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Published: June 20th 2009
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Day 54 - Warwick
For reasons unknown neither of us slept very well last night. Maybe it’s because we’re in a proper campsite with power and it’s too unsettling for us! Who knows!
We were on the road early this morning, the weather looked iffy in the distance so we just thought we’d take the day as it came. We filled up with diesel in the local Caltex Woolworths where we got a 4c discount per litre thus paying 1.11 rather than 1.15, it all makes a saving and means we can have an ice cream, maybe! We followed the Falls Drive for a while and checked out Daggs Falls and then the waterfall piece de resistance for this area, the Queen Mary Falls. Both were in great flow and completely free of humans when we arrived! Sadly they were completely free of visible wildlife also! We might have spied Rock Wallabies if we’d looked hard enough or Water Dragons if the sun had been out but alas neither waved a flag in front of our noses to let us know they were around!
As we continued up the Falls Drive there are warning signs about how steep
and winding the road will become and how it’s not suitable for caravans, luckily we’ve left ours at ‘base camp’! The mist had come down over the top of the mountains and as we neared Carrs Lookout it was pretty obvious we weren’t going to be able to see much other than ‘white mist’! We’ve not done any off-roading with the car as yet and coming up was the Cambanoora Gorge track which crosses the Condamine River 14 times and is suitable for high clearance vehicles only. It sounds like fun and it was! The track went from flat dirt track to rocky dirt track to rocky and sunken mud track! We selected 4WD mode on the car and in we went! The first and second crossings are close together and neither looked too deep, we made it through with no problem at all! It was quite nerve racking as the car rocks from side to side going over the uneven surface. Fair play to Darryl on the driving too, it was great and well paced! Next up were the Double and MaWhirts crossings. The Double is where we could have spied platypus if we weren’t messing around in a
noisy vehicle, as it was we didn’t get out to have a look figuring that they would be long gone! The river forks at this point, forming close parallel streams and thus creating the Double crossing which rarely dries up as it appears to be mountain spring fed. Safely through this and MaWhirts we were joined by trail bike riders who sped through Bullocky Crossing while we tried to straightened up our cycle rack on the back of the car which had bounced to a different angle much to our amusement! Bullocky was quite fast flowing but no problem and we were on to Flaggie crossing where we caught up with the bikers. One of them had had a “lay down” in the middle of Flaggie! He was upright when we went past but his mate let us know as he caught us on the next section! The terrain had got muddier and deep tracks with prominent rocks faced us for much of the way. Crossings Mill, Reis and Heywood were easy enough and then Billy John Dagg and Andrew Evans. All of the crossings were given their name through historical events apart from crossings First and Second which we
guess they left as obvious! I really wanted to cross on foot in front of Darryl so I could take a photo of him coming through the river. We did this at Billy John Dagg which wasn’t the deepest of the crossings by any means but gave us something for the blog of memories! Then it was my turn! With two crossings left to go, Long and Watsons, we swapped over and I did my first bit of 4WD through water! It was great and despite being a little slow to take my foot off the clutch (!) I did ok and kept the car at a good pace but more importantly let the car do the work using the 4WD gears. Excellent fun! We were so tempted to turn around and do it again but instead followed the track to the end where we rejoined the paved road and returned to Carrs Lookout!
The mist had lifted a little so we stopped at the adjacent Spring Creek Mountain café for a bit of refreshment and a look at the view! If the mist had lifted completely it would have been even more stunning but it hovered over the
top so we couldn’t see it in its full glory.
Coming back down the other side of the mountain range the road steepened further and went to pretty much single track. It was at this point that Darryl put the brakes on and exclaimed “Bloody hell, did you see that?” It was our first snake and on second investigation it wasn’t dead which is what Darryl had initially thought! It looked as though the grass verge had recently been cut back so we presume this had disturbed the snake as he wasn’t looking too chuffed. Let's not pretend, we had no clue what sort of snake it could be, lots of names were thrown around for the 4ft ish snake! The close up from the camera will have to do and we’ll do our best to Google for his identity!
We drove on through some fantastic scenery and reached Boonah where we stopped to scoff our sandwiches! The tourist information place here is lovely and the lady was very helpful. We didn’t intend to do anything in Boonah but wanted information on walks for us to do tomorrow. We got what we needed and thanked her for her
time having bought a couple of postcards which two of you lucky people will receive shortly!
We spotted a sign for the Moogerah Dam which Uncle David had mentioned as a possibility for visiting on Sunday. We didn’t want to miss out so choose to hedge our bets with a flying visit today! It’s fantastic! I can hear the groans, another dam, more water, more mountains blah blah blah but honestly the scenery is awesome and the setting just perfect for a holiday home! The dam is enormous and this time we can walk along the wall to look over the edge - it’s a long way down! There’s plenty of fire pits here and picnic benches so we decide that if we do come back on Sunday we’ll bring lunch and cook al fresco!
So that was our day! The journey back to Warwick was uneventful but it did take us past the entry points for the walks we’re considering tomorrow! Back at camp we cooked tea and then it was blog writing and photo sorting time!
All the best
Dar and Sar
Footnote 20/06/09 - When we Googled our snake we thought it
looked a bit like a Carpet Python but we couldn't be sure as someone else had said (without looking at the picture!) that it was probably a Tree snake. When we went to Davids for dinner tonight he was almost sure it was indeed a Carpet Python! Mystery solved we think!
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Alex
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That's only a teenage carpet python, not yet fully grown :)