I had been considering a driving/camping weekend out west of the Gold Coast, around the Beaudesert/Boonah area and even though the weather was perfect (maybe a tad warm) I decided that a day trip would allow me to come home to my nice comfy bed and hot shower. Early on I went for a walk to the Farmer's markets at the nearby school and picked up some goodies for lunch - hot smoked chili salmon and avocados. Then it was off to Robina for a cuppa and a read of the days paper before heading off to the Hinze Dam. The new look dam has been opened for more than a year now, so I went to have another look and a walk around.
View from the info centre/cafe.
According to the sign - I was surrounded by Geology.
Some cute little birds were flitting around the rock wall.
The Spillway was looking impressive but not all that wet.
I had a very tasty lunch in the picnic area and briefly contemplated having a fly of the quadcopter but with all the water and fences around I decided it wasn't worth the risk if something went wrong. Then I decided to head up to Binna Burra for a look and headed off to Beechmount road. Along the way there was a stunning view back over to the Gold Coast.
At a little park - Rosins Lookout Conservation Park there were mad launching themselves off perfectly good ground and sailing gracefully around the sky.
I kept on driving to Binna Burra and drove up to the little Teahouse but it was pretty busy and there were no parking spots so I headed back to a carpark near the entrance to the Lodge and thought I would go on one of the shorter walks. There was a 2 km walk to Kweebani Cave with a 5 km circuit. The forest looked like it was nice and cool so I headed off for a hopefully nice rainforest walk. I put the macro lens on the camera, as I hadn't really ever played around with it too much. After several hundred metres the track started to zig zag backwards and forwards in a downward direction and my thoughts of a pleasant forest stroll were evaporating. During this time I was coming to realise that macro photography was not easy. The things you are trying to photograph are small, hard to focus on and generally moving (plants in a breeze and insects inconsiderately wandering/flying around). I'm not sure if it is just my camera but with the macro lens on the autofocus really struggled and quite often I needed go back to old fashioned manual focus. Below are a couple of macro photos but they didn't turn out all that weel.
I seemed to be forever going downhill (and wasn't looking forward to climbing back up) and I hadn't seen a cave yet. Eventually there was a family coming the other way and they said that the cave wasn't far away and that walk back to the car park was pretty good. It thought it should have been 3 km or so to the car park but thought I might have misread the original signs. I eventually got to the cave and found the other problem with having the macro lens on is that at 90 mm equivalent (60 mm x 1.5) it is not wide enough to see very much, so I then had to rely on the iPhone 4S for general photos.
After a couple of short steep sets of steeps the walk levelled off and the walk continued on through more open bush. Then after a pleasant stroll I was at the carpark, unfortunately it was the wrong carpark and where I had parked my car was another 2 kms up the narrow winding steep road. On the way you see some of the new ecovillas built at the Lodge, they would have had a spectacular view.
I made it back to the car and somewhere on the way back my fitbit clocked up 20,000 steps for the day. My knees are disputing this, claiming it is maliciously underestimating the steps by at least a factor of 1.5. I then got rehydrated and ready for the drive home. Along the way I went via "The Panorama" at the back of Tallai and the views there were also pretty spectacular.
Then it was off home and a nice shower and relaxing drink with the odd Ibuprofin to keep the old creaky Knees happy.
