Queensland part 2 - Crikey!

“Crikey, Look at the size of this post - It’s only 4 days long!”. We packed a lot of long overdue fun into these four days as we worked our way north of Brisbane, with the highlight being Australia Zoo of course. Speed read if you want to see animals.

Friday 14th March: Gold Coast to Beerwah

Time to say goodbye to the Gold Coast and head north. We kick-started the day with a morning stroll to Mermaid beach. A nice beach walk and a relief to see city hubbub, and more importantly surfers, returning to the ocean after over a week of weird weather. Some of the waves even look clean: both in terms of surfability and general lack-of-sand content! A few quick stops to fill up the fridge and fuel tank and then we headed off from Miami.

Chloe had been extremely excited to see and hike the tambourine and glasshouse mountains: a stunning area with, you guessed it, some awesome mountain formations. Very sadly, the cyclone closed most of the national parks in Queensland until they can fully assess and clear up tree and path damage. One of the few remaining reserves was the Witches falls walk, so called by the local children in the early 20th century because of its eeriness in the evening. Sounds like a perfect place for a lunchtime walk! After a very steep drive that was “not suitable for trucks/buses/caravans/trailers” we made it to the top of the tambourine mountains with some breathtaking views over the gold coast.

Our hike to the witches falls proved adventurous with tree debris from heavy winds and sporadic streams from the heavy rain disrupting the usual path. The “seasonal lagoon” along the return loop fully consumed the track requiring a bushwhack detour, and a monitor lizard took it upon itself to lumber along in front of us on the narrow return path for an age! All in all, a very fun walk after a good week of rainy days!

We pencilled in a quick visit to our rental company’s workshop in Brisbane to replace our cycloned-out smoke alarm (and a few other minor things) and en route we called in at a place called Yatala Pies. When you have a big pie sculpture on a pole and EVEN a drive through, your pies are probably decent! We popped in the store (a 3m+ clearance van doesn’t do drive throughs) and helped ourselves to a steak, bacon, cheese pie and an apple custard pie. The steak pie was pretty good, not quite on par with an NZ pie of course, however the apple custard pie was woefully lacking in apple - a mixed review from us!

With our van ready to bleep at burnt toast once more (or 95% humidity) we set off towards Beerwah, containing our campsite for the night and also the world-famous Australia zoo that we’ll visit tomorrow. A touching moment to see the Steve Irwin Way Road sign, even if it is ultimately him feeding a raw chicken to a crocodile. Before fully retiring to the campsite, we drove to the town of Mulaney for a cheeky call into Brouhaha brewery for a tasting flight, a delicious pizza (so good we forgot to photo), and a can of strawberry+rhubarb sour. Beach walk, waterfall walk, pie, pizza, and beer. Definitely enjoying this travelling malarkey.

Saturday 15th: Beerwah to Kenilworth

Chloe went for her first run of the travels this morning, so Mike enjoyed a peaceful lie in for once! We had a chilled morning and lovely shower before our 3 nights of off grid camping and headed on our way to the Australia Zoo. We found a bonus big thing - the big mower did make us laugh on the drive. The zoo definitely lived up to its name and was a wonderful place with so many animals and such big and beautiful enclosures. We expected it to be heaving and horrible as it’s a Saturday but because it’s so big it was lovely. Definitely could spend a full day if you had a family but we just did 4 hours.

We saw all the main animals you expect on a Zoo but in true Steve Irwin fashion there were heaps of crocs and native animals too. I even got to stroke a Koala; they are soooo soft (even if a bit stinky!). Mike’s highlight at the zoo was the huge crocodile but also being able to test out his new zoom lens properly! My highlight was probably the number of Koalas and also seeing some baby ones too. We paid an extra 2 dollars to get a sneaky peak in the Wildlife Hospital. Although there weren’t any operations happening, we saw a number of animals in incubators which were generally roadside rescues. They had a super tiny Joey in one incubator that was really alert and a number of pouches which we can only assume contained smaller joeys or Koalas too. An awesome start.

We were doing a roundabout route today; our next stop was the big Pineapple on the way to Noosa. It was big and definitely didn’t disappoint. You even had to take a picture from the other side of the road to get the full pineapple in! Next stop was supposed to be Noosa Heads and the Hells Gate Walk. But turns out, the surf festival was in Noosa today and there was not a single park for about 3 km from the start, so once again a sad Chloe can’t do one of the cool walks she found but also can’t even get to the beach :(. It did however look like a horrendous beach because it was so busy. Our trip to Noosa wasn’t a full waste because on the side of the river was the ‘Big Pelican’. We went for a lovely stroll and ice cream to see and read about it. It was initially built in 1977 as a carnival float and its wings, beak and eyelashes all move! It’s a bit past its carnival days but it does sometimes go out.

Tonight we are staying in Little Yabba and free camp with epic reviews and some lovely walks and creeks around. Hopefully the water is clear enough to swim after Alfred passed through!

Sunday 16th: Kenilworth to Gin Gin

A very foggy start to our morning in the Little Yabba rest stop. We put our boots on and had an early morning walk around the Fig Tree boardwalk at the rest area. The few KM loop takes you on a jaunt through the nearby forest which is full of monstrously tall fig trees (not the usual edible kind). Apparently, these fig trees grow from parasitic saplings on host trees and eventually outgrow and suffocate their host. Just to add to the thrill this walk also contained Gympie-Gympie, better known as the stinging tree. Its large leaves contain stinging hairs full of a nasty toxin, and are still potent even when the leaves decay… A fun walk eh!

After our walk we rolled on up the road to Kenilworth to visit the Kenilworth bakery, which is famous for its donuts and sausage rolls, both of which can come in kilogram form for an epic eating challenge. They also serve coffee in a donut! We treated ourselves to a jam donut, sausage roll, and coffee donut for our breakfast (we thought better of a 1kg start to the day!). Delicious, thoroughly recommend them all!

A decent stint of driving was on the cards for the day to help get us back on track after the cyclone delay in Coffs Harbour, and so we found the “roadside trivia” signs just outside Tairo very helpful to keep us alert. We also learnt that a baby echidna is called a “puggle”. And to top it off, we even found an unofficial “big kangaroo” which was bigger than half the official “bigs” that we’ve seen!

En route north we stopped for a good walk and dip in the Waterfall creek rock pools located in Mount Walsh national park. Despite Googles best attempts to take us down non-existent roads literally through fields and jungle-bush, and an on-the-road encounter with some Brahman cows, we finally arrived at the car park. Well, technically half a km down the road as we decided against taking the campervan down a single lane dirt track full of pot hole bumps and opaque puddles. The 4x4s coming the other way helped reaffirm that decision. A couple of kilometres down the track and we eventually reached the rock pools themselves. The day was a scorcher and so we were happy to take a good dip in the pools. Silver lining of ex-cyclone Alfred: the recent rainfall kept all of the pools fresh and flowing into each other, bliss.

After our swim and a late lunch, it was time to crack on with the driving and head towards Hervey Bay. We agreed that Chloe would drive to the bay, and I would drive to our overnight stop afterwards. I then found Cauldron Brewery while perusing things to do, and we agreed I could get a can so that I could still drive the second half. An hour and a half of driving later and we arrived. Somehow, we found the only brewery of our entire trip that didn’t sell cans, and so my extremely generous wife offered to drive the rest of the day so that I could have a beer. Whoops! I’ll make it up eventually! She also bossed perhaps the best parking of the campervan we’ll ever do first time!

Fortunately, Hervey Bay also offered a “big” statue to see and a beach point to walk. This “big” thing was none other than “Jarod the massive Whale”, and the large wood and mirror statue of a jumping humpback whale did not disappoint! Very impressive towards the end of the day as the sun reflects in the mirrored parts. We finished our Hervey Bay visit with a stroll along the Gables rock formations on the beachhead front, spying little fishes darting into cover as we walked past. A final 1.5h drive to our overnight stop in Gin Gin (did I say how fabulous my wife is yet?!) and we wrapped up our long day of travelling.

Mon 17th March: Gin Gin to Bundaberg

After a lovely night’s sleep in Gin Gin we headed on our way for another Christmas present adventure - The Bundaberg Distillery Tour. The Rum distillery was initially built in 1888 but burnt down twice so the one standing today is from 1936, it even still uses a hand dug and hand concreted molasses pit. The tour was about 45 minutes long and we loved seeing the inside and the dad jokes made us laugh as well. We got to try the molasses which they get from literally next door because the area is surrounded by sugar cane growers. The tour ended with the best bit through, 2 tasters of any of their Top shelf rum. I tried the Coffee and Chocolate Rum Liqueur alongside the Solero, Mike tried the Campfire Rum and the Banana Toffee Liqueur. The campfire rum had a hint of coconut flavour which was delicious, but the Solero was so smooth and easy to drink. The Liqueurs were also very tasty and when you mixed the banana one with a bit of milk you got a very naughty milkshake!! Thanks to Soph and Tom for such a delicious start to the day!!

Our next stop was Tinaberries, finally a real fruit ice cream. I’ve been craving them since we left NZ and we hadn’t managed to find one but this did not disappoint!! Fresh mango at the bottom, real strawberry ice cream topped with melted Belgian chocolate and some crispy coconut chips. It was a yummy treat to cool us down on another scorcher of a day!

We couldn’t visit Bundaberg and not go to the Big Barrel for a soft drink taster too so after our ice cream we headed for some tasters. The most well-known drink is Ginger Beer which you can get in over 67 countries, but they also make 11 other flavours. We tried them all and as part of the tasting got to choose 6 bottles to takeaway. Half way through the tasting the guy leading said that the next one will be controversial - Sarsaparilla. Neither of us particularly loved it, it had an odd woody ginger/liquorice taste, so we didn’t choose that, but their pink grapefruit drink was delicious.

Next stop the laundromat, gotta do the washing to keep up with all the adventures but we did use the time to plan the next couple of days and book a snorkel trip to the Keppel Islands.

Our last stop if the day was Agnes Water for what could be our last un-netted mainland beach swim for a while, crocodile area is just around the corner!! The water was delightfully warm and even though it was starting to get dark it was such a nice refreshing swim. The shower wash off after also felt good after not being able to shower for 2 days!! With sunset coming in we went to the 1770 viewing point and caught some beautiful skies as the sun set below the horizon. A lovely end to a lovely day.

Last minute addition: the VERY end of the day wasn’t quite so lovely as the inevitable finally happened. We found our first huntsman spider insider the van… yikes! A swift spider relocation and door shut before retiring for the evening.

Phew, what a busy 4 days! Plenty more deadly animals to come as we progress northwards into Queensland. Until next time!