Kalbar -Lake Cressbrook

We stayed at the Kalbar Showgrounds for 8 nights and enjoyed every moment, Kalbar makes a great stop over for visiting nearby towns & attractions. 40klms from Ipswitch, 10klms from Boonah and 8klms from the well known Aratula Bakery. Boonah by the way has the best valued Hamburgers i have eaten, so good we went back twice :-)

Showgrounds Kalbar


Each day we went for a drive around just checking out little towns and taking in the stunning scenery, Mt French National Park has a fabulous lookout with an easy walk, Moogerah Dam is well worth a look but unfortunately like Marroon Dam it doesn't allow camping.

Moogerah Dam




Harry the caretaker at the Showgrounds kept us entertained with his remote control car's, he has around 15 of them and majority are 1/8th scale and nitro powered, they certainly fly around, Harry doesn't race them preferring to just fiddle around with them and watching them do wheel stands for hundreds of metres. I helped mow the grounds a second time before we said our goodbyes to Harry & Gus his American Staffy and left for Somerset Dam.

Friendly Green Tree Frog


Somerset is only 20klms from our destination Kilcoy but we thought we may spend the week here before the end of the Month, plenty of Red Claw to catch apparently. We were surprised & shocked at the cost to stay at the tourist park, $28pn for unpowered is extreme for what is a SEQ Water Supply, plus on top of that it was $15 licence to put the power boat in the water plus a Qld Freshwater fishing licence.

Somerset Dam



We stayed 3 nights, the 2nd day i drove to Cooroy and had the Hobie Kayak replaced under warranty [again] Sunstate Hobie are the Qld agents for Hobie and they were very helpful & understanding of our run of bad luck, a quick phone call and Hal arranged to exchange our's for a new one, this time i was able to choose my colour and opted for the original Sage version, i never liked that bright yellow! Whilst there i purchased some trolley wheels, a rod holder and anchor.

On the return trip i stopped at Forest Glen Bakery just off the Bruce Highway, this would rank as one of my top bakery's we have indulged at, certainly on par with Freddo's at Kempsey.

Back at Somerset The weather was very humid and the water was rough, but i had to try my luck on the Red Claw so i purchased the fishing licence and used the kayak to get out and drop the nets, the Opera Style nets are allowed here in Qld and i had two, the bait used can be Dog Biscuits or Fruit, i was told Rock Melon worked well. Having only dog biscuits i tried them first with no luck, so i changed bait to banana & tomato and caught 3 in one net, nothing in the other. I spoke to one camper who proudly told us they caught 90 that morning !!

Red Claw


David & Maureen came and visited us the last night we were there, we had a BBQ tea and had a lovely evening chatting about everything, it has been agreed that we get to the property on Thursday of this week so with that date set we left Somerset the next morning and headed to Crows Nest & Lake Cressbrook.

A quick visit at Esk and we followed the signs to Crows Nest, the road we took had some signs saying Truck & Caravan turn around ahead, and then another sign saying Unsuitable for Caravans, Vickie was a bit worried but i ignored the signs and continued on, the road was bitumen for most of its 56klms length, gravel for around 20klms, it had a few steep sections over the Bluff but nothing that was a concern to the F250, it certainly wasn't a daunting road as the signs suggested.

Coming into Crows Nest from a direction we had not been i allowed the GPS to navigate us to where we wanted to go, with a slight hiccup where we visited the National Park first and then a major stuff up where we journeyed through the bush following a narrow trail that took us to a dead end after 17klms, we could see where we needed to be, the problem was we were on the opposite side of the Lake! Bloody GPS Navigation cannot be trusted. Backtracking all the way to the highway soon had us where we should have been. We have visited Lake Cressbrook before and knew that there was a charge of $2.50 gate entry, camp fee's had risen slightly to $7.50pp. It is a lovely spot with plenty of kangaroo's, some Bucks were absolutely massive in size, their forearms were huge!

Lake Cressbrook Camp


Vickie's back is playing up again so we treated the stay there as a relax and read, i had set up the satellite dish and it drizzled rain most of the time. We need to get a prescription filled for Vick so we moved this morning and now at the Crows Nest Caravan Park, the very 1st Van park we have stayed in since leaving home. Chemist is not open on Sunday's so tomorrow we will get that done and move on and find a free camp somewhere else.