Adels Grove

Oh dear – I have just realised that we never finished telling you all about our two week trip away in June/July!! Ooopsy Daisy!!!  Right, back to it then – there’s a couple of awesome posts to come!  So, while we explored Lawn Hill/Boodjamulla National Park we set up base camp at Adels Grove Camping Park.  It was a lovely shady campground with plenty of room for everyone.  No designated sites – just find a spot wherever you liked. As we mentioned in our Lawn Hill post – there is no internet connection available at Adels Grove but the shady sites outweighed that for us as even in winter it was very hot at the National Park!!  Just a word of warning though – it would be very difficult to get much sun on your solar panels in the Adels Grove Campground as most of the park is covered by the leafy tree canopy!  The Top Campground at Adels Grove does allow pets and generators, but it is much hotter and no where near as pretty and leafy as The Grove campground.

Here’s a little bit of trivia for you – the Adels Grove Park was originally taken up by the owner as a Botanical Garden and over 1000 species of exotic and native plants, shrubs and trees were planted there.  The Botanical Gardens in Brisbane still has 536 different samples of seeds sent to them by the original owner!  This really explains the beauty of the campround here!  We camped for three nights at Adels and really enjoyed it.

On arrival at the campground we promptly set up camp and then went off to explore.  The first spot we came across was ‘The Beach’ a beautiful little swimming spot where the kids jumped straight in and lasted about five minutes before coming out blue!  The water was freezing here in late June!

While camped at Adels – we spent most of our mornings at the Lawn Hill National Park and then came back to camp when it got too hot for a late lunch and an afternoon of swimming.  We introduced the kids to Chicken Schnitzel Sandwiches here on fresh white bread delivered to the park shop from the Cloncurry Bakery – sooooooooooo good when we were all starving after a morning canoeing!  We found the pontoon on Lawn Hill Creek which was just across from our campsite the best/warmest spot for swimming and had lots of fun in there meeting other campers and larking about!  Adels Grove Campground also makes a great base for exploring the World Heritage Riversleigh Fossils (we didn’t get time on this trip – next one!), there are also tours that can be taken of the huge Century Zinc Mine which is down the road, and there are plenty of walks around and bird watching and fishing.  I think a week here would be very easily filled! A top camp spot for sure!  The amenities were great and there was even a basic shop, small restuarant and rustic tin shed cafe on site – pretty amazing for out in the middle of nowhere!  We loved that we could have a camp fire every night and morning, and we needed it as it was quite chilly!

Camp Fealy at Adels Grove

Breaky Time!

Very chilly in the mornings!

We did end our time at Adels on a bit of a sour note though, as when we went to leave – there was a bit of an incident with backing the car into a tree while getting ready to hitch the camper up!  The result was rather a loud crunch, a large dent in the back of Peter Prado, some very cranky mutterings from the driver (Matt) and some defensive arguing from the one giving directions (Jess) about how large the tree was and how it was assumed it was pretty difficult not to see it!  Let’s just say it was lucky we were in the middle of a crowded campground – so no swearing occured!!  There is no photo evidence of this episode as all involved are still recovering!

Anyway – from Adels Grove we had originally planned to head via the station tracks to Kingfisher Camp, but after loving the Gregory River so much on our way in, we decided that we wanted to head back there and try to find ourselves a secluded spot where we could set up camp properly, have a relax and some quality family time for the next five nights.

That is exactly what we got – stay tuned for the next post about the best ‘proper’ camping we have ever done to date on the Gregory River!!!