ANZAC Day Long Weekend - Camping at Undara

On the ANZAC Day long weekend this year (25th- 27th April), we went out camping at Undara. There was no 4wding (as you can probably tell by the Mazda and Kia that came with us!), but we did take the Pathfinder (all our stuff wouldn't fit in the little car!), and the camping was lovely. We went with Jess' parents and Karina and Graham - friends through work.

Undara is about 3.5hrs south-west of Cairns. We left by 8 on ANZAC morning to hopefully beat the crowds. First stop was at the servo at the bottom of the Gillies Range to fuel up and meet our camping buddies. We left there just after 8:30 after topping up fuel tanks and iceboxes. The Gillies range is quite famous amongst motorcyclists at least, due to it's tight, winding corners as it climbs up the side of the range. Guard rails are completely unknown up here, and you really don't want to go over the edge!

The Gillies, however, is also well known for sometimes being a very slow trip. Lake Tinaroo is situated just at the top of the range, and is very popular with caravans, camper trailers, and mostly, ski boats. So it's not uncommon to find yourself crawling up the mountain behind a string of cars, all headed by a 1950's era slide-on camper towing a 1960's runabout. Thankfully we had a really good run up, and were off on our way very smartly. I've mentioned about the Gillies here, as it comes in again at the end...

We stopped briefly at Innot Hot Springs - about 45 mins before Undara. Innot Hot Springs consists of a little town, and caravan park, and a creek. As you can probably guess, the creek is home to the hot springs. We walked down until we came to some - the clearer the water, the hotter it is! There were some puddles that you were unable to stick your hand in for any length of time, such was the temperature of the water straight out of the ground. Amazing stuff, and we're penciled it in as a future spot to check out over a weekend, despite the sometimes overpowering sulphur odour!

We arrived at Undara around lunch time, and promptly checked in and headed off to our assigned sites. Upon arriving, we discovered that the sites that we had been assigned (the ones we had specifically requested!) were really not that flash. No shade, rock ground, and heaps of ants. Additionally, there were a pair of rude german tourists camped there still, despite checkout being 3 hours earlier! When we asked if they were leaving soon, they simply answered "no", and went back to reading their books! However a quick trip back to the office soon had us relocated to much, MUCH nicer spots! We set up, happy in the knowledge that we had had the last laugh!



The new awning worked a treat. It would have been even better if we had put some thought into where to park the car so that we could get the most shade out of it, but hey - now we know for next time.



It wasn't long before some locals joined us.









The remainder of the day was spent lounging around, and generally enjoying being in the great outdoors.



Saturday morning we had organised to go on a tour of the lava tubes. As it turns out, there was a Camp Quality event at the campground that weekend, so we ended up needing two of the minibuses to take us all into the national park!

The change in scenery was quite dramatic. From rocky, open grasslands:



Into tight, cool rainforest as you descend down into the collapsed sections of tube:



It wasn't long before we came to the first section of tube, known as The Arch (for obvious reasons):



The patterns and the colours in the rock are quite amazing. The guide explained to us that, despite the roof and walls being covered in deep cracks, it was actually these cracks that keep the tubes intact, in the same way that a stone archway is held together by interlocking blocks:





Some of the spots made you think you had stepped out into a whole new world:



We even met some of the locals up close (a bit too close for Jess' liking!!!):





We eventually made our way to the larger of the two tubes we were going to visit. This one is known as Stephenson's. Due to the larger than average rainfall we have had so far this year, there was actually water pooling in the bottom of the tube. Apparently this only happens roughly once in every 20 years, so we felt quite lucky to be here at such a time.



The adventurous ones in the group were invited to take off shoes and socks and roll up jeans, and follow down into the tube itself. The water ended up being half way to knee height at the deepest sections, and completely clear.







Unfortunately, it was soon time to climb back out and up to the surface. We felt very privileged to be able to experience such a thing - it certainly felt very strange to be underground, in a huge rock cavern carved out of the earth by molten lava, standing in cool, clear water. By now, however, it was midday, and the temperature back on the savannah was considerably warmer than down in the rainforest and tubes!



That afternoon the girls decided to try out the brand new camp oven, and whip up some damper. Having never made damper before, nor used a camp oven, it was always going to be a bit hit and miss. However, I can happily report that they nailed it first go!



Is there anything better in the world than sitting around a fire out in the bush, surrounded by birds and inquisitive hoppers, piece of freshly cooked and buttered damper in one hand, and a cold beer in the other, watching the sun set?



Following the success of the damper, the girls decided to try their hand at a camp oven roast. Due to the smaller size of the oven and the 6 of us, the meat and onions went into the oven, whilst the veggies were wrapped up in individual foil packages, and thrown into the coals to cook separately.

A little too much enthusiastic fire-building around the sides of the camp oven saw the onions meet an untimely demise, but the meat came out absolutely perfect!



A glass or two of red wine, some roast beef with veggies whilst sitting around a camp fire - what a way to end the day!



Sunday morning we woke up and set to packing up early to hit the road back. A bit of a waste of a day, but we wanted to avoid all those ski boats that would be heading home down the Gillies when we got there if we had left any later.

So, why all the emphasis at the start about the fun that is the Gillies range? Well, we'd been seeing increasingly poor fuel economy out of the pathfinder over the preceding weeks. In round town driving, we were getting perilously close to 20L/100kms - a $90 tank of fuel would last a week and about 300kms. With the car loaded to the hilt with our junk, the awning and poles on the roofrack, the trip up the Gillies and through the windy, rainforrest Tableland roads, we ended up averaging 11.7L/100kms for the trip out there and back. Around 560kms on 66L of fuel. So I'm pretty happy with that now. Especially considering that when we drove our little baby Subaru from Bris to Cairns, with a very light load and nothing external to the car, we were getting about 10L/100kms on the highway. Given the driving that we did (I wasn't exactly slow up the Gillies) and the load that we had on, I'm really happy with that result. At the same time though, I'm still keeping an eye on those FWH's on 4x4parts... :lol:

Anyway, that was our lovely weekend away. It's just reinforced our resolve to get out more often over winter this year - there's so many interesting places that are well within half a day's drive, yet so far removed from the city. Now that we're reasonably well set up on the camping front, I'm keen to start finding some more out of the way places where we can be by ourselves, instead of needing to ask others to turn their music down, and move out of our camp sites, and so on!

I can heartily recommend spending a few days at Undara if any of you are ever up this way - it really is a wonderful place. The facalities are very good, and the staff are all friendly, helpful and lovely. We'll defiantly be going back at some stage to explore some of the longer bush walks, but we've got a few places on our list to knock over before then!

I'll leave you all with some piccies of some of the other locals to share breakfast with us.
More photos can be found in our Picasa album, here: Picasa Album - Camping at Undara

Thanks!
Matto :)

Butcher Bird:


Kookaburras:





Rainbow Lorikeets:

DIY Vehicle Mounted Awning

Thought I'd share a quick little project that we whipped up over the weekend. Since buying the Pathfinder, I've been increasingly jealous of these lucky folk with vehicle-mounted roll-out awnings. I'm far too skint to pony up the $500 for a pre-built unit. Courtesy of this thread ( http://www.4wdmonthly.com.au/forum/f39/awnings-43572/ - specifically post #17 by hookedon4wding), I came across these guys : http://www.infrontcampinggear.com.au/category2_1.htm and started to put a plan into action. I traded emails with Klaus, the owner of the business, who seems a really helpful character - they can pretty much customise the product as much as you want to get the result you're after. Their customer service was spot on, emails were returned very promptly, and nothing seems too much trouble for Klaus at all.

Unfortunately, that was still a bit too rich for my back pocket at this stage. I'm sure if you were going to use it every weekend it would be wonderful, but we don't get out that often. As it happens though, we were at a local camping store on the weekend for a completely unrelated venture, and they had a great special going on some super-heavy-duty silver tarps. So, armed with my trusty credit card, and following a stop off to everyone's favourite Bunnings, we came away with the following swag:



1 x awesome tarp - something like 2.5m x 4.2m, I think - $22
1 x 25mm x 25mm square section aluminium tube - 3m length - $26
4 x adjustable tent poles - $9ea
1 x adjustable spreader bar - $13
1 x roll of 1" wide velcro strap - $25
6 x pegs, 6 x rope adjusters, peg bag, yellow nylon rope - $cheap
assorted s/s bolts, U-bolts, washers, etc. - $expensive

I already had the:
1 x dog - low intelligence, but lovable - $expensive

Using my extensive workshop / fabrication facility / BBQ food prep area (complete with high-tech tools like the $3 hacksaw), I set to work. First job, cut the Al square-section to length:



Once the aluminium was cut down, we aligned the tarp, and drilled the mounting holes to attach the d-rings to the al. All bolts and fittings are (as mentioned) stainless steel, so rust shouldn't be a problem. I've since reversed the orientation of the bolts that secure the tarp, such that the nut is on the bottom of the aluminium tube. This has allowed me to use spring-washers on all of them, hopefully securing them against coming loose by the vibrations of the car. I hope.



Once the tarp was attached to the al, it was mocked up on the car, and the location of the roof-rack cross-rails was marked. The U-bolt mounting holes were marked out and drilled, and after a bit of fiddling about due to the lack of correctly-sized drill bits, the U-bolts were fitted up nicely.



The awning was then trial-fitted to the car, attached securely to the roofracks, and we set it up to see how it went. Using the nylon rope and the rope adjusters, we made our own guy ropes to suit the height that we wanted to use the awning at. It's super-high in the photos, due to the driveway sloping away from the yard. I'm reasonably tall, so we wanted a nice tall centre peak, but it's a bit ridiculous in the pics!

One problem that I'm still thinking about is how to get a good knot using the nylon rope. As anyone who's ever used the stuff can tell you, it's too slippery against itself, and tends to undo itself if not kept under tension (like, say, when it's all coiled up in the peg bag). I've toyed with the idea of melting it onto itself, but I've had very bad results with that in the past - it's weakened the rope and it's just snapped. The only other idea I've got is using some sort of crimping figure-8 - something that I can feed the rope through one hole, then back through the other, and crimp it down to hold it. But I've no idea if such a thing even exists, much less whether it would actually work.



If attempting something like this, here's a vital measurement to keep in mind right from the start:



Don't ask me how I know! Luckily by the time I'd started drilling, I'd worked it out. It gets the seal of approval from both the foremen on the job.



With everything pulled down, the tarp rolls up nicely to snug up against the aluminium. Strips of velcro were cut to length, and secure it nicely against the car:



The tarp itself seems to sag a bit at the front, but the aluminium is still nice and straight and solid, so I don't envisage it being a huge problem:



Close up of the awning mounted to the cross-rails via the U-bolts. I may look at getting some rubber to go between the u-bolts and the roof rack, just to isolate the vibrations and to prevent damage to the cross-rails. My current plan is to use it and keep an eye on it, and see if it's needed or not.



Following the trial fit, the only thing left to do was to somehow secure the velcro straps to the awning, so that we didn't lose them when we set up camp. This was simply a matter of drilling holes on the inside of the aluminium tube, and then using little al pop rivets behind large washers to hold the strips on. The velcro itself seems very strong - hard to cut, hard to poke a hole through - I think this should last a while. Worst case, it's easy to drill out the rivets and try something else.



The only thing left to do is to organise a cheap pole bag to hold all the poles and pegs and ropes, and it will be just like a pro one. I'm thinking of splurging for a canvas bag from the InFront Camping mob, so I can get it made the exact right length to suit the oversized spreader bar. I toyed with rolling the poles up inside the tarp, but they've all got big wingnut adjusters on the side of them, and the extra weight and bulk would make rolling the tarp up reasonably difficult. Once we get a basket to go on the roof racks, they can live in there. In the meantime, they can go in the back with everything else.

So all in all, a successful job on a good budget. I've no doubt that a canvas awning would last longer if you were using it every weekend. Also, the rope-less quick setup of something like a commercial OpenSky awning would be very advantageous for quick stops or day trips. However, for the money we have saved, I'll take the 10 mins to set it up each time. It's not for everyone, but for our purposes it will be spot on. We're planning on testing it out over the Anzac day long weekend - we're thinking of taking an extra day off each side and making a 5 day trip out of it. At this stage we'll either be heading west to Undara and the lava tubes, or north to the Lions Den, via the Bloomfield track.

Thanks for looking! If anyone's got any suggestions, please feel free to chime in! (And don't worry about the state of the car - washing it is number 1 on my list of jobs to do this afternoon! Although it's nice to be able to show people that it does, occasionally, get used offroad! Not much beats a bit of mud in the poseur stakes!)