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Travels in the Heart of Gold

 

by Joy Window

We've finally decided on a name for the Kombi - the Heart of Gold. It's from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, after the superstarship stolen by the galactic president, the two-headed Zaphod Beeblebrox. The starship has an engine called the "infinite improbability drive". You will find out the connection with the Kombi as the story proceeds.

We packed the Kombi, finding all sorts of nooks and crannies to put things. I'm used to packing a backpack or a motorcycle pannier (maximum weight 10 kg), so I was delighted to have more space for field guides, notebooks, sketching equipment and binoculars. With its cute little sink, stove, refrigerator and table, bedroom with cupboards, and curtains and skylight, it's somewhat like "Brambley Hedge" on wheels, but without the little Edwardian mice in dresses. Originally I wanted to name it the Canary Coloured Cart after Toad's gypsy caravan in "Wind in the Willows", but Andrew loathes Toad, so the associations were not right. Besides, the canary cart came to a disastrous end at the hands of a Motor Car.

Neither of us had camped in a van before. The electricity and gas were not working so we determined to "picnic out" when possible. Lack of electricity also meant we went to bed very early, and got up very early. We soon developed a routine, however, and the van became a little sanctuary for us.

We headed north through Brisbane to the first stop, Caloundra. We'd intended to stop first in Moreton Bay, but found it was too suburban for our tastes. In fact it's the seashore of Brisbane city. Caloundra is a small, tourist-oriented city, but with a pleasant beach and caravan park. The reef on the beach, a good minute's walk from where the Heart of Gold was parked, was an excellent spot for finding smashed up shells, which give an idea of what lives in the sand and immediate subtidal area.

After the sun sank, we took a torch and investigated the other main reef along Dicky Beach. It was quite bare, but there were a lot of crabs, which normally hide out in the daytime. We'd hoped to find octopus, but no such luck.

Returning to the Heart of Gold, we arranged the bedding and were startled, then overjoyed, to hear in the distance the tones of a bagpiper! Andrew donned his shoes and went out to talk to the guy, and reassure him we loved the sound (he wasn't too bad at all). This guy had been studying for just over a year, lived in the park, and practised occasionally in an area away from people.

Next day, after a surprisingly comfortable sleep (and not too much bumping into each other), we explored the main drag of Caloundra as well as the seashore nearer the centre of town. We drove up to Mooloolabah where there was an aquarium ("Underwater World"). Prices to enter were steep ($19 each!), and the place was certainly not as good as the Sydney or Manly aquariums, but the one saving grace was a fantastic display of jellyfish - moon jellies, sea gooseberries (ctenophores with their rippling colours) and others. This all took longer than we'd thought, so we booked in for another night at Caloundra.

After breakfast we drove to Noosa, which is famous as a tourist attraction. The township was not as built-up as we had feared. We wandered around the upmarket shops (discovered a wonderful bead shop) and checked out the Noosa caravan park which was sited on the bank of the river, but was extremely crowded. So we drove further on to Tewantin, where the CV park was much quieter if not so scenic.

Next day we went further north to Rainbow Beach. This looked promising on the map, being at the end of 65 km of road through national park. In fact when we got there, we discovered it was the place nearest Fraser Island (the largest sand island in the world and very popular with tourists), and had great numbers of those large eco-tour all-terrain vehicles, plus fishermen in their fancy 4WDs, all zooming (and I mean zooming) along the beach itself. With all the children and adult pedestrians, and the beach very narrow, I felt quite unsafe walking along the beach having to watch out for these vehicles which seem to weave along the sand. Apparently there are 200 metre high cliffs of coloured sand 2 km down the beach, which is where the tours were going. The local shops had many photos of "dead" 4WDs the owners of which had misread the tides or could not drive adequately in the conditions, and which had met their ends on the rocks or in the sinking sands of Rainbow Beach.

Next day we felt it was time to move inland. The seaside seemed to be hot, unpleasant and full of noisy people.

Eumundi is a market town in the true sense of the word. Most of the shops close down all week except for Wednesadys and Saturdays, when the "world-famous Eumundi markets" happen. And they are very good indeed. And very packed as well. The CV park was very pleasant, quiet and cool. After spending a few hours in town, we retreated to the CV park pool and sat and read and vegged out - we stayed there two days recouperating.

Then on to Maleny (ex-home of the famous folk festival which doesn't appear to be very folky any more, and has moved to Woodford) and to Bribie Island. The way up to Maleny was a steep mountainous road. Andrew did not turn the van well at an intersection, and it stalled. This is where the name of the Kombi comes in. On the way up, we'd stopped for petrol, and the van refused to start. We waited 15 minutes or so, and it started fine. Andrew had read that this hot-start problem was not uncommon with Kombis (this was confirmed by George the Wonder Mechanic and VW specialist when we returned home). Since the probability of the Kombi starting varies with the amount of heat energy in the engine bay, and the starship "Heart of Gold" was powered by the Brownian motion in a really hot cup of tea, and the Kombi is yellow, the name "Heart of Gold" was appropriated. We have figured out ways to deal with it, so it's no longer a problem.

Bribie Island is only one and a half hours north of Brisbane, so it wasn't a surprise that it was crowded on a Sunday. One side is a surf beach (what surf?) and the other faces the mainland. We couldn't stand the thought of yet another crowded and noisy seaside caravan park, so we drove home. After a few days recovering and seeing a friend who came up from Sydney to visit, we packed up and headed out on the second leg of the trip.

This trip was very different to the last one, in that we just mooched along the coast from Ballina down to Coffs Harbour, stopping in on some of those those little towns you fly past on your way to somewhere else, wondering what they're like. Now we know!

We also had more technology this time. We invested in a cable to hook up to a powered site, so that we could read in the evenings rather than bedding down with the sun, and I bought a small jug for boiling water for cups of tea and heating the washing-up water. Andrew reckons at this rate of technology increase, we'll have a dishwasher installed in a couple of weeks.

The first night we stayed at a caravan park in Yamba. We wandered around the town and the beaches and rocky headlands, and watched the surflifesavers practising rowing their very long boats. That night we had a heavy thunderstorm, and the rain absolutely bucketed down. We were warm and dry in the van, though we did note down some tiny leaks in the window to be fixed on the next visit to the panel beater.

Next we stayed a couple of nights at a caravan park at Wooli. We had a site right on the river, very picturesque. In fact, we stayed there 2 nights.

Minnie Waters is a tiny place just to the north of Wooli, and has an extremely good set of rock pools. Perhaps being part of the Solitary Islands Marine Reserve helps. The park on the cliff above the pools held 6 massive yellow-tailed black cockatoos. They were contentedly ripping apart the seeds of a yellow banksia tree with their great beaks and claws. Very impessive.

The beach below held a dead hammerhead shark. It was a small one, only 4 feet long. They are peculiar looking things, and it's sad to see them dead. The rock pools themselves had lots of live animals of all sorts - a "must return" situation. The road out of Wooli yielded a surprise - two great emus sauntering across the road, on their way to the freshwater lake for a drink, and Andrew had to do a big 'dodge' to miss them. I hadn't seen emus in the wild for ages. They don't look good in zoos, but somehow they look 'right' in the wild.

We looked around Grafton. The only interesting thing was an extremely good exhibition at the regional art gallery. The ceramics were superb, and a set of charcoal or pencil drawings also very good.

The following day we spent in Coffs Harbour, mainly in the Park Beach Plaza, where we discovered Pages bookshop. Anywhere with a decent bookshop rises in my estimation. I know I have spent too long in the 'backwaters' when shopping malls start to look interesting.

So although we saw only 10 rock platforms out of the possible 24 (some were inaccessible without a 4WD, and others we didn't have time for, but can come back later), we got a good idea of the countryside.