The Great Carnarvon Gorge Epic Trip

Important preface to the story: Baby boy Alex Tyler Stewart was born on Tuesday, April 14. Last word was that everyone was settling in fine to their new amazing lives. Congratulations to Jo and Joel for the start to your new adventure.

OUR JOURNEY

There was great anticipation setting off on the longest holiday either of us could remember. We jumped up and ran around excitedly for a couple of hours before heading off to meet Jenny, Eb's sister, who was travelling with us for the first little leg of the trip.

We waved the train (with Jenny in it) farewell in Casino and headed off towards Tenterfield, stopping at a rest stop along the way called Crooked Creek.

The end of our first day of travel found us at Sundown National Park, situated along the Severn river. At first we were the only ones in the whole campground, but then we were joined by one other couple almost on dark time. It was very peaceful.

The next day we did a fabulous walk/rock-hop up Ooline Creek, encountering some lovely geography, flora and even a few faunas. After lunch, Flo had a little afternoon rest while Eb did another walk up around the back of the campground. The unwinding had begun.

Day three was a BIG day of driving, destination Surat, a small historic town that was on the Cobb n Co mail route back in the day. We had heard there was camping along the river at no charge, and there was, and it was a little bit busy. We ended up right under the bridge, on the banks of the Balonne River, with the road trains roaring by all night, shaking the earth beneath us. How romantic.

We thoroughly enjoyed checking out Surat, including the wonderful free showers at the Shire Hall, the Cobb n Co changing station, which houses a large aquarium, museum, library and art gallery. After grabbing a coffee and homemade pumpkin scone, we headed off to Carnarvon National Park. We camped at the Takkarakka bush retreat, which was just way too busy for my liking, but the only place near the gorge that you can camp outside of school holidays. Lucky for me, I have earplugs.

On Friday we took off early-ish to explore the Gorge. It was Gorgeous, all right! What a wonderful place. The main track heads up the gorge, crisscrossing the river, and is an easy walk. Then there are side-tracks that are steeper and quite magical. We explored Moss Garden, Wards Canyon and the Art Gallery, where we saw thousands of aboriginal etchings, stencils and other artworks. It turned out to be quite a big day, 12.5 km round trip, and so I decided to take the next day off, while Eb undertook to do the whole of the main track, right to the end. He ended up walking around 24 kilometres in one day, after getting up before dawn to walk up to the lookout for the Anzac Day dawn service.

The next day, after sharing our breakfast with the campsite kookaburra (grrrrrr), we packed up and headed off to the wild blue yonder--again. We took the back road, which was gravel, but shorter and more scenic to get to our potential destination--Rolleston.

Let me try to paint you a picture of the Rolleston Caravan Park. Out the back of the 6 houses in Rolleston, is a square block of dirt and concrete slabs, minus anything fancy-pants like a tree. As we cruised around the block, looking thru the cyclone fencing at the inmates, they all stared back, daring us to try it. Dismal is a very flattering word for the Rolleston Caravan dirt lot. We headed off toward Blackwater, with no arguments from either side.

The drive along the 100 k's of mostly gravel road (Rolleston-Blackwater rd) was a little sub-adventure, with the dust from passing cars and one giant truck overwhelming us and the sun shining directly into the driver's eyes. But it was picturesque, and if we could ignore the growing worry about bedding down for the night, it was a lovely route.

And we found a place, oh yes! It was listed in our Camps 4 book, the rest stop under the Water Tower, right on the highway. Later I realized it was listed as "Day Use Only" so...we were actually STEALING a nights rest. Sort of.

Blackwater is not a peaceful town. It is a coalmining town. In addition to being on the highway, the illegal camping spot we found was also on the railway line and next to a tennis court.

As soon as the evening game was over and the last of the tennis players drove off, we manouvered ourselves into position, tucked away in a little corner at the back of the courts. Eb made some stupid joke about night tennis, and voila! There they were, floodlighting our secret hiding spot! They needed a fourth for doubles, but sadly we did not bring our tennis rackets.

I might add, at this point, that the trucks AND the coal trains continue all night, and the shift change at the mines is at six am.

We walked the dark streets of the town and eventually found a great meal at the Coalminers Club. It was very civilized after our nights of "roughing it," and definitely the high point of our visit to Blackwater, the "town that never sleeps."

After re-stocking at the Blackwater Woolies, we headed toward Blackdown Tableland to see the sights there.

After a harrowing drive UP UP UP onto the Tableland, we were rewarded with a gorgeous experience in the National Park and the campground. There were lots of walks, and the campground cleared out almost completely after the first night. We even had a nice fire one night!

One of the walks led us to a magical swimming hole. It truly was the most beautiful place I've ever been. Rainbow Waters (Gudda Gumoo) will forever be in our thoughts whenever we need to think of the beauty in this world.

As well as several good walks, we ventured out one day on "The Loop," which was supposedly for 4WD vehicles. We have a pretend one of those, so we thought we'd have a go. It was all good for most of the time, with a couple of tricky bits to make us feel like it was an adventure.

Then, when we reached the lookout near the end of the loop, we thought we were home free. Then Eb made some stupid joke about wouldn't it be funny if they saved the worst for last, and voila! There it was, the hairiest bit of the 4WD track. For the third time, we had to get out and scout the best strategy on foot. It was my job to wait at the end of the trechorous bit with the camera, and let Eb get on with it. At one point, it was so steep that one of the back tires came off the ground and I had several kittens. Luckily, I was not in the car at the time.

We finally made it all the way around the Loop and we celebrated with a short walk before catching the sunset at Horseshoe Lookout (Yaddamen Dhina). What a wonderful and exciting day.

Sadly, the next day we packed up and left the Tableland, headed for the coast. Byfield National Park is north of Yeppoon.

Along the way we were pleasantly pleased by the seaside town of Emu Park, with it's beautiful bayside park and "Singing Ship" sculpture, commemorating Captain Cook. The town had a nice feel to it, and looked all blue and white and clean.

Not so pleased by Yeppoon, which for some inexplicable reason, serves NO food after 2pm. So, after preparing my appetite for a delicious seafood feast, we were turned away at each and every little tourist cafe in Yeppoon.

Luckily, we had Great Keppel island on our itinerary, so I had to put my seafood cravings on hold for the time being.

There were three camping areas in Byfield State Forest, which is an extensive Pine Plantation. The first two weren't too great, so we quickly dashed into Byfield to book our site, and hoped that Upper Stony Creek wasn't too packed out.

Well...it was great! There was hardly anyone there, and we had the upper half of the campground completely to ourselves for two nights. There were a couple of nice walks, and a very nice swimming hole, which of course Flo couldn't resist.

On the second day, we took a "circuit" walk, which was very nice for the first half, until we ended up on the 4WD road back to camp. We heard these strange noises like guns during the walk, and then bumped into some guys in a 4WD, parked at the edge of a causeway, drinkin some stubbies and shootin cans. It was 10.30 in the morning. Gotta love the queensland guys.

Later, there was plenty of time to relax and have a few swims, so Byfield gets a gold star for sure! We even took a short drive into Byfield to grab some goodies for our planned outing to Great Keppel the next day.

The trip to Great Keppel was pretty interesting. Not at all what we had expected. This was my vision: We would get off the boat, maybe grab a cappucino before heading off over the little headland on well formed tracks to do some snorkeling. My biggest worry was that there would be lots of people there.

After some snorkeling, my plan was to head back over the track to the resort, choose which seafood place we would patronize to enjoy our sumptuous meal and drinks with umbrellas in them. Then, we might take a lazy walk down to the bay to do a bit more playing around in the water, finding some shady place to read books until the boat came to pick us up.

THAT was not the reality of Great Keppel Island. Just finding lunch was a real challenge. That island is not exactly a tourist trap these days, with the main resort in mothballs for the past 18 months. There was one place that sells tourist junk and eggs and toast and sandwiches. The advertised Pizza place was only open on the weekends, and the only other establishment had only reopened three weeks previously. It wasn't funny then, but it is worthy of a chuckle, looking back.

We did have a nice time snorkeling at Shelving Beach, after scrambling over very eroded tracks on the headland. We got to the only place open for lunch just before they stopped serving, by which time I was starving, and still thinking of seafood, although I had by then given up on the cocktails with umbrellas.

Good thing too, as they didn't even have beer on tap, and I don't know what would have happened if I had wanted a glass of wine with lunch. We settled for a bottle of beer each.

It was also the cook's day off, so there were no hot chips with the burgers. Still optimistic about getting seafood on a tropical island, I asked the trembling serving girl what kind of fish was on the fish burger. This is what she said: "We're not really sure. It's some kind of generic white fish."

We ordered chicken burgers. Which took over 45 minutes to appear. Which were frozen crumbed (crummy) patties, a few centimetres thick, and burnt on one side. And served with a bit of shredded salad and NO sauce of any kind. Yum.

Never mind, we didn't starve, we got some great quotes for the blog, and the island was so unpopulated that we took a walk after lunch and were the only people on the long stretch of deserted tropical island. How romantic.

After our big day out, we treated ourselves to a motel room in Miriam Vale. Even tho Eb did not enjoy the night driving, it was nice to grab a Barra Burger at the Big Crab, a bottle of wine at the Miriam Vale Pub and sit in our room watching TV while we had takeaway dinner. And I finally got my seafood.

We like to finish off our northward journeys with an evening in Perigian Beach, with our friends who live there. They are the most wonderful hosts on the planet. Great company, four course dinner, fine wine, the best guest room you can imagine, and our host's special eggs for breakfast. Thank you, our dear Perigian friends!

Then we got to visit with the newest member of the Macdonald clan: little baby Alex Tyler Stewart, and his proud mum, dad and aunty. Not yet three weeks old when we met, but I can already imagine a really impressive personality there. I think he is going to keep his parents on their toes, and everyone in stitches with his humour.

It was a real treat to catch up with the Brisbane crew, and the perfect icing on the icing on the cake.

And then we were home again. Best homecoming ever! My lot had cleaned the house top to bottom and mowed the lawns, as a belated birthday present. And the critters had left Eb's house alone, as an early birthday present to him. It was nice to be home.

Now...where are we off to next?

Many more pics on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dichristie/ or click on the slide show