After our ‘practice’ hike (see previous post), I decided to take Caleb on a REAL hike, where you take everything on your back, and stay overnight.
Hiking!
As we only have one car at the moment, our hiking destination had to be
- accessible by public transport from Brisbane
- close enough to get picked up again if necessary
- achievable in one weekend
So -- I checked out RailTrails again -- they had a hike from Caboolture to Wamuran.
But that one would be 15 km to get to the campsite, and most of that through suburbia. Not so much fun, packing past wheelie bins, hostile toddlers and barking dogs!
So I started looking North -- and found the Beerburrum East State Forest was close to Elimbah Railway station (well, 5km anyway.) It’s popular 4WD, Horseriding, walking & dirt biking (and littering, it seems).
However, Elimbah? -- That’s on the Caboolture line -- and we could get there by mid-morning! Yes!
So I mapped out a route, and started planning. The groceries started to have dehydrated pasta packs in them, and some hydration water bladders arrived from Ebay.
I packed and re-packed the packs, with tent, sleeping gear, and a 3 legged camp stool (borrowed from Craig).
I opted for luxury this time, and also packed one of my “lightweight” camping stretchers. Weighing in at 4kg, it was heavy piece of luxury, but I enjoyed the sleep on it.
All up including food and water -- my pack was about 18 kilograms, and Caleb’s was a hefty 5 kilograms.
I took the Friday off, and Caleb was on school holidays, Soccer was not on either. We checked the weather -- (forecasted showers), and so off we went!
We waited for 30 minutes for the train to Caboolture..
Daniel was a bit miffed that it wasn’t his turn..
And we were off!
On arrival at Caboolture -- we caught a “Rail-Bus” to Elimbah. It seems QR doesn’t run all-stations trains to the Sunshine Coast from Caboolture very often.
First misadventure was leaving a hat on the bus! But luckily for us, there was a hardware/produce type place “Elimbah Fruit Growers Co-Op” just next to the station. I asked the lady if she had any caps or hats, and she had some promotional ones advertising some fertilizer. A small donation to the local special school was all she wanted, and we were on our way!
We hiked for the first 5 Km, and had a break. We were still fine, and feeling fresh!
We boiled a cup of coffee and had some Beef Jerky (Biltong, South African style!)
Still feeling fresh, and recharged with biltong, peanuts and smarties, we got on our way again.
After a short while, Caleb’s pack was slowing him down. So I found myself carrying two packs, which was OK for a while.
I tolerated this for about 4 km.
By 3pm we had reached our first destination. It was threatening rain, so we setup our tent & tarp straight away, followed by a fireplace.
Caleb carefully made an awesome fireplace:
Of course, we scraped all the forest litter to one side to avoid setting the forest on fire. Pays to be careful, even if showers are forecast!
That night -- we built the fire up nice and high with pine needles!
Dinner the first night was “Mega Meal” and Creamed Rice. We wanted to eat the stuff in the heavy tins first, cause the packs were causing sore shoulders.
It rained at 4am that night, but we were safe and dry. We had our hiking pots out to catch water, but it was only about 5-10mm of rain, not enough to drink.
It did wake us up though! Luckily we fell back asleep till about 7am.
The next day we decided to find the creek -- (Elimbah Creek) and get some new water to boil up.
On the way we found quite a lot of rubbish. Very Disappointing! We reckon people must come up with utes or trailers and dump all their rubbish and trash -- heaps of tyres, even a burned up car!! A few TV Sets as well.
So we got out of that area quickly -- and onto the creek we hiked. Luckily the GPS on my phone still worked, because we were on the wrong trail for a while. We would have hit the creek in another 2 km but we found a shorter way.
At 11 AM we were at the creek, and filled up our spare water bottle.
That day we set up again -- but even better this time!
We had plenty of time to chill out, and catch up on sleep -- due to the the previous night’s rain waking us up we were both tired.
We also boiled up the water -- double boiling it just to be sure.
Dinner that evening was
“dead potato” (dehydrated potato)
“cup-a-soup” with extra noodles thrown in, and 2 eggs.
Dessert: Marshmallows!
The next day we didn’t have too long to hang around, as we had a rendezvous with the rest of the family at 11AM at “The Big Fish”.
So we hot footed it down Rutters Rd, past a “pick your own strawberry farm” named Rolin Farms. Looked like a great place to take the family. We’ll go back for sure.
There were also heaps of professional fruit pickers out in the fields -- gathering all the lovely ripe strawberries in strange bicycle-wheeled carts. But we didn’t have time to hang around there and drool over the strawberries!
As time was running short, I hefted Caleb’s pack again and we hot-footed it the next 4km up to Pumicestone Passage
Just as we were pulling into the M1 Motel, we saw some awesome old Vintage motorcycles and side-cars:
And then my wife rang -- she had arrived at the motel 2 minutes before us.
No celebratory beer & pub squash for Caleb and I, it was Off Home with us!!
What an adventure! 20.3km walk, 2 nights, 6 eggs, 3 tins, 8L of water, and 2 very tired and grubby fellas.
We love Hiking!
A side note about safety -- The state forest is sadly littered with junk (near the roads, anyway). There’s a lot of motorbikes on Saturdays and Sundays, generally after 9AM. They finish off around 4pm. So be careful on the trails. Don’t camp on the trails, get off the road and into the trees.
It was still a huge adventure! Make sure you and your lad are fit, but even if you are, be prepared to heft two packs for a while.
A tarp setup is essential!
Dehydrated potato is really tasty, but quite salty -- have heaps of water on hand to drink!
Smarties are good in porridge!
Anyway -- that’s enough from us. We’ll do that again for sure.
Enjoy!
J
Looks like you two had a great time Jon!
Those pine needles really light up well!!!
I see the stool is now famous and made it in a few photos. Glad you got some use out of it.
I also saw the stool, but no mention of ’stools’!
Looks like fun, something you both will remember forever.
20K is an awesome feat.
Awesome!! Well done lads.