Camping It Up

Packing was, rather unexpectedly, given that space was at a premium given an extra passenger, a breeze. Possibly because I left the details to Nicole who is genetically pre-disposed to being good at that sort of thing.

We forewent the air mattresses too, taking a risk that sleeping on duvets would be OK. The air mattresses after all are next to useless having both developed unfixable leaks which necessitate reinflation every day. Not good.

So we headed off about 11 o'clock through Samford then Dayboro then up the Mount Mee Road across the mountains and down the other side, along the D'Aguilar Highway. There was a certain amount of consternation in the car, I sensed, as I'd owned up to not actually having printed out a map of how to get to the campsite, and the UBD Refidex didn't extend quite far enough to cover it, but the Force was with me and I remembered the names of the relevant roads.

Consternation became elevated again though as we rolled onto the last road on our journey, which was a dirt track the entrance to which was protected by a cattle grid.

To the uninitiated among you, our dogs and cattle have in the past failed to mix well.

And soon, the dogs, up until now resting quietly, woke up to the herd of bullocks lazily chewing the cud in the middle of the road, and began barking madly.

Consternation receded, for me at least, as we rolled over another cattle grid a k or so down the road, and descended into a dip crossing a little creek that - get this - had flowing water in it, in a verdant valley with forested mountains to either side.

Unpacking and tent-building went well and we embarked upon a walk up the hillside which would have been very quick if it hadn't been for Eloise. Still the dogs were in seventh heaven and we could look out over the valley beneath a slightly ominous-looking overcast sky before descending again to the campsite.

We had been put on the plum spot on the campsite as there was actually absolutely no-one else there, and the site was actually pretty big, probably covering several hectares though I'm not sure I really know how big a hectare is. However be that as it may, both our tents fitted easily onto our alloted space which was reasonably flat, surrounded by trees, at the bottom of the walking tracks, and equipped with a stone fire circle at which Nicole's eyes lit up.

I'll leave it up to Nicole to extol the virtues of the composting toilets which were an easy three minute walkaway unless you had Sproggy with you.

We grabbed a reasonably early night after sitting around the fire for a bit.

And got up in the morning after a somewhat broken nights sleep, punctuated by the trials and tribulations of having had to spend the night with two dogs and a nearly-three-year-old to have a light breakfast of sandwiches and juice and coffee.

Mother did the decent thing and offered to look after Eloise while Nicole and I took a brisk walk with the dogs, so we set off thinking we'd be back in an hour, looking at the map to see if we could maybe get half way up the mountain.