Our first practice @ Gheerula camp

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Day 1:
Hello all,
What a day, we set out early to beat the long weekend traffic, bags packed and boots tied tight ready for a day of hiking ahead. We had booked a camp site at Gheerula camping grounds and planned to park at Mapleton Falls and hike the "Great Walk". Well half of it any way, what we believed to be about a 10-12k hike taking about 3 to 5 hours. What we actually found was about a 14-18k hike taking about 8 hours of relatively hard pace hiking. We never took into account the zigzagging of the track extending the distances on the map a lot. Passing some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever been through made it totally worthwhile. The lushest rain forest to washed out tracks due to recent rain and flooded creeks and sparse scrub land. All greening up well after recent rains. Some steep descents and of course the opposite steep ascents. I believe we may have found some new muscles or at least a new ways to make the old ones work. I use the term "old" lightly. The track was relatively straight forward with markers often enough to reassure you that you are on the right path. I must say that we did pass a sign from the ranger (referring to previous weeks down fall of rain) saying “track closed do not use.” The tricky bit came when we could see the camp grounds but could not get to it due to no way of getting across a small fast flowing creek (which for the last 2 years was dry) and by this time we were tired and hungry and the sky was getting darker so with all this occurring we bit the bullet. I took a leap of faith while Lynne removed her shoes rolled up her pants to reveal a large patch of blood courtesy of a leech. We pushed through some scrub and walked straight into someone’s private camp site. A quick exchange of hello’s and excuse me’s and a brief exchange of information we found we were 200m’s from our camp it felt so good! The tent went up without a hitch. YEY! The blow up mattresses followed quickly - flawless inflation - sort of. No time for a fire (bummer). A quick wash in the creek then for some dinner but by this time the body was aching, knees, hips, shoulders. We woofed down some food and went to lie down. I think it took about 30 minutes for me to fall off to sleep and it was about 6:30pm sad I know. I woke at 10pm for a nature call and was so depressed to see the time I was sure I had had an 8 hour sleep at least but it did not take much to dose back off again.

Day 2:
Oh!My!God! My aching bones! muscles were a secondary pain. it was all worth it. We woke early and the day was beautiful, the sky was clear, still no fire to cook so we had a cold tin of beans and some scotch finger biscuits. We discussed the return trip an decided get an early start and head for the nearest town, Kenilworth it was still 8k's away but that beats 17 which it took to get to the camp site. It was then that fate dealt us a king of hearts. A couple of guy's looking for a rock climbing location stopped to ask for directions (like we knew where we were anyway). After discussing where to find some more information Lynne put on the best drama display seen in the Kenilworth area for a long time. It went something like this "I don't think i can walk any more my legs hurt so much" I said " Come on honey, 8k's is easy" this continued for a minute or two then one of the guy's in the car said " Well we need another coffee anyway so how about we give you a lift?" YES PLEASE! and we were off! We found the best coffee shop at about 8:30am and had 2 in a row of Mrs McGinns coffee and a muffin. The next challenge was to get back to the car in Maleny falls carpark. We found no taxis venture this far but there was a local mini bus called SPLASh community taxi saved our lives (bones and muscles too).

Ready to go next time! Bye.

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Photos

Food break
A brief pause for nourishment.

A small fall
A moment in time ti remeber.

The morning after
What can one say.