I'm sitting here typing this in a pool of sweat on another disgustingly humid night. Last night was similar -- I don't think it feel below 25 degrees C all night. Well, there was nothing for it but to head up to the mountains today. It's been a while since I visited Green Mountains/O'Reilly's. The first thing I had to do was negotiate a road block at the base of the climb.
This involves a long gradual climb up the mountain, taking about 13km to gain 500 metres. The road was built in the 1930's and some of the old road cuttings are still visible today. After cresting Mt Cainbable, the road winds around the mountains delightfully, before the final climb to the summit.
I decided to do the Treetops walk once I got to Lamington National Park, largely because I haven't done it before. It's basically a circuit on a suspension bridge positioned at a higher level in the rainforest canopy than simply walking along the ground. It offered some pleasant views through the forest, but it was too dense for any mountain views to be visible here.
Then for some reason I decided to ride back in the middle of the day. Big mistake. I could feel the heat rising up out of the valley on the descent. By the time I reached the town of Canungra, it was 36 degrees C. It would stay there for a long time. It's a shadeless 9% climb to get out of that place, followed by a shadeless 10-12% grade a little further down the road. In fact, I handled them surprisingly well (surprising given my general hatred of temperatures above 12 degrees). I had been anticipating that the temperature might drop a little as I got closer to the coast, but it just wasn't happening. It even increased to 37 at Maudsland.
In a grim kind of way, I began to enjoy it. It's that unique feeling that comes when conditions get harder, when it eventually reaches a special point that you start willing it on, wanting to test the limits of your own capabilities. At one point I was checking my thermometer, and hoping it might hit 40. That said, the humidity was relatively low by now, which generally makes the heat a lot more bearable. I made one mistake of thinking I'd gladly have the magpie season back if I could get rid of the heat. No prizes for guessing what dropped out of the next tree. This was actually a problem, my usual tactic of simply squirting magpies with water would waste a valuable resource.
As it was, I was running short by this time. I eventually decided to use that $5 that I generally carry around with me and buy a couple of drinks. That gave me enough to reach the coast -- finally things started to cool down here on the back of an impending storm. Unfortunately, the storm didn't arrive, but it did block out the sunlight for a while.
Perhaps stupidly, I actually passed through Surfers Paradise in the middle of schoolies' week on the way home. Not surprisingly, there weren't too many intelligent conversations going on around me. Fortunately, there was a bit of Sunday Afternoon gridlock going on. It gave me the boost I needed, I was really in form picking my way through that. At the southern end of Surfers, I heard a voice call out "you're only human". The form I had through that patch of gridlock, I was in serious danger of forgetting that. In anycase, I was glad to finally make a statement against the heat. I'm sure it will be back soon, however.
Right now I'm about to see if I can score some belated tickets to the Oasis show in Brisbane, the one that they told me was sold out three months ago.
No unorthodox wake up calls today. I guess even the recruits get a breather on Sunday morning :-D
We were up around 6:00a, which might seem early to most of our readers. We’re used to getting up between 4:00-5:00a, so we consider this sleeping in ;-) Knowing that our move to Hunting Island State Park (HISP) was going to be short drive of 24 miles (38 km), we took it easy and didn’t get going until the official check out time of 11:00a. We set out under blue skies and plenty of sunshine, keeping fingers crossed that the weather would hold for the rest of the day so that we could enjoy a little beach-sitting in the afternoon.
An easy drive takes us from Parris Island MCRD to HISP.
On the way here, I decided to play around with the Microsoft Streets and Trips software we purchased before we got on the road. We bought the version that comes with an antenna and a thumb-drive GPS device that plugs into a USB port. What fun! With tracking turned on, I was able to watch the coach make its way to our new temporary home at HISP. Now I have my very own 17” GPS to double check what the Garmin trucker’s GPS tells Mui to do; and I can even monitor his speed ;-)
Very useful … and fun too!
We arrived at HISP shortly after noon (about two hours before the official check-in time). Seeing as how the campground is pretty empty this time of the year, no one blinked an eye at our early arrival. The
After unhooking the toad, we left the Phaeton in the holding area and drove over to our reserved site for another look-see. The roads at the park are fairly narrow and the grounds are heavily treed, so we wanted to figure out the best approach before taking the Phaeton to the site. Smart move on our part — but for a different reason.
During our recon trip to HISP on Friday, we had checked out the sites and made a list of the ones that looked good to us. We then made reservations for #110 on the 50A loop, because it had a great privacy factor. Well, it turns out that this site has a slight grade towards the rear that had gone unnoticed during our recon. If our levelers were functioning, it would not have been a problem. Since they aren’t, we decided to switch to one of the other sites on our list — #36 in the 30A loop. Luckily, we figured all of this out before we took the Phaeton to the first site, so the switch required just a simple conversation with the attendant at the camp store.
In the campground map above, the site marked with a thumbs down is #110; the site circled in red
(in the green loop) is #36. [map courtesy of the Hunting Island State Park website.]
The sites at this campground are water and electric only, and many of them are simply huge. Our site is $27/night + tax — and oh so worth it! The area on the driver’s side of #36 is non-camping space and we have palm trees on that side that provide a natural privacy screen. While our site is a back-in, the neighboring one on the passenger side is parallel to the road. Should someone come into that site, they would be facing us, but there is so much space between us that we don’t see that as an issue.
#36 is a grand site; we are looking forward to enjoying our stay here.
The one possible downside to this site is that the entrance road into the campground and the camp store are behind us. That could make the site unattractive during the busy season, but we don’t think it will be a problem for our 9-day stay this time around. The advantage to being near the camp store is that we have blazing fast wi-fi; and it’s free. From what we were told, the signal does not reach far, so the load on it is limited to a few campsites and the picnic tables placed next to the building for anyone who wants to bring their laptops there. Our mi-fi shows 3G service, but the trees create enough interference so as to make it unusable. That means we won’t have VOIP phone service, but we can stay in touch with family via email, so that’s not a real problem for us.
Our rooftop satellite could not lock on to a signal, but that is not unusual for such a highly treed area. We’re getting plenty of channels with the antenna, though, so we’re good to go. At some point, Mui will test his tripod satellite gear, but we had better things to do than to mess with that this afternoon.
Top left photo shows the empty space on the driver’s side; no camping there.
top right photo is a view of our site from the neighboring one (#34).
By the time we were settled in the site, which proved to be level enough that we didn’t need to resort to leveling blocks under the tires, it was past 1:00p. After taking time out for a quick bite to eat, we set up our screen shelter for maximum privacy. Then it was time to check out the beach.
 |  |
Looking down the beach to the left; looking down the beach to the right.
The sun was mostly hidden behind clouds by the time we went out there around 3:00p, but that did not deter us from enjoying the mostly deserted beach. I think there were three people fishing, and a family of four at the far end; that was it. I took a book to read, but as usually happens, I was caught in a trance as the waves gently crashed ashore and the reading went by the wayside. That’s OK; the pelicans diving into the water a short distance from shore were plenty entertaining … when I was able to pull my gaze away from the waves.
This ring-billed gull is also mesmerized by the gentle waves.
 |  |
Left: a ring-billed gull coming in for a landing adds interest to the pale rainbow in the distance.
Right: Mui tests the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean; too cold to swim today!
What a great way to wrap up our afternoon! So far, we’re loving HISP and look forward to exploring the beach and the trails in the upcoming days.
