Beardy Creek Free Camp

Beardy Creek is approximately 8 kilomteres north of Glen Innes on the New England ... It is a free camp with a forty eight hour maximum stay. (Camps Australia Wide 7 #148)

I am standing up on the track which the truckies would use.

There is plenty of room for large vans here, and it is a good spot for quick overnight on your way though to see one of the majestic national parks in the New England Region.

A beautiful rainbow embraces the motorhome

 We enjoyed our friendly time in Maryvale but it was time to move on again. In keeping with our motto of taking it easy, we travelled just 200km after attending church first at Warrick. Our destination this time was at Heritage Park on Beardy Creek just north of Glen Inness.

Got to keep an eye on the rising creek levels

We generally average 80k/h but the hills slow us down significantly. Rob was very concerned about the brakes on the motorhome as they were shuddering something fierce when heavily applied. I was to drive within eyesight behind to reduce the stress on the brakes and to be within cooee if something terrible happened.

Hardly a soul in sight.

Nothing happened on the trip. The grounds are very wet and we chose not to camp at the 'proper' camp grounds as it was so boggy. instead we went just 50m further to what appears to be a very large truck stop. Rob reckons that not many trucks would stop there due to the approach from the road and they certainly can't veer off the hard track. Once we had parked and settled, we enjoyed relaxing and looking out with the creek just metres away. We weren't going to be doing much walking since there was a gently but constant drizzle of rain. We were watching the already high river to ensure that it wasn't likely to go any higher.

Maryvale and Condamine River

Our stay in Maryvale was a joy, mainly because of the company of our friend John who recently moved there. We generally  plan to meet up with John each time we travel to Queensland.

The very friendly Maryvale Pub -they have their own free 'Uber' driver

We first met John and Kathy in Western Australia back about 6 years and have spent many camp nights in their wonderful company. Sadly Kathy died in a bike accident early this year but John still wants to travel and meet up.

John's place - it's not really a free camp - we just did a send up for fun

He has just bought a flat 1 acre block in Maryvale just east of Warwick and is encouraging his friends to drop by and camp a night or two with him whenever you are in the area. So we did just that! John had other friends there whom we naturally befriended. We soon got to know John and Tracey and enjoyed their company too.

Tracey delighted us by cooking for all of us on the first night.  I returned the favour the second night and John the third night with the 4th night being a combined BBQ pit fire night for all comers.

Maryvale is such a lovely friendly place, it is no wonder that John is happily settled there. All John needs now is to get his plans passed so he can get his shed up and move in properly.

Daggs Falls & Queen Mary Falls

The five of us went for a drive through to Queen Mary Falls, stopping at Daggs Falls first.

Our two daggy friends (Pls note Rob is NOT a dag) ;)

We walked to see the Queen Mary Falls with the two Johns & Tracey doing the full walk down to the bottom of the falls and back.

A scrumptious lunch was enjoyed by us all at the Queen Mary Falls kiosk of their Wicked Cheesy Wedges with sour cream, bacon and onion and salsa.Oh my, these were so yum, I am almost salivating again as I write. (I am going to try to duplicate this recipe one day.

BTW you can camp behind the kiosk for a fee in their little caravan park. We were well nourished for a bit of light 4WDriving around Condamine River which is the head of the Darling/Murray River.

4WDriving around Condamine River

We stopped at a look out that overlooked the Gorge and lovely countryside.

John's car in front of us.

It is a wonderful drive going over no less than 14 river crossings! It was a fabulous day of great fun with these marvellous friends.

Festival of Flowers 2016 Toowoomba

There really isn't too much to say about the amazing flowers and the artistic presentation of the flowers is just awe inspiring... and this was after a horrible & extended period of extremely wet weather that must have disheartened the workers, but what we saw was just beautiful.
Feast your eyes and try to get there next year. It is truly worth it!

 Everything was so artisically arranged in the beds that it was a delight to see the next flower bed.

 

The tulips are the royal flowers here,

but that is not to say that other flowers weren't appreciated for their own beauty,

let alone as a gorgeous colour foil for the showpieces.

 

It was absolutely wonderful.

Oh by the way, I didn't mention anything about the scents,

only because that is one of the casualties of my cancer, I can't smell!

Toowoomba: the city of flowers

We have friends in Toowoomba, though we don't keep in touch alot with them, we do know that we can pick up the threads from the last time and weave a little more of the tapestry of life together each time we see one of them. This time, we stayed in the driveway of long time friends, Leo and Alice. We met up recently with Leo and Alice briefly when we were all at the Bathurst CMCA Rally back in July this year and they kindly invited us to stay with them when we came through.

It was a lovely coincidence that we were in Toowoomba at the tail end of the Festival of Flowers. The organizers must have been wrought with concern with all the most unseasonably wet weather. We delayed visiting the gardens until a dryer period since we were staying a week and had the time. The whole city is filled with flowers but certainly the main gardens are spectacular. In my opinion I think it beats Canberra's Floriade by an artistic mile. In fact we loved the gardens so much and took so many photos that I will dedicate one post just to the flower festival.

Rob is loving the variety of flowers esp the tulips.

We filled some of the time visiting the Cobb & Co Museum and a drive to the privately funded Wellcamp Airport. Rob and Leo know the family that built this forward thinking public airport.

I didn't get my own photo, but this plane is truly up inside the airport terminal!

Dump Point Grumbles

On arrival before we rocked up to our friends, it was time to empty our black water tank. We had tried to use the one at Calbutra and found that it was unsuitable as it was 3 ft high. We need to use gravity to empty the tank. We have since been advised that it can be accessed lower, but you couldn't tell by driving up to it, hence we drove on past it.

So we had to use the dump point here at the Toowoomba showground and found that it was rather difficult to access. It has a 1 metre fence all around it. We couldn't park close enough to use it easily. For the first time ever, we had to use our extension hose, which I doubt many motorhomes would have.I reckon that the councils and waste water boards should seek CMCA advice before adding such services to make it as practical as possible. We've also been to ones where you have to reverse in to use it which would be very difficult for some RVs and caravans. A bit of forethought and planning would make a dump so much easier.