Beerwah – back with buddies!

After Christmas, we spent a few days lounging around with the family before hitting the road again. It was such a lovely catch-up and we all enjoyed it immensely. But then it was time to move on, and now we knew which roads to take to avoid the hills!

We headed off to the showgrounds at Beerwah, right near Australia Zoo on the Sunshine Coast, and where our dear friends Marty and Belinda were waiting for us. They had moved out of their caravan park as the rates had risen over New Year’s Eve – from $250 a week to over $400! Sheesh!! Marty and Belinda were joined by their friends Bronwyn and John, so we had 6 children to entertain each other, and Beerwah has a skate park right next door. Bertha was also parked right next door to the bocce piste, so we were set. And all for $20 per night – you really can’t beat showgrounds!

Sadly it appeared we brought the rain with us. It pretty much bucketed down from the moment we arrived for a good day or two. It was really rather insane and at one stage I was seriously concerned about the possibility of contracting trench-foot, from walking around on sodden camp matting for so long.

Duncan took the opportunity to join Marty in his hobby of cruising the "tip shop", where he managed to swap Angus' old bike for one with gears for a grand total of $10. Plus $25 for a new chain and $15 for a bike stand. But still... not too bad!

As soon as it cleared up, we thought an afternoon out might be fun and decided on a 4WD through the Glasshouse Mountains. Sadly the people at the Visitor Information centre were no help what-so-ever. They don’t want to encourage 4WDing through the National Park, so didn’t have any maps for us. Kind of understandable, but there are tracks in there which are not gated off, so why not give people the information about it?!

Anyway, we decided not to let a little lack of information stop us – we just went for a drive, looked for a likely track off the main road and went for it. LOL. Our first go was a little tame and boring, but the second track was anything but. It didn’t take long to get a little bit steep, so much so, that I asked Dunc if he thought Baby Bertha would make it back up if we had to go back the way we came. “Ummm. No. The only way out is forward!” was his response… Eek.

  

The track got really fun, with deep ruts and fun curves. It was only about 4km, a little short one, but still it took us a good 45 minutes with all the stopping and walking and discussing and crawling along. Sooooo much fun! It culminated in one last turn followed by a steep drop and these 4km were the most extreme 4WDing we have put Bertha through in this entire trip. We all had a ball but were all happy to head home after that track!

Christmas Day (a very Bertha Christmas?)

We had a lovely little family Christmas in the early morning in Bertha. Mum and Dad were staying up at the house and we had delivered all of our gifts up there the afternoon before. So it was just a few presents for the kids from us, the presents from family that mum and dad had delivered and, of course, the presents from the Big Man in Red under our little tree.

I had secretly packed the children’s Christmas stockings and kept them hidden for 12 months – quite a task in a small space. The children were able to hang them out on the table and we had quite the haul on Christmas morning!

We were woken at about 5.30am and managed to stretch the kids to 6am before we got up to open everything together. We were ‘booked’ for breakfast at 8am and 2 hours was just a perfect amount of time for us to get through our mountain of gifts.

  

Breakfast with Tim, Jennifer, Anna and Carla was wonderful and we then got to experience the usual ‘Dutch mafia’ type of Christmas, with children choosing one present at a time to give to a recipient, which we can all watch being opened, before that person chooses another gift to give and watch. I REALLY love it – I think it has made our children appreciate the giving just as much as the receiving.

THEN we got to experience an Ulcoq Christmas. Tim is one of 8 children and nearly all of them were coming, along with their many offspring. And Tim’s father too. There was an ENORMOUS quantity of delicious food, cousins and puppies to play with, and of course the pool to swim in.

Some time after lunch, I realized that having so many family members together was an unusual event. Apparently it had been about 5 years since it was such a large gathering. Being the photographer that I am, I switched into ‘Wedding Photographer’mode and we got some great pics of all the various families. It’s always handy to have a good step ladder around!

Lunch went on and on and in the end I called it a night at about 10pm! We all had an absolute ball and can’t thank Jennifer and Tim enough for having us share their day with them.

Gayndah with family

After 6 restful days in Rainbow Beach (only 3 with Mum and Dad, though) and with half of us completely covered in sand fly bites, we bid farewell to the coast and headed inland to Gayndah. To be honest, Mum, Angus and I were more than happy to see the back of the sand flies! We have managed to avoid them this far, but even our trustworthy “The Locals” spray wasn’t cutting it with these little buggers. We looked like we had chicken pox! Dad, Dunc and Lexie seem to be made less tasty than the rest of us and remained unscathed for most of the time. Bastards!

So off we went, following the road signs instead of Mabel the GPS who likes to take us down every short-cut tiny little road there is! Unfortunately, the road sign also led us down a smaller road than expected and we came “over the ridge” which was fun, but not highway driving at all! At least we knew which way NOT to come on the way back.

It had been 3 years since we’d been to visit, and we all remembered “the big hill” after crossing the low bridge over the river. We had decided to unload the car before crossing the bridge, but after driving through Gympie and over the unexpected hills there, changed our mind. Then somehow we lost track of mum and dad and had to wait for them, so took the opportunity to unload while we waited for them to catch up. It really wasn’t needed though. The hill was nothing! Though being ahead DID give me the chance to block the road and radio thorough an all-clear to use the entire roadway to make the turn into the drive through the narrow gates…

We had a wonderful week with the Ulcoqs! We took over their shed and parked Bertha right alongside, where we could plug in. It was a short 2 min walk up to the house, which Angus made every morning in order to scam himself a yummy cooked egg breakfast EVERY day! I nearly fell over with shock the last day when I got there in time to see him being passed the largest serve. Goodness that boy can eat!

Eating seemed to be a common theme during our time there…

It didn’t take the family long to figure out that a 2min walk is a far more comfortable 30sec quad bike ride though…

I’ll do Christmas Day in a separate entry, but we all had a ball before and after as well. There was cooking and prepping for Christmas Day, fun and games for the kids, dogs for Angus, a pool for all, and (much to Tim’s disgust) an irrigation issue that had to be dealt with. Dad, Dunc and Angus took great joy in pitching in, and this continued after Christmas when there was sewerage to play with too. Bonus!