After leaving the beautiful little town of Elliott Heads
(where we thought we’d sell up and move to), we travelled down through the
beautiful countryside of the Sunshine Coast hinterland, visiting towns like
Childers and Maryborough on the way. All
these towns have wonderful old buildings and a lot have been sympathetically
restored. I love the old Queenslanders.
We arrived at our next destination, Maroochydore,
mid-afternoon, and made our way to where we were going to camp for the next
couple of nights. The Cotton Tree
caravan park was a huge place and very busy, and not our normal choice of
places to camp, but we were on a mission, and this was going to be necessary. We did, however, by a stroke of luck, manage
to snaffle the best site on the park, a little bit cut off from the others,
right on the edge of the beach, so if we turned our chairs towards the sea, we
could pretend that we were all on our own.
We arrived on Thursday afternoon and enjoyed a walk along the beach
before finding great fish and chips for tea.
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| View from our campsite at Maroochydore |
Friday morning we had an appointment and we set off early to
make sure we were on time. You might be
wondering what that would be…… here’s a hint.
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| Maybe not this one!! |
I said we’d been doing a lot of planning for the future, and
those plans now include moving from our beloved Ultimate camper to a
caravan. This is a good way off yet, and
we hope to enjoy our camper for a good few years to come, but we’re now in
planning phase for the next stage in our lives, and while we were in the area,
we came to visit and tour the manufacturer of the best off-road caravans in
Australia.
We spent a really interesting morning at the Bushtracker
factory, and were well impressed with the build quality and detail that goes
into these RVs. Armed with lots of
information, floor plans and pricing guides we went off and had a lovely lunch
and poured over everything and put together our “wish list”. We’ll spend a long time researching and
trawling round the shows before making any firm decisions, but once you see how
Bushtrackers are made, you can’t really compare apples with apples.
Unbeknownst to us, this weekend was a sort of long weekend
in Queensland (student-free day on the Monday) and a lot of Brisbane families
had obviously taken the opportunity to have a fun weekend by the beach, as when
we arrived back at camp, the park was even busier than before, and they
continued to arrive until well after tea time.
Thank goodness we were leaving the next day.
There was a bit of rain through the night, and it was nice
to lie and listen to it on the canvas.
It had all but cleared by morning, and we were able to pack an
almost-dry camper away. With no real plan
in mind, apart from to by-pass Brisbane, we headed off. We travelled south-west and made for the
Granite Belt region of southern Queensland, and the little town of Stanthorpe. We had read that it was a great area for
foodies, with lots of wineries and other local producers, so we thought we’d
spend a day or so there.
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| We only went in to taste!!! |
We spent the afternoon doing one of their planned tourist
drives, which takes in various stops along the way including several wineries,
a cheese factory and the local brewery.
It was a lovely way to spend the afternoon, and we picked up provisions
for our dinner along the way. When it
came time to camp for the night, we relied on our new friend, Wikicamps, which
led us to a small farm, about 20km outside Stanthorpe, which grew
lavender. The farmer welcomes campers in
his front paddock and even provides hot showers and toilets, and a fire pit
with wood supplied. What a fabulous
place, and Peter and his wife Tere were really friendly hosts who couldn’t do
enough for us. They even shared their
dog with us for the night.
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| First fire in months |
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| We called him Ben but his name was actually Tallis |
Mind you, we needed that firewood, as the farm was at 1270m
elevation, and the evening turned into a very chilly one. But we were kept warm by the fire before
nodding off to sleep (probably soothed by the smell of all that lavender in the
air).
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| Fields and fields of lavender |
Sunday dawned a beautiful, crisp, clear morning and we took
our time packing up, enjoying a coffee beside the fire. We said our goodbyes, especially to Tallis
the dog, and headed back on the road south.
Continuing our theme of yesterday, we did some more wandering in the
Granite Belt, taking in another winery (this time with a cheese factory
attached), a jam factory, a candle maker and a soap maker. We then moved into northern NSW, to the town
of Tenterfield, and took in the sights of all things “Peter Allen”. There is a lot more to Tenterfield, but they
do love their most famous son.
A bit further down the road, we found another good stop for
the night thanks to Wikicamps. In a
little place called Deepwater, the local pub recently burned down. And the owners have now moved the bar into a
temporary building (read, shed) next to where the pub is slowly being
rebuilt. To try and encourage a bit of
trade, the owners have opened up the field at the back of the pub to campers
for free. We gladly stopped for the
night, and were only too happy to buy a beer or two in the pub to help
out. They’ve got a long way to go, but
they’re putting their hearts and souls into the rebuild, so we wish them
well. If you’re ever passing, be sure to
drop by for a swift half.
We were on our way early again the next morning, this time
heading for the beautiful town of Glen Innes.
It’s Celtic Country up here and they love all things Scottish. Farms and properties have Scottish names, as
do streets and businesses and they have recently celebrated something called
the Beardy Festival (we have yet to find out what that was). We had a stroll along the restored main
street of Glen Innes admiring the lovely old buildings and grabbing a few
supplies at the supermarket. Moving on,
we really enjoyed travelling through the beautiful, green New England
countryside, and we arrived in Armidale for a great lunch at a local café.
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| Great letter box on the way to Armidale |
The lady in the tourist office was very enthusiastic and
armed us with lots of information on the local national parks, and with that,
we headed off to find our camp for the night, at Tia Falls, part of the Oxley
Wild Rivers NP. The campground at Tia
Falls is small, and we arrived late afternoon and were pleased that there was
only a couple of other vehicles there.
We set up, and quickly got a fire going – that 1300m altitude sure makes
it cold when the sun goes down. We were
looking forward to a slow day the next day, enjoying some sunshine, and taking
in a couple of the walks in the area, so we toddled off to bed early, and
snuggled down under the duvet.
You can imagine the disappointment the next morning when we
got up the campground was shrouded in mist and it was drizzly rain and
cold. This hadn’t factored in our plans
at all. I guess we weren’t used to
weather being anything but perfect. So
after a slow start by the fire (the rain kind of eased a bit), we decided to
head off walking anyway. We walked to
the Tia Falls lookout first, which showed a reasonably spectacular waterfall,
flowing down into a long deep gorge.
Remember, we’ve just been in the top end, so gorges and waterfalls have
to be pretty good to rate a “spectacular” now.
But it was a lovely gorge, and disappeared in the distance with the
hills fading in the mist.
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| Tia Falls |
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| The Tia River above the falls |
We later took the Tiara Gorge walk, which skirted alongside
the river before it went over the falls, and then we walked along the western
rim of the gorge to look back on the falls.
It was a lovely walk, and we were rewarded with some great views.
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| Tiara Gorge |
By the time we returned to camp it was lunch time. The weather had cleared up a bit, but we were
going to have to be content with a day of grey skies and a sharp wind, which
made the temperature feel decidedly cold.
Instead of enjoying a day relaxing in the sun, we spent it huddled
beside the fire. But it was still
relaxing anyway.
We could have spent another day at Tia Falls if the weather
had been better, but the next day was pretty much a mirror image of the
previous one, so we packed up that morning and headed back to the main
road. From there we wandered down back
roads (albeit pretty rough ordinary roads) to the small town of
Gloucester. We travelled very far from
our camp before the weather started to improve.
It was just cloudy and cold on that mountain.
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| View over Tia Falls |
We stopped at Gloucester for morning tea and
a wander and picked up some of the “second best sausages in NSW” from the local
butcher.
From Gloucester it seemed a naturally progression to move
east to the coast, to the town of Forster (pronounced Foster). This is one of those twin town things, with
Forster on one side of the inlet and Tuncurry on the other. We stopped again for some information at the
Visitors Centre, not sure if we were going to stay here or move on further, and
were greeted with a notice outside saying that The Cat Empire was playing one
show in town that night. We enquire
inside the centre about this and the people couldn’t have been more helpful,
organising tickets for us, telling us where to get a meal, and suggesting a
caravan park for us. It seemed we were
staying in Forster, and our evening’s entertainment was sorted.
We did indeed have a fantastic night in Forster. We stayed at Lani’s caravan park (thoroughly
recommended), and the club where the band was playing ran a courtesy bus which
picked us up and brought us home. We
enjoyed a fabulous Thai meal at the club, and spend a good couple of hours
dancing to The Cat Empire. So much for
easing ourselves back into civilisation slowly!!! But you couldn’t let a chance like that go
by, could you?
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| Cat Empire on stage |
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| Couldn't resist |
Seal Rocks was our next destination, only about 50km down the
coast. This is a beautiful little area
adjacent to the national park, where we camped just 100m or so from the
beach. It was a wild beach and we didn’t
fancy battling the waves, so we were content to spend an afternoon walking
along and skimming stones.
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| Skimming stones at Seal Rocks |
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| They get big waves here. |
The next morning we had to retrace our steps back out from
Seal Rocks and point the car in the direction of Sydney. Since we had some extra time on our hands, we
decided to spend a few days in Sydney, catching up with some of my
relatives. Most of them are fairly
elderly now so it’s nice to see them, and to know they’re still doing
well. So for the last few days we have
been welcomed into houses all round Sydney and fed copious amounts of food. Each evening we return to camp saying we
won’t eat again, but manage to fit more in the next day. We haven’t done any of the usual touristy
things while we’ve been here, as we’ve done all that in the past. It’s just nice spending some time with
family.
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| My cousin Chris and her husband Scott |
So now it’s our last week, and we will make our way slowly
home. The boys have had the “1 week
warning” and Liam says he has commenced the “big clean”. It’ll be so nice to be home and see everyone
again. We’re even not dreading returning
to work.
But we’ve still got a few days to go, so it’s not over till
the fat lady sings.
See you all soon. xxx
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