We are just back from a trip to Central Queensland which was pretty enjoyable, any comments on the BLOG page please.

We spent a couple of days getting to a place called Lake Elphinstone which is about 50 K’s from Nebo, inland from Mackay (sort of). Left home here a bit late but found a large free camp on the Bruce this side of Gladstone called Granite Creek. For us it was right beside the highway because of the lateness of our arrival and plenty of trucks passing in the night but it is amazing how you can ignore the noise when tired. Next morning we headed up to Rockie, then inland to Dingo, then north to Nebo, where we found a CP behind the servo for $18 a night, water power and amenities, chose your own site, thought it was a pretty good deal, and the servo has a licensed restuarant as well that does quite good food for a country place. We are finding some gems to eat at in regional areas, nothing to top Singleton NSW so far, but still looking.

Filled up all water tanks at Nebo as we usually only travel with 1/2 tanks full, used the dump point there as well and we headed off to the lake. It is a roomy place, there is an ablution block with cold showers and toilets but we are self contained so that was of no interest to us. It is a pretty roomy free camp with up to 100 there at a time, all sizes of rigs from tents to our size. The forum gathering was organised by one of the forum members and one of the attendees was a moderator, who wanted to take over, fortunately he was ignored and we never even met him. We had a few members all together, we stayed for a week and had a great time putting faces to forum names and playing Klop (look it up). We even did a trip up to Collinsville where there was a Big Rig gathering afterwards but decided not to go as it was too far out of our way. Many of these small towns are very depressed, one forum member closed on a house in Collinsville while we were there for $60K !!! 4 bedder, high set 1,000 sqm of land and huge shed.

One funny incident (at least in hindsight) happened when we were there. I have not bothered to calibrate our tank sensors so far, it is on the list of jobs to do. We carry 3 x 20 ltr plastic jerrycans in the roof of the trailer in case we ever need to empty some from the black or grey tanks. As we were going into Glenden (the nearest town 25 K away) for supplies we decided to take a bit of black water as well, as we had not decided when to leave at that time. So we were filling the first container ( the macerator pump pushes it out very quickly) and neither of us was watching closely. Next thing May who was holding the hose got a drenching before I could turn the pump off. She sees the funny side now but did not at the time, I just wanted to get the others filled so I could clean everything up and she did a bit of complaining, something about being covered in poo water, with me telling her she complained too much !! At last we were done and she could have a good scrub ! She is getting a few yards out of that story, at my expense, believe me.

The mod mentioned earlier made some inapproriate comments about a forum member, without censure from the forum owner, which of course forum members are not allowed to do. This was unacceptable to me so I no longer post there. Amazing how a stupid. single person can stuff it for others.

We left the lake after a week or so and head back down to the Gemfields. We intended to be in one place for quite a few days while we waited for the field trip to start so rang the Rubyvale Caravan Park who said they had a spare spot. I did tell them it was a big rig but between several conversations between the husband and wife owners (they had just taken over a couple of weeks ago) that seemed to get lost so they were a bit surprised when we pulled in, but actually found room for us that they did not know they had. Lovely couple, we will stay there again, but this time use the overflow area they did not know they had control of when we first arrived. As I said, just taken over.

While there we attended Gemfest at Anakie over several days and did some digging for sapphires with the Caboolture gem club, without much success. The members on the field trip visited the Gemfields gem club one day and one of the members there told us of a mine selling wash (the stuff the sapphires are found in) with lots of gems in it. We visited there and bought a $15 bag of wash and withing minutes May had a handful of sapphires. This made me happy as the old saying “happy wife, happy life” is pretty true. Other trips to Clermont and Springsure rounded out that particular field trip, and when it started to rain at Springsure we decided to head for the coast, rain all the way until we came to Granite Creek rest area again. The next morning on the way home saw some niggling electrical problems with the thermatic fans that have taken 2 years to develop, but have really increase the fans output when fixed so all good in the long run. Home with no other problems so it was into the shed with VP and get ready to tackle the few minor changes we want to make.