Lake Tinnaroo

Lake Tinnaroo, What a beautiful place.



Whilst we were camped at the Bushtracker Muster at Herberton i mentioned that we would be camping out at Tinnaroo after the muster, Muzza & Judy, Noel & Denise, & Roscoe & Chris were also keen so we all drove out to do a recce and decided that Fong On Bay would best suit us. Being a Qld National Park all bookings are either placed via the net or by phone, as it turned out the system was down for the weekend but 1st thing Monday morning i got on and booked some space for us. Fong On Bay has a maximum limit of approx 250 campers and with the School Holidays coming up the following weekend we were hoping to get in before the rush.



Muzza & Judy and ourselves booked for 4 days and the others booked for 3, arriving at Fong On Bay on Wednesday we were relieved to see the place nearly empty, on the track in we met two other Bushtrackers leaving and apart from them there was only two other tents set up but things were to change come Friday afternoon with a steady procession of cars and boats arriving for the weekend and holidays.

The weather for the 1st 2 days was hot & clear sky's, we were all monitoring our solar systems and all it took was one of us to call out "26.7 amps coming in & 13.5 volts" and the rest of us were checking and calling out similar figures, it was good fun and kept us all on our toes. All the vans produced very similar results and we all had fully charged batteries.

We set our camp up in a square and had a central area for our fire's, at one stage we had Muzza's 'GRUNTER', Roscoe's 'MICKEY MOUSE', Noel's 'TANKARD' and our 'KIMBLE' fires all going in competition. Noel & I agreed that our's were the best & the most simple of designs, Muz & Roscoe agreed to disagree, it was all good fun.



The 2nd night it was agreed that we would have a progressive dinner with each of the girls making something. It was a meal fit for any restaurant, with soup for entree, mains consisted of Thai Chicken & Cheesy Meatballs and desert was sticky date pudding. Let me say that 'camping tucker' is not boring with the talents of these girls.

Vickie & i have two Hobie Kayak's, one an inflatible and the other a hard plastic version and i soon had them both set up and ready to take out the Opera House nets to catch a feed of Red Claw, we all produced a different bait to put in the nets, from can's of cat food, dog biscuits, potatoe, rockmelon, avacado, banana. Noel even bought out some clams. All baits caught something but the dog biscuits ruled supreme with the most caught.






We managed to catch enough in the 1st couple of days to have a 'RED CLAW' cooking night, one of Judy's many talents lay in cooking and she made us all a lovely Paella consisiting of Fish, Pork, Prawns & red Claw with rice, she also prepared some with Garlic sauce and Vickie boiled the rest up. Denise made a lovely loaf of bread to accompany it. To top it all off Judy excelled again with the most delicious Mocha Cheese Cake.

Saturday, it was raining this morning as Vickie and i went out to collect all the nets. Another dozen nice sized Red Claw which we gave to Judy. Noel & Denise and Roscoe & Chris have left us but not before we again compared solar inputs, not quite as significant as the day before but it didn't stop the competition with calls of "1.6 amps coming in" and "I can beat that 1.7 amps"

Fong On Bay has filled up with tents in most places, some young pups have been doing bog laps in their utes and cutting up the grass which is a shame, where is the Ranger when you need one.






We are camped near a nest that a Little Curlew is sitting on, these birds have the most painful sounding call, it sounds like a child in distress and they have a habit of calling out in the middle of the night, we are also expecting to hear the Doof Doof music belting out from the camps later in the evening. Tomorrow morning we leave with Muz & Judy heading back down to Malandra to visit friends and us onto Mareeba where we will camp at the Rodeo grounds for a week and catch up with some chores & mail.