Leaving On A Jet Plane !

Camping weekend at Lake Tinaroo

Having Ok’d it with the boss at work I managed to sneak out early on Friday arvo in order to get home before the kids got home from school, help TWS to pack the car for our camping trip to the Lake. The weather here has been awful most of the week but we had booked it now and I was damned if we were going to lose our $36 camping fees ! ($18 per night for a family = approx. 7 and a half quid)

We had been to KMart for a 55l esky $89(cool box. Going to get a decent one around 200l which will keep stuff cold for up to a week at a later date. Approx. $375) and camp shop for a twin burner camping stove $59, fold up table $159, lobster pot $5 etc. on Thursday (open late night till 9pm) so had the basics required for now we reckoned. Stopped there again on the way for 2 bags of logs for the fire $9 a bag for some seriously dense hardwood blocks. Also got the fishing licence there - $35 for a 1 year licence which covers me and Lou, kids under 18 fish free. Covers over 30 dams in Oz and you get to choose which dam your money benefits - Tinaroo in our case seemed appropriate. You can fish any river, estuary, beach, jetty etc. for free anyway, it’s just the dams that you have to get a licence for.

It’s amazing the amount of stuff you need to go camping ! The patrol was full to the brim with stuff, even just for a weekend trip.

So off we went, down to Gordonvale south of Cairns to then take the Gillies Highway up onto the Tablelands. There are a few ways up there but the Gillies (remember? 220 corners in 20 kms ?) was the shortest route even if it was the twistiest. Stopped at the lookout for a breather and to admire the view of the valley below (see pics) and on we went.

Now, the forest road round the lake can be accessed from the road up and we wanted to take it as Kauri Creek campsite was at the near end of the lake but it was shut so consequently we had to drive all the way round the lake (at high speed on the unsealed gravel Forest Road in the gloom !) so it was pretty much dark when we got there. We picked our pitch, easy enough as there were only 2 other campers there and there’s maybe 20 pitches ? and then put up the tent by the light of the headlights of the car ! Just like the good old days as a kid only at least these days the poles come colour coded ! The tent is great. As you’ll see from the pics, it’s plenty big enough with 3 pods on the side big enough for 2 adults but the kids have 1 each and then a central room which we are using as a bedroom. You could sleep 4 r 5 adults in this area.

Once the tent was up it was easy enough to cook on the stove (steak and feta cheese salad. Note to self: must remember metal cutlery and or steak knives next time, plastic cutlery wasn’t up to the job !) and enjoy the view across the lake in the moonlight and have a beer or three (XXXX Gold, 24 x 375ml stubbies for $30).

Saturday was a mixed bag weather wise, light showers, rain and sun. Zak and Lou got up early to fish on the banks of the lake. I briefly surfaced to sit up and look out of the tent door across the lake at dawn but then didn’t rise again until the cheeky Bell Magpies (Pied Currowongs) woke me by hopping on the camp chairs, the tent porch, the camp stove, the fire pit etc. They’re a bit scary looking, about 50cm tall (eek!) with big nasty looking raven like beaks and yellow eyes but are pretty tame. There was about 6 or 7 of them making themselves at home in our camp ! Make some nice noises though, not least the noise they make with their wings.

The bird life up at the lake is amazing. You’re standing on the edge of the lake fishing and the noises of some of the unseen birds behind and around you is brilliant. Then there’s the gangs of noisy cockatoos landing in the trees, and maybe 8 or 10 laughing kookaburras in a nearby tree making monkey noises ! (if you’ve never heard a kookaburra “laughing” before then you’re missing out. If you were in the jungle you’d swear they were monkeys. They make a “oo oo oo oo oo oo, a a a a a a a” noise and flap their wings around while they’re doing it and when there’s a few of them all at different stages of the calls it’s pretty cool. Imagine huge kingfishers maybe 30cm high that just sit in trees literally feet away as you walk up to them they just look at you. Saying that, if I had a beak that big I’d probably just sit there too!).

Also here there seem to be sooo many birds of prey. Everywhere you go you’ll see them, all different types, cruising about on the warm thermals looking for small ground based prey or other birds to eat I presume.

Anyways, I went for a walk on Saturday arvo, up a 6km circular walk into the rainforest along the banks of the Kauri Creek. Very nice little creek, crystal clear water, sandy bed that you have to cross a couple of times on the walk. Didn’t see much wildlife on the walk except the usual little lizards,  and dragonflies everywherea bush turkey who was very interested in me taking pics for while but there was just me, no-one else there. No-one to have to say hello to as they passed you on the trail, no-one. I’m sure there would be if the weather was better though to be fair. Got a bit lost, had quite a few leeches on my legs that had to be removed (little fellas, easy to remove as they’re walking up your leg at the time like those caterpillars that make a bridge when they walk? but 1 little bigger did get under my sock and had a good suck. That one hurt when I pulled it off !) and got stung by a stinging tree but eventually arrived back at camp safe and sound. Might invest a GPS device at some point, particularly for when I’m not with my Indian tracker guide (Lou) ! but also as a safety aid anyway as you really don’t want to get lost in the bush in Oz.

Despite our lack of success on the fishing front a few young fellas turned up from nearby Tolga around 5pm, caught a load of fish in a couple of hours and then went. One almost got a huge Barramundi as Zak witnessed it leap out of the air on the end of the lad’s hook. We had a chat to one of them as we were making Zak leave the water in the dark and he assured us that if we take prawns next time and fish at 5 we’ll catch stuff.

Saturday night was cool. We got the fire going - each pitch has a couple of picnic type benches set around an iron circular thing with a hinged top. You light a fire in it and can put a pan/billy on the top and cook your stuff which we did – beans in the billycan and sausages in the frying pan. We also did baked potatoes but the heat of the pit was so intense and we left them in too long that they were a bit black when we got them out so we abandoned them.

We had made a halfhearted attempt at it the first night but this time did it properly and Jedd and Indie had been out and about collecting kindling for it earlier on. That fire kept us going for the night, we did marshmallows on sticks, then burned the rest of the sticks on the fire, sang songs and had a few glasses of red (4L box of passable red wine - $19 !!!). The embers were still hot the next morning and cooked us another batch of potatoes!

Zak was up and out early, standing up to his waist in the lake fishing ! He caught a turtle that was a couple of feet long and apparently not very happy ! Lou went and helped to ease him back into the lake.

Didn’t get anything from our lobster pot other than a couple of small fish (there are what they call Redclaw – freshwater crayfish in the lake and you are supposed to be able to drop them in with a piece of potato in them overnight and they crawl in. No-one told us that the spud had to be par-boiled mind you ! Hey ho, next time !)

Left early about 12 as it was raining and we wanted to get back in plenty of time as Lou started work the next day, lots to unpack and wash and the car badly needed a hose down/vacuum.

All in all a great weekend for our introduction to camping. Next time though, we’ll be checking the weather forecast first !

Will add pics when I get chance, hopefully tonight. Still having to do them on Lou’s laptop which is painfully slow but at least it works – unlike my new PC that I built in the uk and shipped here. It did work to be fair, but only for 2 days ! I’ve just sent the video card back to dabs.com in the uk and then they’ll be sending it back to the manufacturer for testing/replacement which takes 4 to 6 weeks and then they’ll send it back to mum’s address and then I’ll have to get it sent to Oz. Pain or what but my own fault I spose. I’m making do with the Xbox360 connected to the flat screen monitor ! How do I cope ? lol !

Good news on the IT front though – we have broadband and it works ! set up Lou’s laptop on it last night, got webcam today (bought everyone else one, forgot to get one ourselves !) and will install skype etc. tonight.

Zak’s at soccer training tonight and tomorrow for Redlynch (his mate plays for them and his mate’s mum is the club secretary). Got him some new boots, shin pads and socks yesterday as his clown like feet have grown so much since last season’s boots.

Redlynch socks mind – they play in yellow and maroon which they pronounce marone here in Oz – WEIRD ! I mean, I get the whole US pronunciation of things like Yoghurt being YO-gurt but marone ?

They play Saturdays so that’s our weekends buggered from now on ! It costs $175 for the insurance as well ! We’ll see how he goes with his knee which is bothering him again and we’ll have to get him to the docs to get sorted.

Other kid’s news – Jedd is performing the theme from Rocky with his class, all dressed as boxers, at the Eisteddfod (sp?). Eisteddfod? Didn’t know we were in Wales? what’s that all about ?

Finally, I thought I’d add things each time I add to my blog, things that I notice are different to the UK. Thought it might be fun to point out the differences. They’re not big things and some of them are annoying, some funny, some just weird. I knew about most of them before we came here due to my extensive research !

WARNING ! There’s lots already !

So, we’ve already had the fact that they call yoghurt YO-gurt and maroon is pronounced marone.

Other things – the traffic lights don’t go from red to red/amber to green, they go from red straight to green. Not good if you’re on a bike having filtered between the lines of traffic and rely on that split second to get away before the dopey “cage” drivers have realised the lights have changed.

On the subject of traffic lights – they take forever to change. It seems like you’ve been sat there for hours sometimes. Unless it’s early Sunday morning and you’re rushing to meet your mates for a ride out. THEN the lights are on demand so every tosser coming out of a side road makes the lights on the main road you’re on change to red !

Some of the gutters/kerb/pavement interfaces have huge changes in level due to the large amounts of rain in the wet season. A real shock the first few times you hit them and the car lurches from side to side and you all hit your heads on the doors/roof/dash board etc.!!!!

All the roads, when the road goes from 2 lanes to 1, the lane that ceases is the left lane unlike uk. Generally, you have to be assertive when this happens cos the bloke in the outside lane won’t let you in !

People ride motorbikes – proper big, fast 1 litre sports bikes, in shorts and t-shirt. If it’s raining, they ride in shorts and t-shirts with an old yellow sou’wester on the the top ! Madness !

Lastly – here, even though the lights are green for you in your car, if you’re turning, the green man for the pedestrians on the side road is also lit ! makes for some interesting road crossing on foot ! (the pedestrians have right of way in that case by the way).

Manchester is the name for the bedding dept.

Flybys – loyalty cards

EFTPOS – electronic funds transfer at point of sale. Same as switch/maestro but not as catchy a name!

Then you choose which account to pay from : Savings = your current account, Cheque account = your savings account ! weird !

In the shopping mall they have big leather Lazyboy type armchairs that massage your body and limbs in exchange for $2. Not tried one yet. Dying to but too embarrassed !

Kids are desperate to have a go.

I takes hours to watch a film because of the ridiculous amount of ads every 5 freakin minutes. Some programs they have an ad break BEFORE the opening credits of the program ! and they have a break when there’s like 2 minutes of the program left. I know the Uk is going that way ( e.g. when LOST was on C4 ! ) but it’s much worse here.

The news is on all the bleedin time. Like 5 they have news update breaks in the programs but it’ll be for a financial news update or something. Sports news on the local channel is news of results from the local Saturday/Sunday league. They have video clips of goals/tries and I swear it’s just the local park. There’s no crowd or anything there.

Usual b*llocks like back home, if anything even more obsessed with the royal family, headline news like Lyndsey Lohan crashes car and their favourite is anything to do with any Australian. E.g. – Kylie has returned to Australia for a holiday ! I kid you not. Footage of her visiting her parent’s house in a Melbourne suburb etc.

Lots of US TV here like NCIS, CIS: Miami, Vegas, New York, Criminal Intent, Without a Trace, Numb3rs, Cold Case, The Closer, Grey’s Anatomy, etc. etc. but at least that’s better than “Australia’s Biggest Loser”, “Teen Fit Camp”, Big Brother, Extreme Makeover, even a program following people who have all had organs from the same donor complete with sympathetic, emotionally charged voice over. No, really! A program where they follow the recipients of someone’s organs. I kid you not.

As it goes dark here at 6:30 it’s not easy to avoid all this crap.

They have no watershed so although programs come on and they give you all the warnings etc. they still have unsuitable stuff on before 9pm.

They have adverts about everything from cervical cancer to erectile disfunction (blokes playing the piano with their knobs having used the product in question !) usually while you’re having your tea ! No shame, nothing taboo.

Chocolate – people complain that even though you can get Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut here it’s not the same as back home and that’s true. It’s not quite as nice BUT there are about 10 different sorts of cadbury’s including Rocky Road which has nuts, marshmallows, cherries and all sorts in it ! there’s also one which is milk, dark and white choc layers, and loads more.

Lizards (Asian house geckos) live outside and inside your house. Noisy beggars (they chirp or bark every now and then), crap everywhere but they are cute!

That about covers it for now !