Every year since 2002, KISA, Jdubya, George of the Jungle and Son 17 have made an annual trip up the mountain to Eungella for a winter mini break. We think we have only missed one or two years in all those years due to Jess's illness. So this year, as Jdubya, who has now moved away to the south coast of NSW, and Son 17 were both in town on holiday, we made one last trip for old times sake. Chances are we may not get another chance, and the boys are now grown up making their own lives. We had a great time. We had to make a few changes. The place we usually stay was getting too expensive, so we stayed in a different cabin, a newer one on the escarpment. This young kookaburra was the meet and greet.
This is the view from the deck. As it only had 2 bedrooms, KISA and I set up the camper on the lawn next door as a spare bedroom.
Son 17 was exhausted after all the work of preparation, packing up, the drive up the hill, unpacking and setting up the camper. So he had a little nap before dinner.
Our meet and greet kookaburra. He was totally unconcerned about us, even stayed long enough for KISA to touch him before he took off. He was unimpressed we didn't feed him and ignored us after that.
The late afternoon light as we look down the valley. This is the view from our camper spot.
Next morning KISA cooked some bacon for breakfast at the barbeque with the best view in the world. Jdubya helped..sort of.
When he wasn't slaving over a hot BBQ plate he was torturing his friends with descriptions of the best BBQ in the world.
After breakfast we all piled in the car and went for a drive to the lookout at Mt Barker overlooking Eungella Dam. We did some CSI work and ascertained there had been some sort of party up there involving a 22 rifle, smoking, alcohol and a McFlurry. Hmmmm...nice day though.
The view, you have seen it before but it doesn't get weary for us.
Here we are, we don't often get our photo together as it is usually just us!
After the lookout it was time to cut some firewood. Son 17 was adept with the chainsaw. We won't mention the log splitting back at camp.
KISA cut some more, even left his foot uninjured though in this picture it looks like he will cut it off.
Another lumberjack in the family. Need to work on the log splitting though.
On the way back to the cabin, we stopped at Broken River for a coffee and a bit of stone skimming at the old swimming hole. You can see the stone skimming the water in this picture.
Thanks to KISA's expert photography and the camera's capacity to take a million photos a second, we were able to get some action shots. Each one of these was at the precise second the stone left their hands. George has the best style I think.
You can even see the stone in this one.
Son 17 has a style all of his own. It is identical in all three stone throws we got on the film. You can see the stone here too.
We went back for some sausages and onions (lots of onions!) at the best BBQ in the world for lunch, to be followed by tennis and touch footy.
KISA and Jdubya have found that now the boys have grown up they are a little harder to beat at the usual games. In fact they were impossible to beat. We chopped some wood (ahem) and built a fire and sat around it till dinner time. We attracted some other campers who came to share our fire. We left them in charge of it around 7 and went to the chalet (local pub) for tea. It was quite nice. KISA and I had the soup, and Son 17 a steak, George had a chicken Kiev, Jdubya has chips and gravy as he had overdosed on cheese and biccies by the fire. There was a blues band from Sydney playing that was quite good, and the boys played a couple of games of pool. Then back to the cabin for The Poker Game, which was won by Son 17. We owe him a $5 dollar scratchie after some little bet on the rules with KISA. Turned out he was right. The original alcohol fuelled bet was Son 17s life against our house (KISA) , but in the morning it was rewagered on a $5 scratchie. Which we lost. So we keep the house! (Phew)
Next morning, early, KISA, Jdubya and I ventured out in the freezing morn to visit with the platypus. It was very calm at the platypus pool, apart from the 20 or so tourists who also wanted to visit with the platypus. We watched this little blue kingfisher catch several bugs for breakfast.
And saw several platypus, which are very hard to photograph, so this is he, the best I could do.
It was frosty in the shady bits, a rare sight in our climate. KISA was happy..
Looking back towatrds the bridge over Broken River, early morning frost on the roadside.
After breakfast we had to pack up and go. We were home by lunch time. After a quiet afternoon, we were treated to a beautiful sunset off the deck. July is the best month for sunsets here.
Next time we will really try to camp somewhere else, but KISA is pretty stressed with work and he likes to go somewhere familiar where he knows he can relax. Camping up here really reenergises him and he can sleep well. No phones can ring here as there is no reception!
The new axe we bought after the last camping trip broke as well. KISA had to manage with the hatchet. We took it back for a refund and bought a block splitter. They don't call the Australian timber he collected Ironbark for nothing I guess!
There were 4 campers in our little "bay" of the dam. Most of the campers were here as it is sheltered from the wind which was blowing from the southeast. This camper over the water is a Kimberley Karavan, which is the rolls royce of camper trailers, costing some $70000 or so. It even has an air conditioner and is supposed to go anywhere. But it took them just as long as us to set up and they still had to go off to the toilets so I am not sure I can see the value. It folds down to not much bigger than trailer size.
The other campers in our area. KISA and I went for "a walk" with the intent of having a decent stickybeak at the Kimberley. The owners were not at home but we got to chatting to the other two campers.
Our camp in the late afternoon. See how straight and perfect that annexe is?? We are very proud. We found a you tube video which showed a simpler way of putting it up which we tried and we had the whole camp set up from park to wine in under an hour. Plus it was straight! It was windy as well and stood up well to the wind and didn't flap noisily like it had in the past. We are getting there! I am making a guacamole to have with our bottle of wine here. Because we packed in a hurry I hadn't planned any real meals so just threw in whatever was in the fridge and fruit bowl. And happened to have all the ingredients for a guacamole!
Never get sick of watching the sun go down over this view. I know you have seen it a million times before but here it is again!
With the tripod and the night setting on the camera KISA experiimented to get some good shots of the fire. Fires never turn out if there is a flash. We took some with us as well, but we never sat still enough for the long exposure. I don't know how they managed in the old days when they had to sit up to a minute or two!
The same setting enabled us to get a shot of the moon as well.
We packed up on Sunday morning and made our way back to Mackay and a hot shower. WE long for the day when we can pack up and move on to another location.
KISA cut some more, even left his foot uninjured though in this picture it looks like he will cut it off.
