Day 78 (April 18) - Buxton to Woodgate

I woke up and went for a run / walk with Matt.

On the advice of one of the fellow campers, we'd bought some Rid insect repellent which apparently worked well. This didn't do anything for us, so we tried some of our 40% DEET Bushman's repellent we had. This was a lot better, but we still got some bites and of course it meant spraying yourself with questionable chemicals and having this slick across all your exposed skin. The alternative, which the host suggested, was to cover up and wear long sleeves and long pants. But of course this defeats the purpose of being in Queensland near some water in lovely warm weather! It really just wasn't working out at all.

So over our morning coffee Mim and I agreed we really needed to move on, even if it meant the reluctant possibility of losing three weeks' camping fees. She'd been bitten during the night by midges that had made it through the fly screen, and Jude had come off fairly badly too.

Victims of midge

 So we went for a morning swim and fish. We'd bought some squid as bait but again had no luck catching anything. So Jude and Bek came up with a technique to use it to catch some little blowfish type of creatures near the shore in a net! They'd put the squid in the bottom of the net, then from the outside they'd hold the bait with their fingers, then lower the net into the water until a little fish swam into the net to start nibbling the bait, then simply scoop them up! Using this technique they caught about eight little fish and kept them in a little dam until it was time to head back.

They'd also been building a fort, probably inspired by a big one we found on Bribie Island a few weeks ago. So we had some time during the morning to finish those off.

After this we packed up our camp and got ready to head off. Our host had come down to the site but hadn't come across to speak to us and direct us to a new location as he'd said he would. So we had a chat with him to explain our situation and hope to get a more reasonable response and some kind of refund. Unfortunately he was quite stubborn that he wasn't going to refund us any of our fees, so we had to agree to disagree and move on.

So we went back into Childers to do some shopping, as Woodgate doesn't have a supermarket as far as we could tell. Then it was out to the caravan park! We picked a large spot on a grassy patch quite close to the toilets and laundry. The site managers said hardly anyone uses this toilet block as there is one further back most others are using.

We got nicely settled in before an afternoon storm blew in! Wow it certainly rained! Mim, ironically, had just been getting ready to go across to the showers, so we figured we may as well all take one outside! Out came the soap and shampoo and we all had some degree of a wash on the main driveway of the caravan park in our bathers! I took the opportunity to give the car a wash too, which was great as it was always getting new clean water splashed on it. The air was still warm, as was the road, so it was not at all an unpleasant experience as it may be if we tried it at this time of year in Adelaide!

After the storm passed, we were treated to a lovely sunset!

The evening had a lovely cool breeze, we had power without having to worry about a dodgy solar blanket, we had water on tap so we didn't have to worry about the tanks running out and lugging rain water by hand from the tank at Buxton. AND, there were no midges! Honestly, it was such a contrast to everything Buxton Bush Camp had been. Which was a real shame in a way because it had been so promising, and still was nice in some ways. But I also felt a degree of guilt enjoying being in a caravan park so much! "Am I going soft?", I asked myself. We had gone to the effort and expense to get set up with a self-sufficient van, and it seems silly to go and park oneself in a caravan park with all services provided under such circumstances. But then, these are not normal circumstances with the Coronavirus going around; we can't just freecamp wherever we'd like to as all the National Parks and associated freecamps are closed; so at this stage, while I might be feeling soft, being in a site like this is probably our best option.

-- Greg