Lower Portals

A weekend of hiking… well, that’s what it was meant to be. Saturday afternoon we drove down with Angie, Clayton and Pete to the Mt Barney area and drop one of the cars of at the Yellow Pinch carpark. We then started the hike from the Lower Portals carpark to meet Jonno and Sarah at the first campsite.

hike in

The original plan had been to continue hiking from there to another campground, but by the time we got to the first campsite they had already pitched their tent (at this magnificent site right next to the river – see panorama shot).

our camp site

beautiful river

We explored the area a little bit, pitched our own tents and got changed. Luckily it stayed dry during dinner and drinkies afterwards, so we cooked our meals and topped it off with the master chef master-piece from Jonno: tiramisu! I am glad to report we brought the key ingredient to the show (amaretto), so felt like we had at contributed somehow to the feast 🙂

delicious dinner

Jonno and his master piece – yumm!

We heard (!) and saw one massive eel attack a smaller one (territorial issues?), I caught a mini fish (Tuckers would be proud) straight in my bowl and we enjoyed campsite stories by the fire.

Jon by the fire

drinks and stories around the camp fire

lots of fish in the river

We lasted until 10pm (great effort I think) and as we were getting ready for bed it started to rain gently – and it never stopped… The next morning it was still raining so we had breakfast in the rain, packed up in the rain, hiked back to the cars in the rain and decided to head for coffees instead of start the walk proper to Mt Barney 🙂 I still had another pounding headache and Nurofen hadn’t kicked in yet, so was very happy to give up on the hike.

breakfast in the rain

Jon crossing the creek on crocs this time 🙂

the way out

Boonah was the place of choice for coffee (excellent recommendation from Sarah) and we discovered the Boonah Show was on with the national championships post cutting with the chainsaw… We headed over and watched that for a bit until we discovered the food and wine tasting section of the show. They do make an excellent port here in Queensland! Also saw two kids with rather unusual pets: one was carrying a lizzard with studded collar and high hat and a chook wearing a fluffy hat and matching pink dress! Is this a Queensland thing or a Boonah activity?

Boonah show – after the chainsaw they hammer in the metal wedges and split the wood into posts

When Jon and I arrived home the sun was shining and we decided to go for a hike on Mt Coot-tha instead. Emptied the car (= chuck it all on the deck) and off we went. Nurofen had kicked in by now and we enjoyed exploring a few more trails we hadn’t seen yet.

We hiked / ran the following trails (total of 5.6km – height gain / loss 241m):

• Chapel Hill Road trail (very steep down, we only stayed on it for a short section)
• Golden Orb track
• Unnamed link section of track
• Russell Tce track
• Marmindie St / Fleming Rd (we found a shortcut from Marmindie St to Butterfly track so next time we don’t have to go on busy Fleming Rd)
• Butterfly track
• Rose Robin track
• Honeyeater track