Camping
Trip Start
Jan 03, 2008
1
19
35
Trip End
Mar 15, 2008
Brisbane Forest Park,
Australia
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Woke up at about 7, sweating. Decided we had had enough of Surfers Paradise so we were going to go to a town called Southport which we assumed to have a beach. When we got there we realized that it was just a port and there was no beach to be found so our plans changed entirely. We looked in our guidebook and decided to go to a National Park and spend the night there.
Max drove, he was freaking out the entire time and refused to drive through the city so I guided him through a series of roads that went around the city to Brisbane Forest Park (about 15 km west of Brisbane). We got there and were told that camping was only allowed in bush camps ($5 each) which require driving hours into the park and a long walk into the middle of no where to find that camp
Campsite
. I didn't want to do that at all, i just wanted to camp. We thought about it for a while and decided that we would find our own camp site in the park. We walked on a path for a few km and found a decent spot off the trail and out of site. We walked back to the car, packed up our stuff and headed out on our camping adventure. We avoided all the park rangers and made our way without harassment onto the secret trail. With the tent and tons of gear my backpack was quite heavy and it made walking a chore, but we made it to our site. We set up our tent at about 5pm and discovered that mosquitoes were quite horrible at this location. I did some reading in the tent and listened and watched an amazing number of birds from the tent. The only time that I left the tent was to take a picture of it. We even cooked our food in the tent on our mini grill. Spagetti and corn. Once it got dark most of the birds quited down and bugs started with noise. Mosquitoes were everywhere on the outside of the tent but thankfully there was no holes in the tent. The Australian stars were out in full force and overall it was a good time (and we didn't have to pay for it).
