About Us

Australia
Whenever you mention overseas that you are from Australia, people think “the opera house, skippy and the beaches” but Australia is not only that, Australia is the bush, the outback, the country people, and its wild life and lots more. Ten years ago we joined one of the best four wheel drive club in the country. Being members of the Subaru Club, we have met exceptional people, whom we consider our second family; we learnt how to go camping, four wheel driving and more, now is time to put our skills to the test. We will be travelling to the rainforest, the outback, the world famous great barrier reef, we will go through some remote areas with rugged terrain, we’ll see lots of wild life including the legendary salt water crocodile, furthermore the famous road trains, they are 53 metres long, of course meet the country people, we will be visiting cattle stations; one of them is one and a half million acres and obviously we will be going to a lot of country pubs so we can enjoy a coldie while we meet some of the locals and some adventurous travellers, we are very excited and cannot wait longer to “Go and See Australia”......well...part of it.

05 August 2010

Kingfisher Camp

We moved from Lawn Hill Station to its next door neighbour Bowthorn Station (we were told this property has ½ a million acres with 25,000 heads of cattle) where Kingfisher camp is located, we were excited because it did not sound that far, however we travelled 140 kilometres inside Lawn Hill property until we drove into Bowthorn Cattle Station and then kept on going another 95 kilometres until we found Kingfisher Camp, the dirt roads were very rough, with a lot of corrugations and several bulldust holes and sandy patches, the outside temperature reached 38 degrees; it took us around 5 and a half hours of driving. After our arrival we set up and were invited to sit down around the campfire with our neighbours, next morning what a surprise, we found a beautiful camping grassed campground situated next to the Nicholson River.
We did a self-drive trip to Hedley’s Gorge where they told us we could swim, when we finally reached the Gorge and almost ready to get into the water we spotted a fresh water crocodile and very quickly changed our minds about swimming, we were told these little friends do not attack people, but we have a lot of respect for them.
In the afternoon we hired an aluminium boat and toured through the Nicholson River, we spotted a few fresh water crocodiles one was about 3 metres long, when we approached him to take a photo he did not even look at us; he just kept on sleeping. We also saw some bird nests stuck on under the face of the rocks it was amazing to see them coming out of their little houses.
We headed back to camp and prepared everything for the next day journey; to finish the night we were invited have some drinks at another campfire. These people were from Sydney and we took the opportunity to talk about the Subaru Club, we think they are future members.

King Fisher Camp

Adels Grove

After a long a dusty road; finally we arrived to Adels Grove located in one of the largest cattle stations (known in Mexico as cattle ranch) in Queensland and it is called Lawn Hill. The gulf of Carpentaria region was opened up to grazing in the mid 1800s. Pastoral pioneers brought the first cattle to the Lawn Hill Creek area in the 1860s, after the gulf fever that caused many graziers to leave the area. In the mid 1870s Frank Hann purchased numerous leases, launching the beginning of “The Lawn Hill Pastoral Holding Company”, Hann accumulated 9000square kilometres. Over the next century several graziers leased the land, until the famous “cattle king” Sebatiao Maia arrived from Brazil.
Maia arrived in Sydney in March 1975. He was unable to speak English and employed a taxi driver to be his interpreter and chauffeur as he travelled the country in search of potential cattle stations in Queensland. In 1976 Maia took over the lease of Lawn Hill Station and became the largest fauna sanctuary on leasehold in Queensland. In 1984 Maia surrendered 12,200 Ha of Lawn Hill Station to the State Government for a National Park. Today Lawn Hill has around one million acres, with approximately 40,000 heads of cattle, (the above information was taken from the visitors guide).
Now back to our disaster, when we opened the door of the off road granny flat we found everything covered in red dust, it was shocking, we had to empty and clean everything and searched where the dust came from. We found two big gaps at the back of the van, these gaps were at the bottom of the fibre glass panels because the manufacturer of the van just overlapped them and did not seal these gaps, we sealed the gaps as much as we could, it was not a pleasant task.
The campground is very spacious with a lovely waterhole and a river suitable for swimming and canoeing. Next morning we did a tour to visit Riversleigh D Site, which is one of the first major fossil deposits found (apparently in the world) and the only publicly accessible. It is a World Heritage area and its fossils are dating back 25 million years. They have found turtles, fish, snails, crocodiles, lizards, and several generations of wombats. Gabriel held a stone 15 million years old, we had morning tea with the group beside the beautiful Gregory River and returned to the pick up the caravan and headed to Boodjamulla National Park (Lawn Hill) for a long scenery walk to visit the Indarri Falls and the Gorge, the views were spectacular, the gorge has a diverse wildlife, lots of different birds and a funny little fish “Archerfish”, this fish spits a jet of water to knock insects down.

Adels Grove