Cania Gorge

Breaking ourselves in gently, it is just 120 kms to Cania Gorge.

Most of the trip is over familiar ground, but the roads are good and the scenery is very pleasant north and west of Bundaberg. We pass through Gin Gin, site of Queensland's oldest Station and onwards to Monto. A suitable spot for a lunch break as it has a public rest stop with free electric barbecue. This feature is common to many towns and we find it very useful as our current custom is to make pan bread (locally called Damper) to eat with some filling or other.

Like so many towns in this area, Monto's history goes back to the 1840's when the land was deemed pastoral, Then in the 1970's there was a gold discovery, but this was short lived and the town reverted to pastoral farming and also logging.

Just 20 kms further on an we arrive at Cania Gorge camping park. A very pleasant setting, in the gorge with a backdrop of sandstone escarpment. It is late afternoon, so we identify the walks that are recommended and pick a couple of options for tomorrow.

The site is mainly for campers and caravans and we 'tenters' are allocated the most scenic of the sites areas, down by the creek - which is very low at the moment.

In the morning, we make an early start and tackle three walks; first a very short hop to spot a rock with unusual stains or shadows in its face. They look very like a giant footprint and give the title 'Bigfoot' to the track.

Next is a longer trek, of perhaps 6 kms to the 'two-tier bat caves'. Much of the track follows the line of the road before rising up a small escarpment. We found the caves, the second tier is accessed by means of a short scramble through the first. Even having made the effort we failed to spot any bats, but the cave itself was worth the visit.

Finally, the same track continues in a loop past some fern groves and a waterfall before reaching a high panoramic viewing spot.

The good news was that there was a lot of fine cloud cover which made it comfortable for hiking - however the bad news was that photos of the panoramic view were rather wishy-washy. Not a bad trade-off.

Camping on our own Doorstep.

It's quantum leap time. We will get around to filling in the dates leading up to this date, especially as they contain some of our most enjoyable times in Oz, with Brian and Audrey Adams.

But it's all happening so quickly, we're now on tour, in a tent; Ellida is on the hard at Bundaberg to sit out the cyclone season whilst we embark on what we hope will be our 6 month, 15,000 kms trip to see all except the southeast of Australia ...which we did with Brian and Audrey ...which I will fill in later ...which brings me back to where I started.

We left the Marina and booked in a Burnett Heads Caravan Park, just 800 metres away as the Ibis flies. Very sensibly we thought that we could try out tent living whilst we still able to go back and grab the forgotten item. And we did, several times.

In a way it was a baptism of fire. Burnett Heads was enjoying a four or five day spell of high wind and it was blowing hard as we erected our little dome tent for the first time. It went pretty smoothly really all things considered and the tent withstood the blow very well.

The nights were puctuated by a rhythmic 'hooting', more a sort of 'poooom, pooom' sound that went on for several minutes at a time, ending with a crescendo of pooms before stopping for a break.

The next day I traced the origin, the mysterious 'poom' bird. Extraordinarily hard to spot, it was a Tawny Frog Mouth. Not extrememly rare, but rarely seen ...for obvious reasons.

Our first target destination is the National Park at Cania Gorge.