Guru would have been happy (if he’d come – sand allergy, go figure…) that everyone made it on time at 5:30am to depart, It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the road at 5:30am and Kingsford Smith was bumper to bumper. What’s with people these days? what’s with traffic? bah!

Minimum fuss once we were on the highway, we were straight onto the barge and starting to play up…

It was a fantastic drive up the coast as usual, until we got to Indian Head where not one, but TWO busses were bogged, a lot of people were waiting and looking but we decided to cut through and go around..

Stopped in a the Orchid Beach servo and then on to the South Ngkala Rocks bypass.. Cres I went first and then ended up getting 3 beers in before anyone else came through.. Che5ter came out with 2 cars attached with snatch straps behind him! Show off, alas there was no photo!

We arrived to disturb the peace for IP, Jedi and Wayne (Jedi’s bro), who had been there for a few days in advance and were visibly over-relaxed. I named them the Read Only Crew as they just sat around and watched the green campers destroy the view and peace with little to no movement or facial expression. We packed the weber (thanks to fatty), and didn’t take long to get cooking.

I suppose what goes on tour stays on tour, and I’m sick of writing this blog post… The next tour is Hong Kong from the 17th to the 26th, and the next post after that!

My photos HERE, Jedi’s HERE, Siq’s HERE, more when I find them…

Fraser Island is still there, we confirmed it had not moved far. The advertised departure times were a bit misleading, IP had to see the meat mechanic so they were delayed a little, I had some small grief I suspect from dodgy diesel but Angry and I had the lead by about 24 hours, so we agreed to meet up with IP and MK up the cape.
We hit Orchid Beach and Waddy Point for 2 days, Iron Chef Bronco took the lead with some Chicken soup hybrid stew and I followed up with some battered deep fried tailor caught fresh from Orchid Beach.

The west coast beaches are awesome, we were the only people around, we tried out some of the beach, which has some soft bits but with a bit of caution seems like a good mission for another time, Moon Point to Wathumba? hmm, maybe I should get a winch as well :)

We got away a bit later than expected due to some rain in Brisbane (yes, rain!) which was good to see as we’re in the worst drought in 100 years. We arrived in the early afternoon and set up and got into the beers. Before long most people had arrived and as I was tucking into some turkeys I paxed with IP on an afternoon run.

Guru started the entertainment by driving past the “DEEP MUD” sign before finding out the mud was deep. Not sure if he needs better head lights or a snorkel for the MQ, maybe both.

Dicko was his pax so we watched him get wet attaching a snatch strap. Guru’s feet were already wet :)

After Guru drained the muddy water from his car we just wanted to get back to camp, IP’s Phat 42 decided it was time to let go of the tie rod, so that ended the fun and we got a lift back to camp to find a raging fire and many drunken monkeys. Chester saved the day with a tie rod delivery on saturday and IP was back on the tracks less than 24 hours later.

On Saturday I managed to bend a rim, it is a good thing MT/R’s are tuff tyres as they are not even scratched. Not sure where I did it, it was not a drunken night drive as some people think.

We went to collect some yabbie traps after some monkey food at the monkey mess tent but there were no yabbies to catch, on the way back we found an echidna. I hadn’t seen one of these bad boys in the wild before. Robert the property owner came out in his PJ’s to tell us we’re not allowed to drive at night, we were only getting the traps he was pretty cool with it all.

The pictures here will tell some more story, I have today off and I need to unpack and clean my car, unfortunately I cannot use my pressure cleaner, but a business can use one all day, I’ve emailed the relevant politician pointing out the irony here. How can I get the mud off my car with only a bucket of water. I do not know.

I’ll be assuming the catering position and trailering down some tables and BBQ’s, and anything else people want me to take. The food deal is it must be able to be cooked on a BBQ and handled with tongs, excluding some bread rolls and condiments of course, perhaps runny eggs will be allowed too.

Had the car serviced today in preparation, later this week I’ll be getting extractors and a horny sounding exhaust :)

 

Both the tyres and the 55 went well, Angrys truck stuck to the track when he managed to keep more than 2 tyres in the mud and Foodie is happy with the handling of the 55 offroad, he says it is much better than his old skanky hilux. He could have saved himself a lot of hassle if he just took our advice first (Waaaaaa hehe), and got a Landcruiser.

Foodie is now exempt from receiving criticism for his choice of car, from me anyway.

I’m going to eat noodles for every meal next month to pay for a new exhaust and some servicing to my car, the power steering is in its golden years but that’s going to have to wait a bit longer to be addressed.

I cut a 47mb video of yesterdays excursion, it is HERE. Only a few photos HERE and Ironpaws are HERE. :)

We were on the Mt Lindesay highway by 8am and arrived at Levuka around 10am, it was a good run being so early on Saturday. There was probably 5 other groups there and we quickly found a campsite and unloaded all our stuff and headed out to try some tracks. It had not rained much recently, so unlike our last trip the tracks were mostly easy.

The bullant track was attempted by Guru and he met the same fate as ironpaw on our last trip, we also did this unnamed gully, ironpaw only just made it up with some herbs but guru and myself who only have mud tyres were not so lucky and ended up sliding back into the gully.

The gully wouldn’t have been so bad except for the lack of track so having more than one or two attempts was really just dicing with a more difficult recovery and probably some panel damage. I should really get some recovery points on the front of my truck so we can do this again. Ironpaw’s winch passed the test dragging Guru’s MQ and my family wagon out.

A good sign of the lack of rain was the consistency of the mud in the mud pit, somewhat to ironpaws demise.

The scenery was nice, and the cows were happy.

They supply plenty of firewood at Levuka, a welcome change after camping on Fraser.

It was not so cold, and there was a good view sleeping in an open swag under the stars.

Ironpaw has photos HERE and I have some HERE.

Mungas photos are now HERE!

115mb Video is HERE

We headed up the coast in a few groups, Che5ter, Angry and Foodie and myself headed to Noosa and then up the Freshwater track. We had a few delays with some “controlled burning” which was not very controlled and we were stuck waiting around 30 minutes for a traffic controller guy to flick the sign from STOP to SLOW. That guy is lucky we were just starting holidays because any other day the sign would have been bent around his head by some impatient campers after 10 minutes. Once we got past that it was good to hit the beach and get moving closer to the beers, we had escaped civilization :)

The only obstacle we encountered after the fire was a misguided Rav4 trying to get up a choppy bit of the Freshwater track, which was snatched out impatiently by Foodie. It is funny how many people get out and dig before trying to simply reverse out. While it was a bit of an annoyance it was funny to see the Rav get skull dragged up the hill, the guy had given it enough boot to make a burning smell from the clutch and for it to hit the rev limiter :D His missus didn’t look very happy after the excerise.

Most of us gathered at Inskip Point on Wednesday night to celebrate holidays and the trip with some drinks, we were the first group to arrive so we could see where we were driving, it was entertaining watching everybody get 5m into the camp site and having to air down, lock their hubs and engage 4WD to get any further, maybe we should have warned them… nah.

Fatty gained some ProCamper points early with his erection of an uber hammock-tent hybrid which was above water at high tide. We had a fire (no fires on Fraser) and started removing some of the bulky load of cold beverages from our vehicles. Jenson caught up with us in the morning and we headed over to the Island. Everybody was on time, g00l00 would have been proud.

On the trip we now had Ironpaw, Angry, Foodie, Fatty with Whopper (how appropiate), Old Boy, Povo with Rundle, Che5ter, Jenson and myself.

Once we got off the barge and had some adjustments to our load we were under way and a couple of hours later the first stop was Orchid Beach servo.

Luckily I filled up at Rainbow Beach (Who should be forced to explain why the price of fuel is 11c more a litre for only 100k’s of sealed road further). The price at Orchid is high, but when you consider how far the fuel truck would have to go up the beach and over headlands, who cares, yer on holidays. 

Luckily I filled up at Rainbow Beach (Who should be forced to explain why the price of fuel is 11c more a litre for only 100k’s of sealed road further). The price at Orchid is high, but when you consider how far the fuel truck would have to go up the beach and over headlands, who cares, yer on holidays. From the servo we had the South Ngkala rocks bypass, it was a bit chopped up at the south entrance to the bypass. OldBoys bullbar cut itself a path out of the exit (you’ll have to buy the DVD to see full motion action) which made me a nice smooth ramp which you can see here (free 2mb preview of DVD footage). My car loves me it says so with that sharp grinding sound :)

So after some unblockage of the bypass we all got through and formed a campsite at the Sandy Cape. Hoorah.. 

So after some unblockage of the bypass we all got through and formed a campsite at the Sandy Cape. Hoorah.. 

We all kicked back and set up, surveyed our surroundings and continued the unloading of icy beverages.

End of part one.. Photo’s available. MINE IRONPAWS WHOPPERS