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Published: June 21st 2009
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Day 56 - Goomburra Forest Reserve
Happy Fathers Day to both of our Dads at home in the UK. Hopefully we'll speak to both of you today but we hope the sun is shining and you both enjoy yourselves.
We had a pretty late night in the end so we're a bit sleepy this morning for the dawn chorus of Laughing Kookaburras! There must have been a few of them as they were really loud! By the time we were ready to go anywhere the weather had gone from dry to that spitting, misty sort of ish-rain weather! We didn't have any concrete plans so thought we'd pop into the tourist information place in Warwick for ideas. Just before we left, Darryl got talking to our neighbour about our UHF radio. It's never worked and although we think the radio is fine the coax cable is cracked so Dar thinks that's the problem. We're advised to go to Dick Smiths the electrical retailer to see if they sell the cable we require. That's probably the cheapest way of trying to resolve it ourselves initially so tomorrow we'll be looking out for one of their stores on the journey to
our next destination.
Back to today, we pick up a bit of information about the Goomburra Forest Reserve in the foothills of the scenic rim. It's a 45 minute drive from Warwick and there are walking tracks of various lengths. The drive out makes a nice change of scenery as we take a different route to that from the last few days! It's mainly farmland once we're off the highway and the houses become few and far between as we get further out. We spy Janowen Hills 4WD Park and thought it was worth checking it out! You needed to get a permit from the shop which was along the 2WD camp site track. No more than 6ft along the so say 2WD track we’ve started to slide on the mud and we’re having second thoughts about ‘playing’ in the car! Our PIE has to make it around Oz twice and it’s all very well us using it to gets places that require 4WD but playing on a track just chucking it around is another thing all together so we think better of it and head back to the paved road!
We’ve been looking out for novel mail
boxes as fellow bloggers Kangeroojack have seen lots on their travellers but as yet we’ve seen very few, until now! What better way to keep your mail dry in wet weather than to nail an old microwave to a stand and have the postie put everything in there! “3 minutes on high and PING your mail is done”! We roar with laughter and then further up the road we find another microwave mailbox, a tractor and a steam locomotive! It’s fantastic and giving us loads of ideas for our mailbox when we get home!
The weather wasn’t getting any better and as we travelled through the initial parts of Goomburra we could see that the creeks were flowing nicely! There are two private sections before you get to the National Park Forest Reserve and there are signs everywhere warning you of penalties for trespassing or camping without first paying the appropriate fees to the appropriate company. We have no intention of trespassing especially as the tracks to the various areas are deep mud tracks and it would get our lovely car filthy!
We arrive in the Forest Park and our eyes immediately meet with a wallaby of the
unknown variety! He’s quite small and disappears from sight perhaps he wasn’t expecting visitors on such a gloomy day! We trundled through the camping areas and there are quite a few walks of different lengths that we can do however Darryl refuses to get out of the car!!! We find Lookout drive, a car route up the mountain side beginning with a splash through a flowing creek, Darryl’s happy with that and off we go! Despite the rain our eyes are firmly fixed on all eucalyptus trees for the illusive Koala, surely they must still be around somewhere even in the wet or is there a Koala play area they flock too?! We find our way up the steep, quite rough in places track and decide that it would be rude not to do one of the shorter walks - it’s now throwing it down with rain! Unfortunately the short walks are to ‘lookouts’ so we just know that the only thing we’re going to be looking at is misty rain but we walk anyway and it’s quite interesting. The roots of the trees are really prominent and as such act as the grading for the climb upwards! Crikey, grasping
at straws now aren’t I!!! When we get to the top of the 450m Mount Castle lookout track we do indeed see the magnificent spectacle that is ‘mist’! What we should have seen were views over the Laidley Valley and the Little Liverpool Range where we were going to do a special piccie for Mr Lawton and Baxy for the ‘Liverpool’ connection, alas it was too wet so we’ll have to think of something else!
Back in the car and back down the mountain we went. We passed one other car parked at another of the lookouts, it was there when we went up and still there when we went down so they must have chosen a longer trek. We hope they’ve got wet weather gear on! Undeterred we find the entrance to the Dalrymple circuit which is a self guided walk exploring the rich history and natural values of the forest. What did we learn? Lesson One, we need waterproof rucksacks as they’re both dripping wet inside! Lesson Two, Wallablies can actually do a stop and turn in one movement when they come across humans they weren’t expecting! We’re not sure who was more surprised, the wallaby who
belted round the corner only to find us coming the other way and who then decided to turn on his ‘heels’ causing a bit of a ‘lay down’ as he scrabbled to bounce back the way he’d come, or us! Lesson Three, no matter how long you gaze longingly into the Dalrymple creek you may not see a platypus but there’s no harm in trying! Lesson Four, this is not a place Lynne should ever visit as it’s a specialist area for those small, green, croaking animals that she doesn’t particularly like. Luckily we didn’t see any to take pics!
On our way back through Warwick we stopped off at a 2nd hand shop, not sure what we were after really but Dar seemed keen! We found a large biscuit tin collection which we thought Thatadoo's Ian Brown would have appreciated and there was a large bottle collection which would have complimented Darryl's, a massive amount of National Geographics which I remember we used to get when I was a kid and then we found the stash of Dragster Australia mags! Cool! I picked one up from the middle of the box and it had a big Nostalgia spread
on the front. Wicked! When I opened it up who did I see but none other than Mr Athol Williams on the Top Fuel Bike and standing to the side was Mr Crew Cheif himself Roger Bloor! I parted with 50c and snapped up the mag just for the memory of our last days in Willowbank! That mag was from September 2006!
So that was today’s walk in the wet stuff. It was great to be out and about so we have no complaints. Australia needs water so we can’t complain about the rain either, although ironically it needs to be heavier than this to make any impression on the dam levels. We headed back to the caravan for a warm up. We’re waiting to phone the Dads tonight to wish them a Happy Fathers day back in the UK and also to hear if David is coming for dinner.
So that’s us for the day but don’t worry, if we see a Koala tomorrow you’ll be the first to hear!!
Dar and Sar
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Stuart Hall
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Another 1 sets off for Oz
It was Dave's last day @ Tradeteam on Friday. He was resplendant in his "It's a long way to Australia" T-shirt & hat with dangly corks. He could not get through his speech, he was all choked up. I think he starts flying on Monday