Camping adventure

It's time that I posted about our camping trip last week. We camped for two nights at a dam I'd never heard of: Teresa Creek Dam. It's about 20 km south of the small town of Clermont and nearly 1,000 km north-west of Brisbane (see map below). No wonder I'd never heard of it, having never lived further than 200 km from Brisbane.

It took about 2 1/2 hrs to drive there from my sister-in-law's house. We didn't get away till late because she was busy on the day we left (actually, she's generally very busy!) and ended up putting up three tents in the dark! Thankfully we'd brought a pre-prepared stew with us, so we didn't need to do that, but it still was quite late before we ate (late for these city-dwellers, anyway).

The four of us camped with David's sister and mum and our nephew. His brother-in-law was busy harvesting, so reluctantly had to forgo the trip. Also, our eldest son had uni that week, so was also unable to join us. We made the best of who we had. 

But we did get an open fire, a rare thing in Japan (and even Australia in these drought conditions).

View from our bed.

We were very grateful to be able to "piggy-back" in our sister-in-law's camping, because it meant that we didn't need to borrow or transport all the necessary gear (we don't own much camping gear in Australia).

Two of my favourite colours! And why I am no longer afraid to wear green and blue together.

Tuesday was our full day at the dam and we did little. Lots of relaxing—reading, snoozing, and some gentle wandering. The two youngest cousins swam for a couple of hours (you can see their heads in the centre of the photo).

It's a beautiful spot. Lots of bird life, a large campsite that wasn't overpopulated (advantage of being further from the main centres of population), and the showers and toilets were clean and well maintained. There wasn't even many insects (probably because it's been so very dry). The one drawback was the wind, which coated us and everything in the camp with a fine layer of dust.

Sunsets always capture my attention. It's fantastic being in outback Australia where you can see horizon for 360 degrees! The first night's sunset was even better than this because there were some clouds in the western sky, but I was busy trying to help set-up camp in the dark.  

This is what the countryside looks like. Typical Australian country: gum trees everywhere.  Pretty dry, though. The only green on the ground out there is close to the dam or has been watered. It's such a contrast to come back to the coast and see green grass in many places that haven't been watered.

This is another view of country we drove through. It's the most barren country we've seen in Queensland.

I'd been hankering after a camping trip and realised while we were there that it was nearly 12 months since we'd been able to get away under canvas. I'm so thankful for these couple of days away.

Last, but not least, the campsite had a cafe where they serve very decent food. We ate lunch there on the last day. The photo is of a steak burger. I chased my lunch down with what I thought was going to be an iced coffee, but turned into more of a coffee milkshake. Frappe, I think they called it. It was huge and a bit too much sugar, maybe I should have gone for their latte instead?