Pulled off another short trip over the ANZAC extended weekend, well for us anyway.
Slipped out to Boynedale Bush Camp for 4 days off grid, and the beauty is that it's only about 25km from home.
Nice spot with plenty of open grassed areas and a few shade trees on the banks of the top end of Lake Awoonga.
It's provided free of charge by the Gladstone Area Water Board and has a long drops, a couple of shade shelters and scattering of fire pits. Prime sites along the waterfront looked hotly contested by the grey nomads and a few looked rather comfy for a max of 7 days stay. Didn't really worry us as it's not too warm this time of year and I wanted full sun to keep the solar pumping the batteries. We picked a spot near a shade shelter with fire pit and plenty of grass and space from neighbours, although they did keep rolling in on saturday and sunday. In fact it was busier than Easter weekend when we did a quick scout to see what the place was like, the recent cyclone and floods may have stopped a few then though.
Took the dog and kayak aswell and threw a few pots in for Redclaw but only scored the one over the couple of days we had them soaking, that is unless we were sharing our haul with others, you can never tell these days with all the helpful people about checking your pots before you get to them.
Had a cracker fire each night and did most of our cooking on it, which was a nice change as I haven't cooked over coals for some time. Weather was pretty well perfect except for the rain that came through on Saturday afternoon, although with the van it made no difference to us, the fire didn't go out and nothing else got wet.
Did bugger all really, and spent some time with Mr 5yo walking around camp and the shoreline talking all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff, quite amazing where their thought processes go..............................lol
Had a paddle around and thoroughly enjoyed it, had forgotten how calming and peaceful it is just paddling with no set destination, something we intend to do a bit more of real soon.
Didn't bother bringing the fishing gear and really didn't miss it as time was spent in other activities or doing nothing...................lol
Once again the Starry performed fantastic with the only hiccup being the HWS stopping and not running on gas on the Monday, a quick call to Warburtons and through a garbled conversation (next to no mobile service there) it tried clearing the jet and away it went with no further issues.
So our first full off grid trip was a huge success, power and water lasted, we even ran the TV at night for the two little's and the stereo was going most of the time too and no sign of running out of power so really happy about that.
I'll post some pics up soon once I get them of the phone.
Oh one last thing, the night sky was nothing short of amazing, open fire and a sky full of stars it doesn't get much better to waste the night away.