Sunday 20 August 2006 - Brisbane

I had a short working week this week. The Ekka Show Holiday was on Wednesday and I took Thursday and Friday off. Darryl and I were planning to go camping for 5 days, but on the Wednesday he was sick with a viral infection and basically slept all day. I took the opportunity to work on data cleansing on my family history file.

On Thursday Darryl was feeling a bit better, so we headed off towards Mt Barney National Park. With Darryl being sick, and me with my sore knee we really had no intentions of doing much walking, but it was nice to be out in the country, and after lunch at a small roadside park, we got to the 'Lower Portals' car park.

It had recently been burnt (at least one log was still smouldering), but the walk would have been too far, so we decided to drive to a camping ground called 'Flanagan's Reserve', which seems to be run by the council. The reserve is beside the upper reaches of the Logan River, which means there is a decent waterhole, and the whole camping area is a large flat area which is lightly wooded with large eucalypts. Unfortunately, due to the drought, it was very dry and dusty. There were only a couple of other campers, and we were able to choose a nice site far from everyone. We pottered around and set up camp, then watched a lovely sunset behind Mt Maroon.

While we were still sitting relaxing, the only other couple near us came over to invite us to their campsite for Mulled wine. Lionel and Debbie made this very tasty drop by putting red wine in a kettle along with a whole orange, some cinnamon stick and some sugar. As I was starting to feel the effects of the sickness this hot spicy mix made me feel great! The night was very cold, but I was toasty! Darryl woke up with cold feet, but I had to go to the 'loo' so found his army socks to fix the problem.

In the morning we took our time packing up. I took photos of the lone grave beside the campsite and asked about the history of it - apparently in the late 1890's the reserve was part of the stock route and a drover's wife died in childbirth, but no-one knows her name. Eventually we hit the road and headed for the 'Upper Portals' of Mt Barney along a road which was supposed to be 4x4 only. bad, and ran along the ridges between mountains. When we got to the top there were lovely views of Lake Koogarah and Mt Barney. We took a bit of a stroll along the track, but my virus was starting to kick in so I couldn't go far. We had some lunch, and then decided that we would have a look at Spicer's Gap National Park. Darryl said he was pleased that I had the GPS and maps on my iPAQ as some of the back roads we took certainly didn't look like through-roads! It certainly made a big difference to the trip.

It wasn't all that

We arrived at Spicer's Gap and decided to firstly go and have a look at 'Governor's Chair'. This is a spectacular lookout (only a few 100 metres in, so easy enough to cope with in our fatigued state!).

Heading back towards the campsite we also called in to see Moss's Well. This campsite was also quiet, with only two other lots of campers. We had a fairly early night, due to the cold (and not feeling well), but this place strangely had excellent tv reception, so we were able to watch 'Collectors' on ABC! Darryl fell asleep watching the movie, and I read until I was too tired and called it a night. Actually, I had a terrible night, with the aches hitting all my joints (especially my hands and shoulders), and the fever coming and going.

In the morning I told Darryl that I was too sick to take another night out in the cold, so I had breakfast while he went on the short heritage walk. I also checked out the pioneer grave-site near the camp, then we packed up and headed home. I slept all afternoon, and all Saturday and quite a bit of Sunday. Darryl is starting to feel better, but my nose has started running and I am coughing and sneezing lots.

The photos are:
Mt Maroon from Flanagan's Reserve
Mt Barney from the Upper Portals car park
Darryl filming from 'Governor's Chair' Lookout