Cooloola w/e

Last Saturday morning, Mum and I packed up the car and headed north, first stop was the Eumundi Markets, which were interesting, I picked up a dress, a long dress as in down to my toes dress. I have always thought that long “maxi” dresses look weird and never tried one on. This one doesn’t look too bad at all. It also means I think that I have more dresses than I do jeans or shorts. If you had told a 17 year Helen that I don’t know what she would have said.

Back to the weekend though. After cruising the markets for a while we met up with Hilary, her daughter Erin and nephew Sam, or a Fairy and a Pirate as their painted faces suggested. Once we were done with the markets we headed north again to Gympie and the Tin Can Bay rd, which would lead us to our first destination of Seary’s Creek for lunch and a paddle.

Seary’s Creek by mum

Seary’s Creek. This is a most wonderful place. A decent creek flows out of a swamp and is just a nice creek – “they” have put in a lot of board walks etc to two swimming holes and you can float / swim from one hole to the other. On a body board, you just float down – very pleasant. Both pools have “tame” yabbies. The yabbies come and nibble / tickle toes if you stand still. We went both days and the first day there were kids catching and releasing them with a net. The second day Helen gave up trying to catch them with her hands as she wasn’t quick enough but managed to catch quite a few with a bowl. Sam was not successful, but he had a great time trying.

After we were all nice and cool we headed down a side road to explore and to see if the flying duck orchids that were in flower 6 weeks ago when Mum was up there last were still in flower and they were!!

Then we drove in to Poverty Point, which is a campsite at the southern end of Tin Can Bay. That was my first real experience driving through sand which I quite enjoyed. There were a few loooong stretches of deep sand that made me glad to have AWD on the car. We camped about 10m from the sand and our fire was just on the bank above the sand. Hilary and Mum both brought along a box of fire wood and Hilary had remembered to bring the marshmallows. Mum and I seem to always take the firewood and then forget about the marshmallows.

This is how Mum described the beach.

It has a lovely little sandy beach and when the tide goes out it is sand flats rather than the expected mud flats. There were these things washed up on the sand that looked like wafer thin dried apple slices – but most were only 3/4 circles – we realized that they were dried snail egg masses. Erin found a fresh one in the water, which is what we normally find washed up on the beach.

After Erin and Sam had gone to bed, Helen and I went walking on the sand flats in the low tide where we found all sorts of things; little soldier crabs having a feed and a wide array of shrimps, little fish, hermit crabs, snails and other crabs that were left behind in the sting ray feeding holes.

On Sunday morning, Sam and Erin had had breakfast and were in their swimmers by 6.00am!! It is a great beach for little people as when the tide is in it is a long way to deep water.

Once we had broken camp, we went for a short walk to look at the Orchids that Mum had found on her walk yesterday as well as just generally having a nice stroll in the bush. It smelt marvellous. It seemed to have a crisp apple aspect to it. Which is not at all what the bush normally smells like.

After we went on another walk/paddle in Cooloola Creek, we headed back to Seary’s Creek for lunch on the boardwalk, a swim, some yabbie catching and general fun.

Then it was time to start the drive home. We took the Cooloola Way home from Rainbow Beach which was a nice drive back to Gympie. We had a quick stop in Gympie so that I could have a looksie in the windows of a bank that my company has done a lot of work in. Driving home we stopped to have a look at a large colony of fruit bats just north of Nambour. There were 1000’s roosting in the trees beside the highway for a good 500m-1km.

In pictures instead of words there were…..

… plants

… a sunset

… people

and there was my newish Crumpler bag that I love to bits (a Barney Rustle Blanket).