Stanthorpe has lots of well-known parks for south-east Queenslanders so it was a little disappointing to find out that Girraween National Park was closed for camping. Sundown national park was open but there were no options for camping with a camper trailer in the national park (or so it would seem according to Queensland National Parks). However, given this nuisance, we gave Wikicamps a go and picked the Top of Town caravan park in Stanthorpe. Wikicamps seems to be the goto application for general camping information but we did notice that some national parks are not included, but maybe this is because the content is somewhat user-contributed?
Stanthorpe is a lovely old town near the top (The Summit is the top) of the great dividing range. While it’s not the highest point in Queensland (Ravenshoe is) it is cooler and home to the parks as well as Queensland’s Granite Belt wine and apple region. While we’re not wine buffs our impression of Queensland wines has been that they’re pretty rubbish, but, as discussed with the Ballendean owner this is a typical impression of Australians who haven’t tried Queensland wine.
Setup at the Top of Town caravan park in Stanthorpe
As it so turns out we were indeed wrong, the wine from both Ballendean and Golden Grove estates was tasty and interesting, our picks were the Barbera at Golden Grove and the Saperavi Durif at Ballendean.
Aside from the wines we spent a half a day riding through Stanthorpe and the lovely Quart Pot creek area, this looks like it’ll have some new bike paths soon so it should be great. While we weren’t expecting a challenging mountain bike track the old (what appeared to be disused) walking path heading south-east was… extremely challenging.
See if you can find the Southern Cross Windmill
Most people have train carriages in their backyards
We also dropped in at the Granite Belt Brewery which has an excellent session ale and the cider is also good, however, we’d pass on the merlot sour. We were surprised about how much of a lovely bar and restaurant they had. Were we to spend a bit more time in Stanthorpe we’d make an effort to go.
The parks themselves are great, and at the moment (February 2020) they’ve received a huge amount of rain and as a result, the rock pools are all full of water and there is an abundance of moss and beautiful new plant growth. The best part, is simply that at ~900 m it’s a darn site cooler than Brisbane.
Lovely day for a walk – although its quite a steep one.
Bacon and egg wraps at Vixen’s cafe, they’ve even painted a little courtyard mural.
The conclusion we came to is that given Stanthorpe is not too far from Brisbane we could come back again (most likely next year) to check out promised snow and wildflowers.
Our departure day from Stanthorpe was a lovely sunny day. It rained the night before so it was great to catch some sun and let the canvas of the camper to dry up before we packed it. Very excited about our next stopover (Kwiambal National Park) we left Stanthorpe. Blissfully unaware of what was ahead of us we were driving through the range enjoying green meadows with wildflowers when all of a sudden we ran out of luck and our LandCruiser refused to shift out of third gear…
Moments before what seemed to be smooth sailing ended
Hoping it was just a temporary stubbornness of the car – it loves the attention that car – we continued on hoping it would change its mind and change back to normal. Alas, it was not the case…
Since turning around in third gear on a narrow road with a camper in tow and no possible way to go in reverse, the only way forward for our journey.. was forward. Texas was the closest town, and thanks to the road workers who reassured us that there was a mechanic in Texas.
We had always anticipated some form of car failure, remembering that vintage cars – no matter their reputation – are more than capable of causing issues. However, we had figured that once out of the cities and in the country we’d be able to work with mechanics to complete the repairs. This delusional interpretation now faced reality. The reality of which was that mechanics in Texas had absolutely no interest in helping. We guess they’re there to make money, and assisting a traveller with an old car is just trouble, trouble that they don’t want. Presumably, dealer repair jobs, or insurance jobs and stranded travellers are more the order of the day. This left us stymied, with the real world crushing our delusionary world and the generous offer of waiting two weeks till someone could take a look, a look mind you, not even a fix. Alternatively, we were generously offered to be towed to Brisbane at the cheap rate of ~$11 dollars per km (a nice $3,000 tow).
About 5 seconds after the tow offer, we placed her in low range to take off, and high to drive and left Texas. At roughly 60 km/h we would’ve been a nuisance on the highways so we picked a quiet set of roads to return on although this did increase the distance a little. I think the gearbox was just bad luck as there were no other issues, even revving the car pretty high at 3200 rpm (high for a 13B-T) for 5 hours didn’t seem to worry the old 40. The minor dirt roads and the many flooded crossings through Millmerren provided little challenge even with only a single gear.
On the road, we considered the options of repairing/switching out the gearbox (we have two working spares) but came to the conclusion that while this would fix our immediate problem, it would not fix the problem with Australia, and to assume that we would require no further assistance would be foolish.
It was a sad moment to leave the 40 series LandCruiser on the mountain. We had put a lot of effort into the car but hadn’t anticipated the gearbox failure (mind you, we had been interested in having the gearbox reconditioned but were advised that since it was recently rebuilt and sounded good it should have been fine for the trip). We could only take the positives of this away, however, had we been 1000 km into the trip the 5-hour drive on backroads would’ve been 20 hours (or maybe a generous $11,000 tow, thanks guys).
With the LandCruiser parked and resting we hooked the Ultimate up to the Pajero rescue car and returned to Brisbane. Now it was time for a re-think and potential purchase of a replacement vehicle.
Rinse and repeat as they say, whoever they are. Friday found us back at Kent Mountain again but this time for real… real you say.
So the summary is this if you’re preparing to travel for six months, organising everything on the home front in one and a bit days is a little tight. Sure, we’d covered all of the major stuff but it was the tidy up and finalisation of items like tax and power/water/house that actually needed more time. Also try to avoid adding shipping a car also on the same day as you’re departing…
The upside of this was that when we finally got away the road was kind, the car was shipped and the family all turned up at the mountain. Only mistakes were checking the foundation strength of a support pillar of a house with the side of the Ultimate. Don’t take tight turns immediately after installing extension mirrors. The Ultimate is strong… but the external power adapter and the awning beam stay holder are not as strong as house supports. A few rivets later, and it was history with some egos bruised.
For several years the Darling Downs have been dry, this meant that Kent mountain was pretty brown and hard to enjoy. Now, however, the rains have come and the mountain is lush and green.
Automated plant watering systems take time to set up and run – see www.opensprinkler.org very nifty
2017 – Still pretty, but not terribly green
Now substantially nicer
The mountain was good fun as usual, shashlyk was had and the main thing!
There was some drizzle which made any bare soil extremely sticky. They say that if you stick to the downs in the dry, it’ll stick to you in the wet!
The Ultimate seemed to redeem its itself with respect to the hot water system and we let it run for roughly a day to ‘burn-in’ you may say. This seemed to improve things but it still seemed a little finickity.
Collecting a few more parts from the spare LandCruiser (which was at the mountain) left us mostly ready to move on.
The drive from Nobby through to Stanthorpe was pretty easy, although for the LandCruiser this meant another slog of uphill climbing, which it coped with well.
Driving through Warwick was quite convenient as we stopped at Bunnings for some extra tools and supplies.
After we left for Stanthorpe we realised that all spares bought we’d doubled up on as were some additional fan belts and spares left at the mountain from the previous trip to Cape York (for a 40 series LandCruiser a complete list of spares and bits we took is here). This meant a quick return trip in the evening (less van) and a dinner at Soban House in Warwick which was very tasty.
A brief introduction; After many years of working hard together, we found ourselves in receivership of long service leave. Originally we had planned to travel internationally. However, our work provides us with plenty of that opportunity and the AUD is weak. Instead, we figured we’d head around Australia. I guess Australia isn’t cheap to travel either, but some of that cost depends on how to travel.
So – driving around seemed like a sensible idea given we’re residents. Camping for 6 months seemed like a stretch, we’ve done that for a month but 6 would be tough (for us), hotelling/motelling is an option but that’s great for keeping close to towns and cities but leaves little room to explore beyond that. Thus really for us pulling something better than a tent was the plan.
Our younger selves after a month of camping, we were still smiling but I think after 6 months we might not be smiling
We decided against a big caravan almost immediately without much thought, I guess we just figured that we don’t have lots of people to sleep, and we want to access rugged areas. There are exceptions to that rule but we also don’t have the hundreds of thousands of dollars required to buy something that fits both purposes. We also would need to buy something which could pull it… Yes, that brings us to our car. We have an old land cruiser BJ42, now I (Tim) had thought we could think about changing this over for something more comfortable, but Lena was of the mind that as I’d spent so much of my spare time toying around with the stupid thing that we would get some use out of it for a change… and fair enough!
Turns out I was lying, we don’t have just one but two – well it’s a long story as the one on the right was my brothers…
But it’s a Landcruiser? Right, yes they’re those huge cars pulling semi-trailer length caravans along the road, wrong. The small 40 series diesel land cruisers are/ were basically the worlds most powerless cars. The original 3B motor generates a huge 25bhp at the rear wheels (this is less than a reasonable 250cc motorbike makes). However, we did have a leg up on the 3B which has trouble pulling you in the driver’s seat, we found after much searching a 13BT turbo. A little tuning later the car was yielded a whopping 78bhp at the rear wheels. This means we were in the market for a lightweight camper van or trailer that we might be able to tow up gentle hills.
When I was younger my parents toured Australia in a Jayco Lark, I have many fond memories of that caravan. We looked into it and while excellent there was an overwhelming concern that while great on the road, off-road was hard on it resulting in breakage. Do I know for sure? Would it have been a better buy than what we have, who knows? This left us in the world of camper trailers. Our first discovery is that while you get plenty less in a camper trailer it would seem that you don’t pay any less… We thought something in the 10-20k mark would be easy to find. But that’s just not the case, most camper trailers exceed that. Another surprise was that off-road camper trailers are heavy. As that had completely stuffed up our budget, we figured that, bugger it lets just get something that’s good. In the end, we settled on an Ultimate Xplor, and yes, you’re right, it’s more than 20k, more like three times that.
We would put this choice largely down to a few things:
Something that had everything we wanted and was comfortable and we were confident that we wouldn’t need to test run it multiple times before we departed
Internal Kitchen
Very light, 850kg
Looks good and has a double bed and hot water if you want it
We were going to skip on a test run, but given the weather was nice we thought we’d head up to our family property on the darling downs to see whether the Landcruiser could really pull the van up a steep hill (the Toowoomba range) and that there were no unexpected surprises.
mmmmm mud…
It turns out that some of the things which we ordered like ‘hot water’ in the Ultimate while seeming gimmicky make for a totally different experience. That being that you don’t have to go to bed in your own personal dirt covering, or psyche yourself up for a cold shower under a bucket to return to human.
So, did we gain anything from the test run and did we miss anything?
Some spares for the land cruiser.. well that is a never-ending requirement; fan belts, heater hoses, radiator hoses, tin snips to name a few – maybe later I’ll add a full list of tools and spares for anyone foolish enough to take something like this on a trip… and no doubt it’ll never be what’s required
Surprisingly simple cooking utensils like spatulas and cooking spoons. Normally this would be part of the bbq stuff when camping but we missed it
Ground matt for the entrance, either that or have dirty feet
Small broom and some spare rags
Otherwise, all that was left before the trip could commence was some minor car modifications (resonator to cut down on the drone at 100kph, UHF radio and interior console, radiator overflow capture bottle) and packing.
After about eight months working solidly including the weekends, which was a bit soft as we didn’t include the nights, it was time for a brake. Lets not debate the issue however, some people definitely work harder than us, in fact some lawyers in Brisbane work more than 24 hours a day which seems to have set the new benchmark for long hours. We’d also spent an epic month or two planning which is something we don’t often do – you can read about that process here, riveting stuff!
The flight was early in the morning, if you’ve spent time with us, early is not our thing. The morning is best spent in bed relaxing, reading about terrorists, crime syndicates or pedophiles on the ABC news. Or if you’re a really special person you might just enjoy listening to the soft hustle of the wind, cool blue green glow in the windows as the sun reflects off the grass. I forgot, where were we, that’s right, being picked up by our bus master in his chariot the VW transporter at the horrid time of 6 am. For a change we didn’t even need to nurse our bags as the mine had bought a trailer for the transporter. Quite great really. There was the usual ‘lekker’ chatter of the South Africans in the bus, whatever they talk about we have no idea and they’re oblivious to the idea that maybe we might want to know. Our bus trundled through Solwezi, dry, dusty and rarely quiet in the mornings, past our favourite Shoprite, past Whimpy’s which everyone covets so dearly but we’ve never ventured into. Past the teaming Solwezi markets full of people who’ve been our friends for such a long time even though we’ve only been there once or twice. Past the witch doctor large sign stating his cures for diseases such as,you guessed it, marriage. We then turn right after the markets and along a dusty pot holed road which I find a joy as you’ll rarely see much on a smooth flat road, because, well you’d be asleep. The town then gives way to a few plots of scraggly mealies and a few brick kilns, and then we’re at the Solwezi airport. We’re checked in via iPad and our friend from the charter knows us well so ID is not necessary, sure we’d only met seconds earlier but we have trustworthy faces. The plane we board is a Embraer Brasilia. It has silver engines and on hot days you can’t take your luggage onboard because it doesn’t provide enough lift, that is, unless your luggages is a massive flat screen TV.
We arrive in Lusaka on schedule and with no problem. Lusaka although has some problems of its own. Those being that due to a lack of rain and their enormous reliance on hydro power blackouts were frequent. This was all the talk of the local taxi drivers and most had come to the conclusion that it was a conspiracy theory about the water. From their point of view it was much more likely that simply the government was selling the power to neighbouring countries for cheap and leaving only a little for the locals. Who would know, but luckily our hotel had a backup generator so we weren’t in the dark literally or metaphorically. Our parents had managed to make there way across for the safari as well, planes still work. They arrived, breathed in the fresh air of Zambia and settled in for a brief journey in Lusaka.
Lovely dresses from Kamanga Wear (a little outfit making local but modern clothes)
Spending a little time sightseeing in Lusaka is not too bad for a day, maybe you could make a few days of it but we are just not adventurous enough, maybe one day when we grow up. However what we did manage to do was go around to our few tourist spots we know, which are the National museum, and, err, a few shops. The National museum had a little more of the history of Zambia completed this time. Previously the section was only empty display cabinets and taped off. Now however it was filled with a few trinkets and colour posters. The museum has quite a few other exhibits which are worth seeing, some human history and the tribal history of Zambia, you could spend about an hour or more if you read everything in detail. The day offered little more and our parents were weary so we finished the afternoon off picking up some clothes made by Kamanga wear made from chitenge, and then ended the night off at an Indian restaurant …. in the dark due to a power cut across Lusaka.
The next day was our departure so we shuffled off to the airport from Lusaka two hours or so before our flight. As in the typical African style we were issued our tickets and only noticed after we cleared customs and were sitting around that we were on the wrong flight. So I walked back out of the customs zone and the immigration staff waived me back out (this is a bit unusual for an Australian where doing something like this might land you in the strip search cabin). I asked why we had our flights changed. Apparently not enough people had been bothered to buy tickets on our flight so it was cancelled (or maybe it wasn’t and we were just cancelled). This meant that we’d be getting into Arusha at very late not just late, it also meant missing out on a view of Mt Kilimanjaro, shame but that’s life. Anyhows after that was sorted out as successfully as I could, which meant accepting the situation as fact and moving on, I walked back straight through customs waiving to the immigration staff – I figure they trusted I was honest enough to move back through the customs zone without another stamp or even a glance at my passport. That then left us with quite a few more hours to kill in Lusaka International which, while a little dull at least allowed us access to outrageously priced cold Mosi (The best Zambian beer).
Nairobi offered us a Tusker in the airport while waiting. This was probably good as it gave us a little time to calm Lena’s nerves as she was soon going to finally show me how she could clear customs in a flash and some poxy Australians would be left eating the dust of a Kazakhstani. However arriving in a Arusha an hour or so later proved to have the Australians through first and the Kazakhstani double and triple questioned, there is little justice in the world.
We were picked up in our luxury van, err, well, that’s what I was hoping but actually instead at 2am we were picked up in a completely stuffed van that only just managed to get us to the Planet Lodge in Arusha. We weren’t feeling terribly confident at that point as we’d handed over a considerable amount of cash for the holiday and stepping into a quite broken minivan was unexpected. However, we did make it and the hotel while a little odd was quite nice. The rooms were clean and the bed was relatively comfortable, but since we only managed to lie down at 3am we didn’t have long to enjoy the moment. Oasis hotel is a small semi boutique hotel which has a number of small circular rooms. The circles are divided into two such that you sleep in a small semi-circle. The rooms appeared to be clean and, if you’re patient, hot water eventually comes out of the shower head. Breakfast was quite nice and there were a few cute birds fluttering about in the grounds.
We were then met by our driver Michael, who was quite a nice guy and his vehicle of preference was a slightly old Landcruiser 80 series with the safari style pop-up roof and padding, which our sides would become very familiar with while being tossed around looking at the planet’s fruits. Michael had pretty good English and an older fellow who was in the car for some reason also had very good English. It turned out that the older guy was Joao’s 2IC and most likely the guy that ran things in Zambia. We had withheld 2000USD to make sure that if we turned up and they pretended not to notice us we might have some bargining power. However this was quickly resolved once we’d arrived at the local Shoprite and the older 2IC hinted that if we were happy it’d be nice if we finalised the payment. At that point all seemed well and we had a car and a driver so we moved out. I was a little dissapointed that our car wasn’t quite as new as some which we saw operating with Eeasy Travel which we’d looked at, but I figured the main thing was that would manage to see what we came for. After Lena and I had stocked up on potato chips and macadamia nuts we departed for Tarangire national park and our first real look at something other than pot holes, Tanzanians pulling carts and a few rather nice looking coffee plantations.
Tarangire NP
Driving out along the road from Arusha to Tarangire national park was .. surprisingly smooth and well maintained. There are even quite good road signs and in a way I believe all of the talk about it being impossible to self drive might be a little overblown. A view out the window gives a glimpse into the life of the Masai who’s Boma are visible from the road (traditional villages consisting of mud huts). The countryside driving out of Arusha was greener and appeared arable but travelling further north (as described later) you drift through many k’s of white, dry clay like soil with little or no grass, or trees. I would imagine that the Masai close by to Arusha live a far better life than their friends to the north.
Masai Boma alongside the road – I hate pictures from moving vehicle but alas it fits the tale
The weather was also surprisingly nice, it had rained recently in Arusha which was unusual for winter and it was a welcome change from bone dry Solwezi in Zambia. The exception to this was the obviously huge mountains and ranges nearby which are due to the divergence for the Nubian tectonic plate and the Somalian tectonic plates which are drifting apart (Wikipedia article for the love of further exciting reading). This divergence creates two depressions, an eastern rift, which is where we were driving, and a western rift, which we will see parts of during our travel in Rwanda. The eastern rift is the cause for the volcanic activity generating mountains like Kilimanjaro and Ol Doinyo Lengai, and valleys which contain lake Natron and lake Manyara. Tarangire national park is within this rift valley.
Entry into Tarangire national park was all rather straight forward, especially when your driver does all the talking and you largely know nothing of what’s happening. It’ll also be (if it’s your first park that you come to) the first time you’ll realise just how original your idea of going on a Safari in Tanzania is. This was like no national park I’ve been to in Australia, there was probably fifty nearly identical safari vehicles lined up in the car park all waiting for the admission. Think you’ve got some sort of original concept or your cars special, think again. What we couldn’t quite understand is how many companies exist that you don’t see on the net when searching. Maybe some are more accessible to people who don’t speak English or Russian, or maybe the companies we investigated online just had better placement in search engines or a greater quantity of participants who were willing to leave their comments online. Strange, moving along as I was still a little disappointed that we didn’t have a V8 Landcruiser…. So this was it, my father got his GPS setup spectacularly, camera’s at the ready, fees paid, time to see some zebras chasing lions or whatever happens in these much fabled safari parks. Only about a minute after we drove past the guards/ rangers / masai warriors hut we were stuck behind a bunch of other cars and we bore witness to an African Harrier hawk doing it’s best to pull something out of a hole in a tree. You then forget about un-originality and the quibbles in your mind grasping onto the price you’ve paid and start enjoying the trip for what you came for, sites of things you just don’t see in the other six continents. It’s interesting that we’re interested in watching them and we think they’re great, I’d like to know what they think. Trains of passengers passing them by each day, we figure constantly wondering what exactly it’d be like to eat a few of them.
From that point forward in Tarangire we saw what you would expect, zebras, ostriches, vultures, lions, giraffes and even a leopard from quite a distance.
This was all quite wonderful really, right up until when we went to check out exactly where we were on the planet and unfortunately the planet had lost us. The GPS which was happily staying put on the window sill had decided that maybe we weren’t to be trusted anymore and headed off somewhere. Shame, hopefully the zebras can use it for the next migration, well considering they don’t migrate in Tarangire National Park then we could probably just rest assured that it’s quite gone to waste. Shame man.
At the end of the safari we had a mad dash back through the park, Michael, our driver, was on a mission like no other to make it back to Maramboi tented camp, and especially to see the sunset from a great place… The sunset, an interesting plan really. Given that we’d had such a full on day seeing what we, non-Africans, considered amazing, seeing the old friend the sun drifting off the flat edge of the world just didn’t seem like something we’d need to rush for. So brushing past a couple of elephants and charging out of the park, albeit with a short stop to look for dad’s lost GPS was our last parting memory of Tarangire. Once we were out of the park we were back onto good bitumen. This was a bit unnerving, was it actually a giant theme park rather than a rough adventure. No need to dwell on this too much as the former is just the reality.
Maramboi camp is about 20 minutes from from Tarangire National Park. This makes it a really painless drive and it’s certainly something to be happy about because you’re fairly buggered after watching things for the day while being bumped around inside the back of a landcruiser (even thoughts it’s padded). So after the sunset we unloaded ourselves from the car and went into Maramboi which is a fantastic camp for the price we paid (not that that’s cheap but…. compared to the other places on the trip). Maramboi is set on the side of Lake Manyara and has a wonderful view from the deck across (what was a little dry) lake and foreshore. While having your complimentary gin (or whatever it is) and tonic with a little lemon and some popcorn you can watch the wildebeest frolicking in the distance or a couple of crown cranes pecking their way through a few bushes. However that’s where our fun started with ‘It Started in Africa’ with our first reservation turning out to be incorrectly booked, so instead of a booking for two couples we had a booking for one couple. They suggested maybe we could have one couple stay somewhere else and the other stay at Maramboi, our driver had also disappeared at that point so we were left stranded waiting to find out whether in fact at 8pm we’d be shipped off to a new place to stay instead of where we planned. We were pretty shocked to be honest, the trip wasn’t cheap and failing to call ahead and make sure the bookings were correct was really all the tour company had to do. I don’t really blame Maramboi, this wasn’t really their problem whether they chose to solve it or not. Thankfully, however, Maramboi came through with the goods, our driver Michael nowhere to be seen, and let us stay in a room which was not really ready for guests but they managed to organise it. That was good, at least we had a place and we were together, we had to push the bad thoughts away and begin again. When we headed out to get our bags Michael appeared again, maybe he didn’t want to be involved in the issue, we have no idea but it wasn’t re-assuring. They then put our parents into their room and we were allocated ours.
The rooms were really very nice, hardwood floors elevated, good mosquito nets, reticulated showers and a lovely deck. A lovely place to smoke outside if you wished and ponder the meaning of all things. There was even some power points to charge your laptops/ cameras which would be the last time we’d have that kind of facility in a room until we gazed upon lake Victoria.
Dinner at Maramboi consisted of a buffet selection of hot food and some cold foods and cheese, just be careful of the cheese, it’s well aged. We also ordered a bottle of red wine, which I wouldn’t recommend anywhere in Africa, maybe we’re spoilt for choice in Australia, but no matter what we tried in Africa it was always average.
As morning came we were pleasantly surprised that breakfast was for the four of us, not just two, which was a bit of a surprise after the previous night. Again this is lovely out on the deck.
As we had a little time to spare before we travelled to Ngorongoro crater we decided to head out for a walk with a real Masai, unlike the fake ones… Either way it was quite a nice experience to go out for a walk in the morning and see a few antelope in the distance, look at a badger hole (no badger though), marabu storks and some flamingos in the distance. We were also told about the various uses for burning zebra poo to cure headaches and the ultimate headache curing poo is apparently elephant. It’s also a great chance to get a photograph with someone in Masai dress without being accused of being a muzungu and asked for money (one of our least favourite aspects of Africa).
We then collected our belongings hopped in the car and headed for Ngorogoro crater.
To be continued…
Traditional Gallery for those that like looking at photos
For photos which are geo-tagged you can see their locations
You then forget about un-originality and the quibbles in your mind grasping onto the price you’ve paid and start enjoying the trip for what you came for, sites of things you just don’t see in the other six continents. It’s interesting that we’re interested in watching them and we think they’re great, I’d like to know what they think. Trains of passengers passing them by each day, we figure constantly wondering what exactly it’d be like to eat a few of them.
