I acknowledge the Wakka Wakka people, Traditional Custodians of the land on which we spent our holiday, and pay my respects to their Elders past and present.
Our final camping destination while in Queensland was Kenilworth Homestead. After our pit stop back in town we felt prepared to tackle four more days of unpowered camping life. We repacked the cars and headed back up the highway, I was starting to feel like a Brisbane local, finding my way to shops and onto the Bruce Highway without the GPS.
Kenilworth is a small town in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland, and the homestead turned out to be only 3 minutes’ drive from the town centre. Bitti and I stopped on the deserted main drag first to pick up bread and counted a small supermarket, bottle-o, cafe, bakery, chemist and servo. All except the bottle-o and servo closed, it being 2.30 pm. We met up with R and found a nice little spot to set up our tents under the shade of a band of tall trees, a short walk from the ‘Turtle Swimming Hole’ on the Mary River.
The next 4 days were idyllic. The weather could not have been better; a light breeze in the mornings and evenings to cool us down, and a hot sun in clear skies during the day. At night every campsite had a fire going, and the first night we were unprepared for this (coming from SA where fires in summer are a big no-no), but the kids went over to the next campsite and asked to ‘borrow’ some firewood. Well, we should have asked the kids to beg for us earlier, they came back with half a bag of firewood! We had a bit of trouble getting it going without kindling, but ‘The Diesel Man’ came past in a golf cart just after dark and lit it right up for us! He acted like he worked at the homestead, but we still aren’t really sure?
All four kids disappeared into the copse nearby to set up a ‘secret hideout’ and left R and I free to chat and relax! Amazing. There was also a perfect climbing tree right above our tents so Bitti and C spent much of their time lounging up there like cheetahs surveying the Savannah.
Our swimming spot on the river was quite shallow on one side, becoming deeper with a swift current in the middle, so we spent a lot of time calling the kids back to bank. They really do have a death wish. Bitti and I swam out to a half-submerged fallen tree, whose roots provided an excellent climbing challenge. Many of the ‘big’ kids were jumping off it into the deeper water, but Bitti had learnt her drowning lesson at Sandstone. She has fortunately also absorbed my stories about not jumping into murky water and was tut-tutting at the kids jumping in. We only wanted for proper tyre inner tubes so we could float downstream; I dimly recalled my pre-kid travel days when I spent a day floating down a river in the Guatemalan mountains, drinking beer and waving at local kids on the bank. No such peace on this trip!
We headed into Kenilworth at lunch on the second day and found quite a different place! The bakery was packed, with a line down the street waiting for doughnuts. It turned out the bakery is a 98-year-old heritage listed affair whose offerings are famous in the region. It is also home to the ‘1kg donut challenge’, which sounded sickening to me, but appealing to Bitti. She just managed to select from the 20 or so varieties of doughnut on offer and we headed to the shady town playground to eat.
There were a LOT of dogs in the park and Bitti had to pat them all—this has become something of a tradition for her nowadays; she has to stop to pat every dog she sees. Although ‘stop to pat’ can also mean, ‘chase down the street shouting, “can I pat your dog?”‘. The best dog so far has been a very friendly and fat border collie we met at a Lego haven.
The Brick Zone in Maleny, a cute and touristic hinterland town about 45-minutes from Kenilworth along a windy, scenic mountain road. Although they were closed, Richard, the owner of The Brick Zone said we could come and show the kids his collection. Well, it was the hit of the trip for Bitti. He had thousands of sets displayed, including an Eiffel Tower, Colosseum, Taj Mahal, then vast collections of Star Wars, Harry Potter and LoTR Lego, ranging from original era to present day sets. It certainly gave Bitti some ideas about what she could build next! Richard gave us a personal tour through the collection and was pretty pleased about the enthusiasm Bitti was showing for LoTR.
It was with great reluctance that we packed up the campsite on our last morning. It had been a wonderful spot and I would definitely return. We decided to try for a beach swim at Noosa again on the way home. This time I found a good park near Hastings St and we hit the surf at around lunchtime. Bitti absolutely loved the ‘big’ waves and she kept inching further and further out to sea. The kids played for about 90 minutes until it was time to get back to the cars before the parking inspector did.
Bitti and I drove back to Brisbane on a high, but ready to sleep on a real mattress and have a badly needed shower. Bitti and I collected all our gear from R’s sister’s house and bid everyone farewell, we would be staying in a hotel in South Bank for the last 2 nights of our trip.
Two Little Travellers 