Camping

Kirrama Range Road, Blencoe Falls, Murray Falls

Kirrama Range Road

Following on from our Goshen Station camping post, I thought I’d better hurry up and finish that trip off with a little post about the beautiful Blencoe Falls and the Kirrama Range Road – remembering that I am still playing catchup and we did this trip in July 2016!

As we camped at Goshen Station for a week, we decided to take a day trip out to Blencoe Falls from there.  It was only a short 40 minute drive to the falls and a fantastic day out.  We took a picnic lunch, did a walk, checked out the camp grounds and had a swim.  It is a beautiful spot at Blencoe Falls but quite crowded when we were there (it was school holidays).  The waterfall lookout and viewing platform boasts spectacular views – definitely deserves the title of being one of the most stunning (and least known) waterfalls in Australia!  There are views of the waterfall and the Herbert River Gorge – there are lots of Hoop Pines and it felt like we were in Canada somewhere!

Lexi and I did the short (took us about an hour) walk from the viewing platform to the campgrounds.  It was an easy walk with some beautiful scenery along the way.  Continue reading

Categories: Atherton Tablelands, Camping, Qld Camping | Leave a comment

Goshen Station Camping

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One of the best camps we have ever done hasn’t yet been recorded here on the blog, so time to rectify that!

Campsite No 5 at Goshen Station is awesome.  We spent a week here in July, 2016 and loved it.  It was the perfect cure for the hangovers we were sporting from a busy week and awesome night hosting the Boots for Change dinner on the farm the weekend before, complete with guest Paul West from River Cottage.

Goshen Station is a working cattle station where the first series of Australian Survivor was filmed in 2001.

It is about 5.5 hours from Cairns (90 kms past Mount Garnet) west of Blencoe Falls.  We took the Mt Garnett (Gunnawarra Road) way in and then went out via the Kirrama Range Road – a fantastic round trip. Continue reading

Categories: Atherton Tablelands, Qld Camping, Tropical North Queensland | Tags: , | 1 Comment

Roadtrip Tully, Cardwell to Ingham

IMG_2516Although things have been very quiet on the blog over the last couple of years, those of you who follow us on Facebook, Twitter  and Instagram will have seen we’ve still been out and about having a few adventures with Black Betty and Peter Prado.  As I have been getting to know our blog again, it is really interesting to review our stats and see that we still get anywhere between 50-100 visits per day to the blog through people searching for camping spots and landing on places we have visited, so I definitely want to add this small trip to the blogosphere!

Way back in June 2016 when Matt and I were both still Scout leaders, we headed off to a scout camp with the kids in Ingham and along the way managed to add in some quality family time by turning it in to a long weekend.  To start with, we took a whole day to travel just over 300 kilometres to our overnight camp at Abergowrie State Forest.  It was an ‘explore your own backyard’ kinda day.  We really loved it – we could almost pretend we were back on the road travelling around oz again!

Here’s how the weekend went down ……………. Continue reading

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OzTrail Lockyer Swag

As many of you will know, we won a bit of a big prize from OzTrail with this photo:

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The major prize was an excellent tent, some top of the line camp chairs, and a bunch of really great gear from OzTrail.

Not being ungrateful in the least, but recognising that we actually would not use just about anything from the prize, we very humbly asked OzTrail if they would consider swapping the prize pack out for a few swags, being that we had been wanting to buy all the kids a swag each for some time now, in fact, we had pretty much made our mind up on the OzTrail Lockyer and it was only a matter of saving more pennies until we bought them.

We were over the moon to be told that OzTrail were more then happy to send us out the swags instead, I really wish we had of videoed the kids reaction when we told them the news, priceless. When they arrived, we set them up, in their bedrooms, and they slept in them for a week! Continue reading

Categories: Camping, Modifications, Planning, Reviews | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

Lake Tinaroo – Barrabadeen Campground

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It’s a lovely overcast afternoon here at Blue Sky – as close as we are going to get to a rainy day in Mareeba, so perfect blogging weather!  Those of you who follow us on instagram and facebook will know that on the ANZAC Day long weekend we had a terrific time camping with all the extended family at Camp Barrabadeen, Lake Tinaroo.  Camping at Lake Tinaroo was on our ‘hitlist’ for this year so it is awesome to have ticked another little adventure off.  Camp Barrabadeen is owned by the Scout Organisation and we have camped here many times with the kids as part of their scouting activities so we knew it was a top spot.  Hot showers, toilets, firepits, pretty level and shady sites right on the water, ability to hire canoes and you can launch your boat from right in front of the campsites – it doesn’t get much better than that!  It is a little expensive – $10 per person per night – kids under 6 free, but the money does go to a good cause! Continue reading

Categories: Atherton Tablelands, Camping, Qld Camping, Tropical North Queensland | Leave a comment

Led Lenser SEO7R LED Headlamp

Following in the theme of our “reviews” only being for truely stand out products, here is another essential bit of kit in our camping box.

Led Lenser SEO7R

Led Lenser SEO7R

So like everyone, we have all bought the $5 LED torch at the counter of BCF or the local hardware, right? (go on, admit it). Well, how long did it last? How long did the batteries last? Oh, and here’s a good question, did it actually put out ANY light??

Ok, so after swallowing your pride and realising a $5 torch is actually worth about -$50 (time to buy new batteries, time spent banging it on the side to make it work, time plastering your shin from that half wall you fell down because you couldn’t see jack whilst using it) you splash out and buy a $30 torch. Things are great, life is grand, and you can see on the “bright” side again, yeah for you……. So you put that torch back in the camp box only to pull it out again 6 months later on your next camp, only to realise the batteries are flat, they have leaked everywhere inside the torch, and you are now 7 hrs from the nearest store.

Enter, the SEO7R. Continue reading

Categories: Camping, Planning, Reviews | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Nature Play

Jack amusing himself in the campground. Continue reading

Categories: About Us, Camping | 3 Comments

Maytown

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So I had set myself the goal of finishing all the posts about our ‘Fealy Family Adventure 2015’ by the end of January.  I’m hoping that finishing this last post off by the end of February kinda gets me over the line? Sort of, maybe?  No, not really, I know.  Anyway, we are right in the throes of planning ‘Fealy Family Adventure 2016’ now, so definitely looking forward to some new posts later in the year!

Ok, right – where were we? After a wonderful few days at Elim Beach, we dragged ourselves away with the promise from Matt that we would find a beautiful spot on the Palmer River near Maytown to set up for the next few nights.  Just for the record – I had voted to stay a few more nights at Elim, but Matt loves freshwater far better than the beach so he was keen to head off and find a little spot of paradise all to ourselves! Continue reading

Categories: Camping, Qld Camping, Tropical North Queensland | 1 Comment

Elim Beach

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Hello Everyone!  It’s always this time of year that sees us with very itchy feet – just wanting to be done with mangoes, avocados, backpackers and all things farm related!!!  We are in a bit of a lull at Blue Sky at the moment while we wait for our avocados to be ready so we can start picking them, which means Matt and I have had some time at home together to start planning our camping holiday in July – so many places, so many options!

Anyway – with Easter coming up – I thought I’d better get my act together and tell you about Elim Beach – it is an amazing camping spot and you might just want to head there these holidays! Continue reading

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Cooktown

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Right, I have set myself a goal to finish the blog posts about our Fealy Family Adventure 2015 by the end of January as this is just getting ridiculous blogging six months after the trip!

Ok, so after we spent a day on the Bloomfield Track and set up camp at the Lions Den Hotel for a couple of nights – it was time to spend a day exploring Cooktown.  We have to put a disclaimer out here that Kipp did not sleep much at all at the Lions Den for the whole time we stayed there, so we must admit that we did not tackle seeing the sights of Cooktown with our usual vigour, instead opting for some very ‘cruisy’ driving around, long lunch at the playground kinda visit.  We will definitely need to make a return trip to check out some more of the sights! Continue reading

Categories: Camping, Qld Camping, Tropical North Queensland | Tags: , | 1 Comment
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