King tides transform mud and salt marshes into silver platters. They offer silent access to places seldom seen. With fat tides on consecutive days it was too good an opportunity to miss, even with a dubious forecast.
We were booked into the council owned caravan park at Donnybrook where you need to collect your keycard for the entry boom gate from the local store. That is the store which also has the agency for the Post Office (otherwise you have a 50 50 chance of going to the right place). Featuring a grand total of eight powered sites with individual access to potable water the caravan park also had an exit boom gate which unlike the entrance was just left open.
We arrived with our home made (circa 1973) camper still in tow to find Trev well ensconced. He was relaxing in a large padded folding chair with a book in one hand and a growing collection of empty Great Northerns on the other. He was set up in front of a trestle table with cooking gear at the ready all under the shelter of a massive canvas with affable smiles of a finely wrinkled (but not too much) 60year+ couple endorsing some has been RV development in Hervey Bay. Cost of the dental work $10. Punch a few eyelets and you have a sturdy and welcome rainproof shelter. The central stage of the slab was bordered by open tool boxes on the tray of his ute a step to the right and a camper stretcher set up in a disturbingly conventional looking cage trailer abutting to the left. An ode to the utility of boy camping. We had the little camper set up with the awning on with 10 minutes to spare. Then was the first of many rain tests. The canvas held up well after a few adjustments of zipper covers and placement of inverted tent poles to facilitate shedding rather than pooling with promise.
We went for a walk around Donnybrook. It looked how I imagine Woodgate would have been in the late 1990s. A mixture of fibro shacks, modern homes, a residential development in progress out the back and a well-resourced bowls/sports club, which appeared, after our walk to be the hub of all activity. That is if you didn’t count the police conducting an interview on the side of the road with an evasive interviewee who tried accosting us for a light.
The next morning Di, Chris and Robyn arrived as promised, although the amount of rain they drove through had them wondering if this was such a great idea. By the time all kayaks were nosing off the bank, the clouds were dissipating. Two Natureline, two Raiders and two Mirages floated off on a watery expanse and cruised around into Tripcony Bight. We drifted by the abandoned oyster hut. Mullet flopped around the shoreline. The occasional turtle bobbed up. Mark had the swans lift off in a muffled applause before they settled further afield honking with indignation.
It was a make it up as you go paddle. Next up a suggestion to head up Hussey Creek for a cut through to the mouth of Coochin Creek. Then it was out of the creek and onto that island for morning tea with the mossies. The mossies probably had more to eat than we did while the tide quietly consumed our squat. No we hadn’t seen Lime Pocket so that made became the next destination. With no beach and evidence it had just been inundated, an impromptu decision was to continue to Mission Point. We were watched by a couple of brumbies 300m further south as they sheltered in the trees. As we headed south the sky over the Glass House Mountains had become a menacingly deep shade of rumbling grey. A couple of mountains disappeared. We pulled up at Mission Point just as the tide was starting to ebb. We had lunch at a table before beating a quick retreat to an information board shelter as the icy rain at the leading edge of the storm splattered in. With no sign of any strikes and the BOM model indicating that was as good as the storm was going to get, we pushed off for the shelter of the smiles at the Caravan Park. It was a great day out, places were seen for the first time, we had a mix of all weather conditions and the relaxed company of two, by two by two.
Fifteen years ago we would not have thought twice about heading up to Bribie for a paddle. The traffic and time it now takes to get back to Brisbane has taken the shine off paddling the northern reaches of Moreton Bay. A paddle from Donnybrook on Sunday was an opportune time to partially gate crash a paddle the following day which approached the Bribie Island Fort Walk from the western shore. The Fort Walk is well worth doing. Last time we paddled from Roys to Lighthouse Reach, padlocked a pile of kayaks to a sign then walked along the 4WD sand track to the start of the Fort Walk. While we were there we checked out the passage side and set a way point for what looked to be the most likely access point amongst some very muddy mangroves.
Packing up the camper (which looked more like a wonky jumping castle) took a while, so by the time we wended our way around the back streets of Caloundra to Keith Hill Park, the first tranche of the Sunny Coast Seniors (SCS) had already left. We declined the offer to be signed up, saying that we would be doing our own thing and that yes, we had captured Di for the day and were happily leading her up some uncharted path.
It was a reflective still morning. First stop Lions Park, a surprise first visit for some. A gem with ready access from the mainland. A large neat shaded clearing, a shelter with table and toilets. The walk over the dunes opened up to a surprisingly powerful surf. No swimming today. Then it was head down to the track we had marked on Google Earth to link up with the land based waypoint we had made a couple of years earlier. Turned out this was the exact same place the SCS had marked out. Their preparation and execution would have made the military proud. By the time we nosed our way in there was a riot of colour pulled up amongst the mangroves and people having morning tea in the shade of the pandanus on the dunes or exploring the WW2 fortress relics. The tide was so full that one was sitting in the surf zone. Indeed desiccated Asplenium (Birds Nest Ferns) perched high in the forks of scraggy wind swept trees suggested that it may not be long before the surf carves the northern end of Bribie into a series of islands.
The gathering of the SCS was an opportunity to meet friends we had never seen before (Graham) to those we had been paddling with the day before (Robyn and Chris). After a walk around the fortresses with their impressive log struts we decided to poke around in the mangroves to see if we could find the alternative track we had marked. The way to get around this kind of environment is to hug the shoreline as there is often fresh water close to the edge of the banks and this supports Melaleuca quinquinervia (Swamp Paperbarks) instead of the hairnet of twiggy mangroves impenetrable for a 5.4m kayak. A fallen tree blocked ready access, that, with a now falling tide and two others somewhere unseen without ready access to VHF radio tipped our decision to back out. rather than push on. Mark and I forwent the sailing breeze for an up close and personal view of the western shoreline on the fat tide. It was fascinating. A mere metre of sand separated the passage from a watery swamp which was edged by many species of mangroves, cottonwoods and at times casuarinas. A glimpse of a large brown bird morphed into a kangaroo. In one place a beautiful old mangrove framed the entrance to a salt grass meadow. It stretched away like a huge grassy field. Fascinating, but too late. No sliding over the sandy lip when a Cinderella moment at midnight is but centimetres away.
The tide still obscured the beach at Lighthouse Reach. We sat at one of the four large tables for lunch and were soon joined by a large sand goanna in the midst of shedding his skin. By the time we were on the water the tide was swiftly receding and the wind close to being on the nose. The lift from the tide made for a cruisey drift back to the mouth of Bells Creek at Keith Hill Park.
It bought to an end a most enjoyable day and a great weekend of exploration at the top of the tide. The little camper rolling along on its wheelbarrow size wheels did well. We now just have to wait for fine weather to dry out the canvas before packing it up for the next weekend away.
