20th - 26th October

Tuesday 21st

We had a lovely few days in Brisbane. We stayed at Lee and Gary’s place and caught up with family and friends and picked up Boris!!

We have missed the cheeky boy, so it will be good to have him with us again – we will see how we go for camping, etc with him along. We know we won’t be able to get into National Parks, etc, but that’s ok – we will have to be more creative in finding places to go and things to see.

We left Lee and Gary’s after lunch as we were waiting on the mail for a new credit card that didn’t turn up, so they will have to forward it onto us.

We headed for Warwick and then got partway to Stanthorpe to Dalveen and stayed at Jim Mitchell Park there – a lovely little park off the highway so it wasn’t too loud with traffic. It was a very popular spot and there were a lot of people staying there overnight.

Wednesday 22nd

We had a lovely leisurely morning and went for a stroll and found an old mill that had been abandoned. All the workings were still there as well as an awful lot of timber just laying around going to waste. We picked up a couple of pieces to use as firewood.

We then moved on to Stanthorpe for a look-see, went up to the lookout at Mount Marlay – Stanthorpe is quite a big town when you look at it from up there.

We then headed for Texas – we have no idea where we are going to setup camp tonight – guess we will check out Texas and make a decision when we get there.

Half way to Texas a great big huntsman spider decided to crawl out of the window section of my door and proceeded to crawl along the inside of the door into the handle. Unfortunately there was nowhere to pull up at the time so I had to sit tight until Ross could find a spot – AAAGGGHHH!! I was very proud of myself though and didn’t try sitting in Ross’ lap or crawl into the back with Boris – I just sat tight and waited (and prayed a lot).

We got to Texas and had a bit of a look around - nice little place we thought - though VERY windy. You can have free hot showers in town and the locals are very friendly and helpful. We asked the locals and they told us its not usually this windy and told us about a local free camping spot on a river in a fishing reserve so we thought we aught to check it out. We had pretty vague directions but managed to find it. You have to go through a gate to get here, but it is a nice spot with only one other caravan parked here. (Turn off from Texas-Yelarbon Road at GPS coordinates 28 49 59.4S 151 05 42.2E - tiny sign saying "Gibralta Reserve"). There are no facilities at all, but we reckon we might stay a day or two to see what the fishing is like.

Boris had a wonderful swim, followed by a lovely roll in cow manure, followed by a very thorough bath in the river! He has no interest whatsoever in cows (nobody told him he is a cattle dog), but he absolutely adores fresh cow poo!! We have to keep him tied up now to make sure he doesnt sneak off again!

Thursday 23rd

It was absolutely bloody freezing this morning!! It stayed pretty cold all morning and then the wind came out in the afternoon - VERY windy, making things very unpleasant.

We got the boat out in the morning and went for a putter up the river, although it was very shallow and we didn't get far. The other guy who was staying there is an old hand at fishing and he told us the fish were off the bite because of the cold snap. Even though is wasn't a bad place, we thought we would move on and see if we could find something better.

Friday 24th

We went back into Texas to fill up with water and have another shower, chatted to some fellow travellers who had similar intentions, did some shopping then headed out to see what we could find.

When we reached Yelarbon we took the Border River Tourist drive as a particular map we had told us there were a lot of free camps on rivers along there. There were heaps of nice places and we would have loved to stay at some of them but there was no phone reception so we kept going towards Goondoowindi until we found a nice campsite near a river and decided we might just stay here a few days. We threw out the fishing lines but didn't even get a bite. We were getting a bid bored but we wanted to keep fishing so we took Ross' laptop down to the riverside where we were fishing and watched an episode of Psych while we were fishing (still didn't get a bite). We did put yabbie nets out though and got a heap of red claw before we retired to bed. We also caught a heap of shrimp that we might try as bait tomorrow. We had a go at casting the throw net again and caught a bunch of bait fish too.

Boris reckons its a great spot because we can throw his ball into the river from the caravan site so he can give us the ball any time he wants to go for a swim. Unfortunately we left him unsupervised with his ball and he destroyed it and we don't think we have another one with us - hmm - could be a problem!!

Saturday 25th

We had a very leisurely day today - we didn't do much at all!! Hard life. We went for a paddle in the afternoon and discovered why we weren't getting any fish - the river, although quite wide, is only about three feet deep the whole way across and anything other than the first couple of inches under the top layer is FREEZING!! Oh well, we will have to put up with eating all the yabbies we are catching instead. We had a great fire and cooked spuds, carrots and onions in the foil for dinner as well as sweet chilli yabbies - yummy!!

We solved Boris' temporary ball shortage by throwing sticks in the water instead. Sticks are ok to throw in the water - but not on land - too dangerous for Boris, so we will have to see what we can do about getting him another ball.

Sunday 26th

Another quiet day - watched "Psych", updated the side of the caravan, sorted through photos, etc. The weather is great and we have a great spot on the river - what a life.

Ross managed to break the chainsaw when he was cutting up the wood for the night's fire - another thing we will have to get fixed! Ross reckons the caravan needs some major repairs and we are going to start heading slowly back to Port to try and get things fixed over the Christmas break.