January 15-16, 2019
Above – Filling the water tanks at Ipswich Showgrounds
Leaving Zoe’s at the end of our house sitting we were ready to give the new van a run in order to get up towards 1000 kms to take it back to the factory for it’s first service on Friday Jan 25. First stop to give us a short run out of town was Lake Clarendon in the Lockyer Valley where we stayed for a few days last year. Always a few campers here as there is generally no time restriction and a couple of long term “residents” who help to look after the place. In season it is also popular with backpacker farm workers. Since our visit the Council have changed this to a 48 Hour limit, but still worth a visit.
From here we headed North via Esk and up to the bunya highway towards Blackbutt, turning off at Moore for the small community of Linville where we stayed at the Railway Reserve free camp in our first year (2014). This time we continued a further 6km North to small free bush camp overlooking the Brisbane River where it is joined by Monsildale Creek.
This turned out to be a very quiet and peaceful spot with little local traffic and a few horses for company.
Challenged with finding some gravel roads to “give the van a good shake” we had decided to continue North from here on what was obviously largely unsealed tracks; there was actually more sealed road than all the maps indicated but still around 40-50kms of unsurfaced narrow and winding road. This is all well signed at the major turn-offs but necessitated travelling mostly in second gear at around 40km/h due to the nature of blind corners and crests with no visible shoulder to pull off for passing vehicles.
A very picturesque drive through the upper Brisbane River valley was well worth the effort. There is the possibility of turning back to the South-West at one pint and driving through to Nanango but we opted to keep going North and eventually came out on the Kilcoy-Murgon Road. There are a total of 35 numbered river crossings over the Brisbane River along this route, all of them concrete causeways, and all of them narrow!
As you progress upstream the river becomes smaller and narrower until there is almost nothing left by Crossing Number 35
