Had this not been the case I have little doubt that we would have to had unpack the vehicle and delay our departure by a few hours.
These things happen now and again and serve to sharpen our senses.
How we bless these little towns that encourage brief “stopovers” in picturesque surrounds with basic facilities in an effort to boost passing trade. Petrie Park, honouring Andrew Petrie’s navigation of the Mary River 166 years ago and finishing at this point allowed a two night stay to travellers and we delighted in this camp even though Getaway had to park on an angle to give us our best view down the hillside onto the river. Young soldiers, doing water based training and river manoeuvres over the two days we were in situ amused us as feminine shrieks and masculine bellows vent the air to create their rowing rhythms. Folk coming and going with their boats on the slipway amicably shared with army activities. A number of houses and cars around Tiaro sport banners, stickers and notices trying to safeguard “Their Mary” from the Queensland Government building a dam to augment Brisbane’s water supply. A sign warning of a $75,000 penalty (we had to read it twice such was our disbelief) for catching a Mary River Cod seemed unreal considering Courts seldom impose anything like that on drunken driving or dire physical assaults! The Mary apparently supports lung fish, a fresh water turtle and this cod as endangered species. Put together with many other concerns, public sentiment is such as to have the potential for political downfall.
A long weekend loomed to end the school holidays and we decided it was safer to find a caravan park in Maryborough to replenish water and stocks and hopefully make contact with the Australian Howman’s living in Hervey Bay. We walked into this historic town, with its colonial buildings reminding us of a Salisbury, Rhodesia from our youth. Found a statue of Mary Poppins outside the house where the author, Pamela L. Travers was born - never stop learning something new! No response to our many calls to the Howman house had us move off next day and before we knew we had reached Bundaberg well ahead of schedule. Mindful of requiring safe storage for Getaway while we spent a week with Saxon, Paul and Talia in their holiday apartment we began at Burnett Heads to ask around and as chance had it, ended up in Bargara a mere 2kms from The Point. Bargara Beach Caravan Park was a perfect setting for us with most attractive walks along the well laid out esplanade and a pretty trail to Mon Repos Beach – Queensland’s best known and most accessible turtle laying beach. We walked the trail late afternoon on our eldest grandson’s 7th Birthday and midway received a mobile call from Otto just waking up in England to power outage and rain. How we wished he was in our idyllic place.
A couple of days later, in happy anticipation, we awaited the arrival of our Perth family driving up from the Gold Coast on the hottest day to date. We were looking forward to relaxing on the beach together only windy, grey skies prevailed thereafter… We were grateful to have a well appointed and spacious apartment with a view of the ocean (it’s not called Wide Bay for nothing as surf pounds volcanic rocks covering the shore below us) rather than being squeezed up in Getaway. When we did set off on touristy ventures, the rain would come down. We managed to visit Australia’s most baffling phenomenon, The Mystery Craters and just see them before a deluge! These 35 craters formed in a large slab of sandstone, siltstone and red ochre were discovered by a local farmer in 1971 beneath a layer of silt and sand. Teams of international geologists have yet to agree on their origins putting offering many theories. We fancied sink holes from volcanic action!
Mystery craters
We tossed up between visits to Bundy Rum Distillery or Bundaberg Ginger beer - The Barrel won out and we enjoyed sniffing and tasting the ginger beer products.
Disappointing weather could not dampen family time. Putt-putt and table tennis matches, walks along the beaches, esplanade and Mon Repos kept us all happy.
Talia entranced us with her rendition of Twinkle Star and particularly Row, row, row your boat which received constant encores from her doting grandparents.
We backtracked south to Woodgate Beach for the last three days and two nights…
Talia had her first experience sleeping in a tent.
At the start of her afternoon nap we could hear Talia mimicking bird calls from the surrounding trees, followed by peals of giggles that could hardly be suppressed despite her mother’s reprimands. Most infectious for us bystanders! This little sponge learner copied everything we said or did. George became Dandan toot-toot due to his trumpeting nose blows. The downside was the cacophony of birds at first light waking Talia at an hour the rest of us did not appreciate.Paul discovered ant lions during an early morning walk in Burrum Coast National Park. Father-in-law explained their biology and showed him how to test for the presence of a larva by dropping in ants. A fascination of ant lion pits took hold that we’d see three heads with bums in the air inspecting conical pits where ever we went, as Talia joined into the curious activity. Our neighbours recognised accents and introduced themselves. We found new friends in Malawian Jill and Rhodie Jim who’d immigrated over forty years ago.
Finally able to relax on Woodgate beach
Glorious beach weather had arrived until the last night when a downpour had Paul and Lea running around in the early hours, zipping up the tent and saving other items from the wet and wind. We thought the beach kiosk “Woodys” was washed out… On cue, OUT came the sun and we settled on the rather slippery decking for a final breakfast together. Awaiting our order, a bird with heavily painted bright blue mascara swooped down and landed on the back of Talia’s chair and animatedly began to tell her a thing or two! Quite the most fantastic photo opportunity with George perfectly positioned to capture it all. Unbelievably his camera was not attached to his wrist this day! Talia, spellbound by this blue-cheeked honeyeater with its long pointed beak chirping nineteen to the dozen within inches of her face had Saxon agitatedly looking on while threatening the bird with dire consequences should it take out her daughter’s eye.
The sadness of the family departing brought back the rain and jolted us into haring back to the laundry to drag all our wet linen off the line.
Originally, we had all planned to visit Fraser Island only to find it was illegal to fit a car seat in Skiv. Other alternatives proved too costly and the visit was abandoned. We had expected to visit the Hervey Bay Howman’s after our family had gone taking this opportunity to reappraise Fraser Island prospects. Phone-calls to the Howman’s proved fruitless and we contacted Peter to discover his parents were in Brisbane as his father had sadly suffered a stroke. A trip to Fraser Island was feasible and we continued south into the Harvey Bay region. We were fortunate to find well situated Windmill Caravan Park in Urangan, who surprised us with a welcoming a plate of chockie biscuits and teabags. They were happy to look after Getaway for a dollar a day when we went to Fraser and parked us next to a beautifully kept and equipped camp kitchen. That afternoon we made our barge booking out of River Heads and bought the required permits for our trip to World Heritage Area, K’gari, the largest sand-island in the world better known as Fraser Island. Skiv was prepared for our adventure and basic camping supplies bought for our time away.
All we really knew about Fraser’s was lots of sand and aggressive dingoes! We were assailed with a sense of adventure as we reversed onto the barge. Folk reduced tyre pressures during the 30 minute crossing to Wanggoolba Creek – we held off until we disembarked because the steepness of the ramp had caught our tow hitch and bent the bolt protruding below, coming aboard and we needed to keep as much clearance as we could. Lots of heavy cloud around and our arrival on the island didn’t look like much as we engaged in four wheel drive and locked hubs for the duration of our time here before following the sandy corrugated track leading away from the mangroves. In no time we began rising up inland from the West side towards Central Station, tucked away in the rainforest. We assumed by the name that it was the Wildlife Service Headquarters and judging from all the 4x4’s parked, required a necessary stop. Quite the contrary, this historic site had been the centre of a forest industry around the turn of the last century and remnant buildings now used for educational purposes with the surrounds to picnic in and with many walks departing from here. We took a stroll through the rainforest along the Wanggoolba Creek boardwalk amidst impressive picabeen palms, our only regret being no sun to filter down and show up the colours and clarity for photographic purposes. Back in Skiv we slowly rocked and rolled our way along the narrowest rough tracks of the 30km Southern Lakes scenic drive – finding ourselves glad to take in the breaks and steady our bodies with walks to see Lake Birrabeen, an amazingly clear perched lake within glistening white sands. It just lacked a blue sky to enhance its colour. Later, our visit to Lake Boomanjin contrasted with its waters stained brown by tannins leached from all the vegetation. Lea understood how their elevation gave rise to the classification perched lakes but couldn’t understand why the water didn’t drain away through the sand until George explained that beneath the floor of the lake lay an impervious layer of organic debris.
Lake Boomanjin, the largest perched lake in the world
It was here we were somewhat horrified by the little fenced in camp ground resembling an internment camp! Everything dingo proofed and warning notices everywhere.
Look out for dingoes;
Always stay close to your children, even small teenagers;
Walk in small groups;
Stand back to back if approached and don’t make eye contact. And More…
Mercy! Lea began to a distinct uneasiness about the dingoes of Fraser and kept her eyes peeled. We approached Dilli Village only to find it was a well protected place and not easily accessible that we continued on to the Eastern Beachfront. With no tide tables available George made a rough estimate of his own. Optimal times for driving the 75 mile long beach are two hours either side of low tide. He walked down to inspect - All was well for nipping into Govi Camping zone looking out across a vast expanse of ocean to eat our lunch. One of many informal camping areas tucked just behind the fore-dunes offering no facilities other than “a quiet wilderness experience”. QUIET? Not a bird to be seen or heard, just the steady thump and whoosh of the waves. Curiosity to see more took us northwards along the beach. Up until now we’d hardly seen a soul. While out on this beach highway, we encountered heavy traffic- all speeding along. Beach buggies, 4WDs towing boats, some even with caravans, buses of all sizes, trail bikes and to cap it all, we shared the beach with light aircraft landing and taking off. The speed limit was 80km/hr and it was quite an odd sensation to have vehicles nonchalantly passing us slow coaches, when we found ourselves cringing on occasions at the noise arising from our bed boards slamming down as we bounced through unexpectedly sharp edged creek wash-outs. We turned into Happy Valley and found a dingo fence being erected as we crossed over an electrified grid. Inside the protected area many day trippers, chiefly 4WD tour groups of international youngsters stopping at the shop for refreshments plus a holiday resort. We continued on but after a while dodging vehicles with nothing but sand and sea, stretching away became quite bland that it was pleasing to reach Poyungan Rocks and have to do a short inland detour. We were stunned by the congestion of people and vehicles around Eli Creek that we simply bypassed this Fraser landmark and Maheno Wreck was almost as bad – the traffic just moved off faster. We were lucky that a couple of buses were pulling out as we drew up. Sunlight had come out briefly and the tide had only just turned to enable us to get up close to this ex WW1 hospital ship that had seen out its working days in 1935 and sold for scrap. En route to Japan, stormy weather broke the tow rope and Maheno was washed ashore.
During WW11 the RAF used the Maheno for target practice!
Lighting was not good at The Pinnacles and we realised it was time to choose a camping zone for the night. We kept passing the odd large camp of fishermen and steered clear of them! From the barge onwards we had noticed cross generational groups of macho men with off road utes laden with beer, fishing rods and eskies. Seldom did we see one of these blokes without a stubby in hand or parking a pint beside his back wheel - to put it politely! Burad (meaning white bellied sea eagle) camp zone suited us with its grassy patch beneath a pandanus tree backed by high dunes and close proximity to the beach which was no longer characterised by frenetic traffic. Just before dusk George went on a lone walkabout as Lea was too dingo conscious, never mind we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of one all day.Lea had a fit having to go to bed so early, let alone when shafts of sunlight awoke us at an unearthly hour next morning. George was up with alacrity, persuading his wife to rise and shine, in practice for Mozambique next year! She wasn’t impressed. He needed another tactic - low tide and an ominously large bank of cloud sitting across the horizon looking to be rolling our way, did the trick.
The Burad camp outlook!
Thus at 5a.m. we were travelling back along the beach – in a world all our own, stopping at Red Canyon and The Pinnacles to look more closely at the coloured sands that characterise these features before pulling into Eli Creek. A beautiful place with a carefully constructed boardwalk leading up stream to an ideal swimming spot clearly warranting the crowds we had noticed the previous day. As we backtracked to Skiv for breakfast we found clear dingo footprints following ours in the wet sand. We hadn’t seen them going but they were there coming back. No dingo could be seen across the wide expanse of sand. We stayed for most of the day relishing having the place to ourselves until at least mid morning.
On the beach at Eli Creek
We became people watchers as folk began to arrive. Finally when the bus loads of day trippers turned up the pressure shortly after 2pm we took off for Cornwells, a camping zone at the start of the Central Lake scenic drive, an inland road that would take us back over to the West coast next day. As dusk fell, cramped on the bed cutting up salad, Lea voiced her disappointment at not seeing a dingo in the only place with a pure strain to George, standing at the back of Skiv helping prepare our supper. This led to pondering whether the powers of media had overly influenced public considering the only documentation appears to be one serious case of a 9 year old boy being killed by dingoes in 2000 and more recently, a 3 year old girl nipped. Here on expensive signage and fencing protection was being put in place in a wilderness area simply to make people feel safe and take the onus off … Swiftly, Lea tapped George on his inwardly bent head and hoarsely whispered “dingo behind you”. George wasn’t about to fall for her tricks BUT sure enough, 12 to 15 metres away, a most handsome dingo was trotting along the camp track showing not the slightest interest in us. As he reached the beach entrance he rose onto the slight fore-dune and surveyed the empty beach. We kinda held our breath in admiration, feeling joy at seeing a proud dingo going about his own business, for an abiding image of our own.
First light had us up and away without complaint to tackle the inland road crawling up the barrier dunes being thrown back and forth that we were glad of safety belts as we made our way to Lake Wabby – this one, a barrage lake. The approach to the lookout caught us by surprise at that early hour of a morning with the glare rising off the spectacular white sand drift that slowly advances to engulf this lake. We could see a group of girls swimming in the deep lake and left them to their piece of paradise and continued on our way.
Sand blow at Lake Wabby
In time for breakfast, we arrived at Lake Boorangoora or McKenzie, as it is more commonly called and ate our cereal staring at the human cage constructed to protect tour groups, lunching there. Campers could find lockups for their property too. No food or food preparation was permitted beyond a certain point! Our meal over, we took the trail through to the Lake and discovered an enticing stretch of water in idyllic surrounds.
George makes the most of solitude despite paparazzi
Obviously an incredibly popular attraction despite limited parking and we soon realised how lucky we were to have arrived there before the tour groups poured in around 10.30. We fled!
Having an open barge ticket to return any time we saw no reason why we should continue back to Wanggoolba Creek if we could depart from Kingfisher Bay. No signal on our mobiles necessitated going there to ascertain whether this would be feasible. We could and were booked on the 2p.m. barge. This attractive resort obviously caters for day trippers coming across Hervey Bay from the mainland towns. Close to Kingfisher jetty a swimming pool is tucked into the forest with picnic facilities and a pavilion, catering for others. We’d passed the local Servo with car washing facilities and with plenty of time to kill George took this opportunity to give Skiv a thorough cleansing and re-inflate the tyres. Once done, we took the resort’s trail up to its Northern Lookout winding its way through forest, at times we came up against the sturdy anti dingo fence. What a glorious view across the vast expanse of Hervey Bay. We hoped we’d see at least one of the many whales that come in annually to calve. Later we learnt it wasn’t in Hervey Bay itself, but Platypus Bay in the NW of Fraser Island. We’d loved our Fraser experience and came to realise it wasn’t a restful place for parents with young children to explore – NOT because of dingoes! Simply because the enormously bumpy tracks make travel slow and the beach is not only unsuitable for bathing, it becomes a dangerously busy thoroughfare at peak times.
Arriving back at Getaway we found a Park Snag Sizzle in progress around the camp kitchen. We were invited to join but with unpacking and a shower our agenda we only put in a brief appearance at the tail end, when curiosity to meet the faces behind the broad Lincolnshire voices we’d overheard talking about Skeggie and Scunthorpe overcame us! Our opening introduction that we may not talk properly but we came from yellow belly country too, went down a treat. Three“blueys” and the rest were all poms. Almost all were living in “permanents” in Windmill Caravan Park. How odd was that?
We stayed another day to get Skiv’s oil changed and see to laundry. There must have been method behind the madness when MM (mere male) unthinkingly packed our fresh milk for Fraser. It was sour by the time it was found! Lea couldn’t toss it and with camp kitchen oven turned out a batch of Eileen scones and a batch of date scones camouflaged into fruit ones with a few sultanas and frozen for the road. In the afternoon we walked the Hervey Bay esplanade (a particularly pleasant feature maintaining its indigenous woodlands) to the Urangan Pier. This 1917 icon of Hervey Bay was very nearly lost to “stupidity” resulting in the loss of its “end” before folk with foresight rescued the remaining 868m span. It is a splendid pier and judging by the fishermen, pelicans and vast shoals of little fish we could see, not to mention the 8-9kg golden trevally just caught – the pier was well worth saving.
Heading north again, we passed through Childers for the third time and this time, Lea insisted on stopping, as a father’s words “If love alone could keep you safe, we’d never fear a day” had hauntingly engraved themselves in her mind in association with Childers. Fortunately George was keen to buy peanuts from The Peanut Van which made a good excuse to walk the length of this National Trust town with its colonial buildings and ornate facades reminding us of colonial towns in Africa. DECAY SLAYER across one front caught our eye bringing a smile of appreciation at the dentist’s humour. Reaching the well advertised Peanut Van we were given tastes of all flavours of home grown peanuts. While George made decisions! Lea glanced along and noticed peanut erasers. Such was George’s intense interest… it required explaining that his nutty love was whittling peanuts. The lady serving us was immediately intrigued and asked George if he had some as thinking of Christmas presents for her boss was mighty difficult. George said he’d show her as we’d be passing by shortly. Returning on the opposite side of the road we popped into an Art Gallery in The Palace Building and discovered the Palace Backpackers Memorial to the 9 International backpackers who died in a fire that swept though in June 2000. A wall with glass inserts displaying poignant images of each victim befitted their memories. Before we could be our way… George found his carved peanuts in their shells and duly stopped at the side of the road and dashed across to show the lady. She bought both without hesitation. Thus we left Childers elated!
Having stopped in a rest area outside Gin Gin for lunch, we decided to stay put for the night and as the afternoon wore on, more and more fellow travellers pulled in for the night too. Next day we moved on a short distance to Lake Mondurah campground as it boasted a free internet hotspot. Lea had many e-mail waiting to go and more required writing. Technically there is a hotspot and to our disappointment it didn’t work. Obviously the boating fraternity frequenting this campground had no reason to test it out ever. Our next stop was a quiet bush park on the outskirts of Agnes Water and the Town of 1770 that we were keen to spend a few days exploring these beautiful locations. Odd names for two seaside towns in close proximity to each other, each with a story! Lieutenant James Cook anchored in Bustard Bay in 1770. This was Cook’s third landfall in Australia and the first in Queensland thus the claim that Town of 1770 is the birthplace of Queensland. We found the Town of 1770 to have a striking similarity to Cooks Town, further north. Agnes Water owes its name to a ship that went missing (not found to this day) somewhere in these waters. On board was the mother of a future Queensland Premier. We enjoyed many picnic lunches along the foreshores as George’s eye saw much of artistic appeal to get out his watercolours.
Deepwater National Park accessed only by 4WD, gave us a wonderful afternoon admiring the willow like growth form of cabbage palms while another delight, Joseph Banks Conservation Park could easily have been missed, if we hadn’t added on more and more days.
Deepwater National Park track.
Southport Paula had often spoken about the islands off Queensland, where she goes with her walking club. Ideal places to snorkel too that she recommended we visit one. We looked at visiting Lady Elliot only to find the flights were beyond our means for merely a day. Having been on The Great Barrier Reef out of Townsville in January 1995 we felt we were content with that life time chance. However, a poster at the entrance to our Discovery Caravan Park gradually embedded thoughts in our head about cruises over to Lady Musgrave Island. Not only would we walk the Island we could go coral viewing, reef fishing, snorkelling or even scuba dive. We succumbed to advertising, looked at weather and chose our day. Climbed aboard “Spirit of 1770” and headed out of Bustard Bay into the unexpectedly rough swell of the ocean for the next 90 minutes. Contrary to forecasters there seemed far too much cloud on the horizon for our liking but we were not going to allow that to spoil the day. Our pulses quickened at the sight of a picture book calm lagoon surrounded by atoll and a low lying green coral cay fringed in white. Our boat passed through a narrow entrance and tied up to a pontoon with a welcome cuppa and biscuits to steady unsettled tums. A glass bottomed boat took us to the cay, en route giving us more than a glimpse of the treasures in store for the rest of the day - two green turtles contentedly lying in a “cleaning station” within a bommie while wrasse fed off the algae attached to their shells! Cloud kept changing the light intensity and a nippy breeze was about as we stepped on to a shore littered by chunks of broken coral that crunched under foot. Above the Pisonia forest we could see black birds circling around yet nothing prepared us as we stepped into a seemingly prehistoric micro-habitat worthy of a Hitchcock movie. The full impact of all the Black Noddies really grew as we moved deeper into the forest. With no predators these blackish brown birds with a white cap sharply cut off by their black faces and long slender bills hovered and danced around us emitting nasal, rattling ‘chrrrs’ and tern-like ‘kik-kirriks’ as the males sought yellowed leaves for their mates to fussily inspect. Leaves not meeting approval drifted down upon us while others were pasted into rough and scruffy nest shapes with their guano.
No photograph did justice to our Noddy experience.
We had to be very guarded looking upwards to avoid a splatter landing in eye or mouth! Our visit had coincided with breeding season and nest building was almost at peak hence the magic of being engulfed in all the noise and activity taking place at all levels around us. Lea‘s mind kept thinking of her friend Sally back in Cleethorpes who suffers from a severe bird phobia! As a loyal reader of our log, what will she make of this! Our trip would have been worth it if we’d seen nothing else and we could easily have spent hours there. However, the lure of the reef beckoned. Here we were on the southern end of The Great Barrier Reef delighting in an underwater observatory as reef fish of all sizes, living under the pontoon swirled about in a feeding frenzy over pellets; to expeditions out in a semi-sub a couple of times, coral viewing with a qualified marine interpreter.
Low tide in Lady Musgrave Lagoon.
Buffet lunch with more than enough to feed large appetites generated by outdoor activity included lots of prawns. Low tide made snorkelling all the more productive as the turtles and fish were concentrated in deep passages between the coral mass. Despite chilly water no longer appealing to Lea, she took the plunge with the slightly warmer protection of a flotation vest and her usual gasps to join George in another close encounter with nature.
We have certainly had wonderful moments and memories to preserve this month.
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