Sundown National Park, Qld. Labour Day Long-weekend.

While my home iMac is being backed up prior to loading a new operating system (Yosemite - MacOSX 10.10) I thought I should get around to catching up with my travel blog and write up the trip to Sundown National Park over the Qld Labour Day Long weekend in October. As we were meeting up at the quite reasonable hour of 10 am at the Beaudesert Maccas, I was able to have a bit of a sleep-in as the car was packed and I just had to strap the OzTent to the roof racks. I left home at around 8 am and had an uneventful trip to Beaudesert with hardly any long weekend traffic to hold me up. I got there a little early so picked a newspaper, a sausage roll and an iced coffee from the local shops and had a second Brekky in the park. Then it was off to Maccas to meet up with Adam and Meagan, Josh and Phil, unfortunately Kemsley had been kept back at work (in Mackay from memory) and wouldn't be able to make it away. 

We left Beaudesert around 10ish and headed south towards Rathdowney where we saw heaps of motorbikes and their riders meeting up on some sort of organised trip. We turned off towards Boonah to take the back way to Stanthorpe and avoid any holiday traffic. This involved going past Lake Maroon, White Swamp and Legume and staying on as many gravel roads as possible. We got into Stanthorpe around midday and found a little bakery open and proceeded to have a very pleasant lunch before continuing on south towards Ballandean. We stopped quickly on the way so that Adam could fuel up as he was the only one of us without long range fuel tanks. Then onto the national park where after a short stop to let some air out of the tyres we headed off to our camp site at Reedy camp ground. The road in was rough as usual with lots of dust and rocks but taking it slowly meant we coped quite easily although at one stage Phil had the return of a problem where the engine would cut out but it disappeared after he switched from lpg to petrol. 

We got to the camp grounds at about 4 pm and found only one other family there, so we set up camp on a reasonably flat piece of ground around a nice campfire pit. 

It was about now when Adam wanted to go for a bit of drive that he found out that his main battery hadn't survived the rough roads but he was able to jump start the car easily using his auxiliary battery. After making the short drive to have a look at the Burroughs waterhole camp ground, Adam came back and proceeded to go into fire bug mode and got the camp fire going. We had several bags of firewood for each evening so he was able to pile the wood on, with the rest of us sitting around with drinks and some cheese, dips and crackers. I got the quadcopter out for a bit of a fly but stuffed up the filming on its first run, which also scared the Kangaroos off, I then swapped batteries and had another go which was much more successful. Then it was time to cook dinner as it was getting a bit dark and we ended up back around the campfire for some more drinks and chatting, before heading to bed around 10'ish.

We slept in a little in the morning before having a leisurely breakfast. Then at around 9'ish we headed off for a drive, stopping in at the other camp ground to make use of the pit toilets and to see how crowded it was. All the spots along the river were taken and there wasn't a lot of space left, so we were glad we opted for the less crowded camp ground. Then it was off for a bit of a drive down the wombat hole hill along the creek, finally crossing over the river at the rock shelf with only a little bit of scrapping. 

It was about now that Phil noticed that one of his rear tyres was low so he added some air to it and kept driving carefully. It wasn't long before it became apparent he would have to change it, so we started to look for a nice shady flat spot off the road to do this, however the good spots were taken with campers. We ended up crossing another part of the creek and then found somewhere that the change could happen while we had some morning tea. 

While Adam helped Phil change tyres, I was being closely questioned by another group about the conditions on the Canning Stock Route as they heading there in May of next year. One guy was definitely going to have fun as he was driving a V8 petrol Landcruiser and was going to need a fuel drop well before the halfway point. Some video shot by someone else in his party showed that he used speed and momentum just a little too much in his earlier hill climb where he had the front end of the Landcruiser well and truly up in the air. After the tyre was changed we explored a little more before crossing back over the two creeks and heading back towards camp. 

On the way up the wombat holes hill I found it more difficult than last time as the ground seemed drier and dustier with less grip and deeper holes. I made it to the top with only some beeping from the traction control, fortunately I didn't get the tone of death that indicated that the traction control had overheated would no longer help with the hill climb. As I was first up the hill and I wanted to try out the video on the new iPhone, I got the others to wait while I parked and walked back to a suitable spot. Out of all the cars Phil's long wheel base Paj made the climb the easiest as it seemed to be able to span the holes much better. Adam had his mud tyres on and they made it easier for his shortie than Josh and I with the ATR's. Then it was back to camp for some late lunch and a nice relaxing afternoon. After a bit of snooze and some reading I went for a bit of a wander to try and get some photos of the Kangaroos I had scared off the previous day. The were fairly shy and I took awhile to get close enough to get some nice photos. 

By this time Adam's pyromaniac tendencies had come to the fore and the fire was lit even though it was neither cold nor dark. The remainder of the cheese, dips and crackers made their appearance and disappeared slowly as night descended. 

We sat around the fire for awhile but ended up turning in early as we had had a very tiring :) day and we needed to pack up in the morning to head back to civilization. 

The packing was fairly leisurely after a nice breakfast of bacon and eggs and we ended up leaving the camp site at around 8:30 am. The slow drive out of the park was going well until we caught up to a group in front of us and the last vehicle in their group managed to get a flat tyre on a rocky hill a little bit before the turnoff to Red Rock Canyon Lookout. It looked like he pinched the tyre against a rock and broke the bead, leading to rapid deflation. As Adam was the lead car in our group he somehow became the designated tyre change helper even though there was another four cars worth of people in their group who ended up standing around watching. After that was fixed they waved us on and we continued to the exit of the park where we aired the tyres up and not long afterwards hit the bitumen. 

At this point I split off from the others as I couldn't face heading back through Beaudesert and Canungra as I knew it would be slow and packed with rubber necking tourists, so I said my goodbyes and headed south over the enemy border to Tenterfield. From here I travelled east on the Bruxner Highway to Casino where I stopped for a quick bite of lunch, hoping that the grumpy RBT cop from my last visit here wasn't on duty. Then for something different I headed to Lismore and from there up to Mulimbimby and across the roads at the back of Byron Bay before joining up with the M1 and cruising home with no traffic problems at all. 

I got home around 3'ish and unpacked the car, did some washing of both my clothes and myself and generally relaxed for what remained of a very pleasant weekend. The map below shows my rather roundabout trip, all up just over 650 kms for the weekend.