Boynedale Bush Camp, Queensland

Friday May 26th saw us bid farewell to Rockhampton and travel a short distance South to Boynedale Bush Camp. We skirted Rockhampton and followed the Bruce Highway south until Calliope. The highway was in good condition and better than we remember from our previous trip. A bit of road construction slowed us down but they did seem to be actually accomplishing something which makes it worthwhile! From Calliope we travelled South West for 25Km arriving at Boynedale Bush Camp which is on the Southern end of Lake Awoonga and the Boyne River. The road from Calliope was fairly narrow but sealed up until the exit to the camp. There is a short 2Km dirt road into the camping area from the road. Near the start of the road is a lookout, toilet, and picnic are overlooking the Lake/River.

We travelled down the hill arriving at a large grassy area near the water with about 20-25 camping groups already set up. That being said there was heaps of room and we found a nice spot near the fence at the back of the area. We parked so we were facing towards the lake which turned out to be a good choice as the sun was primarily at our backs through the late afternoons. As you can see there was lots of space and we weren't too crowded. There are limited facilities here with only a couple of pit toilets and no drinking water. The toilets were chemical ones and didn't smell too badly although when the wind blew the wrong direction we got a bit more than we bargained for!

The spaces filled up considerably during the Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. Would have probably been 50 groups by Saturday night and we did get one group fairly close to us. That being said there was still quite a bit of open space and luckily none of the groups carried on late into the evenings. Sandra and I joked that we were the last few people up a couple of nights when we retired at 9PM.

There were lots of family groups and seemed a favourite location for the locals from Calliope and Gladstone. A number of people had boats and kayaks to explore the lake/dam. Didn't see a lot of fish being caught but there was some people catching red claw.

We enjoyed lovely relaxing days at the camp enjoying walks up to the lookout each morning to get our exercise ( and utilizing the toilet there that wasn't used much)! We met our camping neighbour, Jeff from Rockhampton who was enjoying a week of quiet away from work, and enjoyed a few conversations and drinks in the afternoons.

This was our first real stint of free camping during the trip and we got to test out our solar capabilities etc. Between the Caravan solar and the foldable solar blanket for the car battery pack we managed to keep everything fully charged for the full four days. The weather was cooperative with lots of sun and we didn't have TV signal which saved the batteries a bit. That being said we remained at full charge and were able to recharge phones, tablets, laptops etc each day as well. I fired up the new Honda generator on the last day for an hour just to test it out. All was good with it as well! We managed to be fairly frugal with our water supply and could have probably gone another two days without issue. All in all it was a good test of our free camping capabilities.

On the Monday we took a day trip to explore the local area on the Gladstone/Monto road. The road South crossed the Boyne River a number of times as well as some fairly large creeks. Because of the recent rainfalls there was considerable water in at most of the crossings. We understand from our conversations with Jeff that this is a rarity in this region of Australia.

We travelled through Ubobo and Builyan before arriving in Many Peaks. We had planned to have lunch at the pub in Many Peaks but as luck would have it they were closed for the day for a family issue. The drive had been good and we were there earlier than we expected so we decided to do a bit more exploring. We decided to return to Ubobo and take the road West towards Kroombit Tops National Park. We had considered this drive from Monto when we stayed at Cania Gorge but had decided against it.

Ubobo was a nice small town with a bit of a camping area at the town information centre. It looked OK and appears quite reasonable with some services. As it turned out we should have stopped here for directions as we had some difficulties later. We proceeded towards Kroombit tops through a series of rural roads/tracks. It was a lovely drive with more creek crossings and rolling hills. Lots of cattle as well to keep your attention focussed on driving carefully. The road condition was relatively good although dirt. Wouldn't be a good road when wet and a number of creek crossings would be flooded.

There were also a number of signs directing us towards Kroombit Tops. Unfortunately these signs proved to be worse than unreliable. I had programmed the location into the Tom Tom as well and all was proceeding nicely until we approached an intersection indicating a Homestead. The Tom Tom indicated to take the turn left towards the Homestead which made sense to my mind as well. Unfortunately, there was a signpost very clearly indicating to continue on the road to the right. We sat for a few minutes before deciding to trust the signage (Tom Tom has let me down more than once before). A bit further down the road we came to another intersection and a sign indicating to continue on the road to the right. All this time Tom Tom was telling me to reverse direction. To make a long story short after quite some time we found someone parked at the side of the road and confirmed the directions. Turns out the GPS was right all along! Unfortunately we were almost back to Calliope by this time so gave up on our quest and returned home to the caravan. Kroombit Tops will have to remain on our adventure list for another visit. Although disappointing that we didn't get to our destination the drive was beautiful and well worth doing

On Monday afternoon we packed up and prepared to leave for our next stop. We had afternoon drinks with two other couples around the fire before dinner. We really enjoyed our time at Boynedale and look forward to returning some day. Would be a great location for a large group of people to get away together!