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| 2021 |
2022 |
2023
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1
- January
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2
- Tasmania
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3
- Autumn
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4 - Cold Weather in
Motorhome
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5
- Cape York |
6
- Driving North in Winter |
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I've
forgotten when we booked this trip; it was
quite a few months ago. A supported walk
through the rainforest of the "Scenic Rim"
near the Queensland / New South Wales
border. A nice thing to do, with the
anticipation of it good to have in the
background during the winter months.
This is, I think, our sixth walk with
Auswalk. And it will be a little different
from the  previous
ones, as my brother Rob and his wife Rita
heard about it and were very keen to come
too. Rob has dementia and Rita finds it very
difficult to get him to go away, out of his
familiar environment; this was a perfect
opportunity. so while we will go off walking
separately, they will be staying in the same
places each night.
But before that all starts, we're
flying off to Brisbane for a few days;
visiting an old friend (met 36+ years ago)
in Maleny, an hour north of Brisbane, for
the first night.
 A
little "spanner in the works" was Alison
breaking her thumb in fall while at circus,
three weeks ago. so although she can now
hold only one walking pole, she at least
still has the use of both her legs.
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The
only real problems we ran into involved
getting to the airports. On the way there,
we walked down to the station to find that
the train we needed was replaced by a bus  -
this, despite having checked the night
before, and it being a scheduled and not an
emergency change! Grrrr. As this was going
to take longer and miss our connection, we
walked down to Southern Cross station
instead and had to take the Skybus.
It did work; but..... not
happy!
On the way back, we were picked up, as
arranged, up in Springbrook; but the  vehicle
got a flat tyre on the way to the airport -
and there was no spare tyre! Our driver
arranged for another car to pick us up, but
after an hour's wait beside the road, in the
bush, it was touch and go in getting to the
airport on time. We just made it.
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 Apart
from these little issues, all went well.
Simon gave himself a bit of a digital detox
by cleverly leaving his phone in the
Queensland State Library, and finding that
he'd done it only when he'd left Brisbane,
on the train to the Gold Coast.
(Rita will pick it up for him when she goes
to Brisbane on the way home.)
We were lucky to get six days of glorious,
sunny, dry weather before some thunder and rain
on the last day. We spent most of each day
walking through varied country and
vegetation, with lots of enormous trees; we
were well fed and given accommodation in
some excellent places. The longest day's
walk was 25km, walking around the caldera of
an ancient volcano with views in many
directions; other days were shorter, but not
as level. On the second last day we spent
the morning climbing, climbing, up to the
Springbrook plateau (over 900 concrete
steps, as well as a long way up on steep
paths) to immediately  descend
after lunch 425 vertical metres to a creek,
and then go back up the other side.
I'm not really sure that it was, in
fact, a plateau. I had thought that they
were flat on the top.
Simon's
Journal
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