Day 37: Forsayth – Cobbold Gorge – Forsayth

It has happened again. That’s the second time this week.

We awoke this morning to the sound of people around us packing up their vans, and leaving.

Beside us, on the other side of the road where we are parked, and behind us. They were all packing up and leaving. All except for the bloke immediately to our left – on the “passenger side” of Percy.

It happened in Karumba, and now it has happened here in Forsayth.

It must be us. Probably me. MBW is charming and lovely. In fact if you looked up the word “charming” in the dictionary, her picture would be there.

I don’t know what it is that we … er, I … keep doing to offend everyone, but I need to figure it out pretty fast. At least I haven’t offended the bloke directly beside us yet.

Although I am officially the worst Facebook friend in the universe, I do look at it on occasion when I need to be distracted from something unpleasant. Like a Proctologist appointment.

Not that I’ve had a Proctologist appointment recently, but I did check FB the other day. And there was a discussion on the LC200 forum about how much oil your Landcruiser uses, especially when towing.

So I thought to myself, “I’d better check the oil in Elsie.”

Actually that’s not true. What I actually thought was, “I wonder how to get the bonnet up so that I can check the oil.”

So this morning, before we headed off to Cobbold Gorge, I got the bonnet up and checked the oil. And it was fine. Halfway between the high mark and the low mark. So I’ll give it a top-up when we get back to civilisation.

I did notice in there under the bonnet evidence of birds feathers, dragonflys, dead butterflys, etc. Which probably goes some way to explaining what happens when a bird hits the radiator.

But checking the oil reminded me of Pierre-Jules Boulanger.

Who is Pierre-Jules Boulanger? That is a very good question, and I’ll tell you about him later.

So with the oil checked, breakfast consumed, and Elsie packed for a day at Cobbold Gorge, we headed out of the caravan park and swung by the local dam because it is one of the top 10 things to do in Forsayth.

To be completely truthful, there is probably only 3 things to do in Forsayth, and we have already done 2 of them, so the dam was the last one to tick off the list.

And what a lovely dam and picnic area it is. Far better than anything I have even seen in Brisbane.

Which is interesting, because we learned today that there are only 900 residents in this shire, and only 200 of them pay rates. So well done Forsayth!

At the dam we realised that there was something we’d left behind, so we swung back to the CP very quickly. It wasn’t far … you could probably stand in the middle of Forsayth and throw a rock in any direction, and it would land outside the town centre.

There are a lot of interesting rock formations around Forsayth. MBW reckons that they are real, but I’m not so sure.

We came back into the caravan park and pulled up next to Percy, and I saw that our neighbour – remember our neighbour? The only one we haven’t seemed to offend so far – standing at the front of his van and looking at me with this bovine expression on his face.

Maybe “inscrutable” is a better word that “bovine”, but you know what I mean. The same look you get from a cow when you drive past.

So I did the neighbourly thing and engaged him in conversation.

Me: “Hi. How are you today?”

Neighbour: “Bit slower’d be nice.”

Now I have to say at this point that the combination of his bovine inscrutable expression and his veeerrryyy slooowww speeeeeeech made me believe that he actually said “I’m a bit slow. Be nice.” Which confused me.

Honestly! That’s what I thought he said.

Me: “Huh?”

Neighbour: “Bit slower’d be nice. Keeps the dust down.”

Me: “Righto then.”

Update: It appears that I HAVE offended everybody in the caravan park.

So we got the stuff we needed and headed back out to Cobbold Gorge. It is about a 40km road, and as discussed yesterday, at least 37km of that is gravel.

To get out to Cobbold Gorge, you have to take the road to everywhere.

The first 3km of bitumen is a very nice surface, but at about the 2km mark you get a sign at the side of the road that says ”REDUCE SPEED. NO LINES. NO OVERTAKING”.

Like having no lines on the bitumen is going to be the worst problem that you encounter on this road today.

The road very quickly turned to gravel, and when I say gravel, I mean teeth-chatteringly rough gravel.

With some serious washouts. And corrugations. And cattle grids. And cattle. And water crossings.

But also some beautiful creeks.

It was lucky that we didn’t bring the Lamborghini on this trip, because it would never have made it to Cobbold Gorge on that road. But it would have been fun in a rally car 🙂

It wasn’t a quick trip, but then I didn’t want to rattle Elsie to bits on the way.

But we did see quite a number of cars and caravans coming out … and I couldn’t imagine how complex that trip would have been with a van on the back.

We got out to Cobbold Gorge around 11.00am and our tour wasn’t due to start until 1.30pm, so we checked in and then went and hung about by the pool. We had taken our swimmers so that we could indulge prior to the gorge tour.

We got ourselves comfy on beach recliners and watched some other people come in and get in the pool, only to watch them get out again looking very, very cold.

Rather than go to the trouble of getting into our swimmers just to freeze in the pool, we just stayed fully dressed and lazed on the recliners and enjoyed the sun and fresh air. MBW read her book and I had a nice nap.

We had a bite of lunch and got ourselves ready for the tour at 1.15pm as instructed.

We were in a group of 13 (there was probably 45 people all together, but split into 3 group) and Grant was our tour guide.

We all got into a small bus and headed down to the gorge.

What was really weird was the way that Grant gave his commentary. He did it in this really “sing-songy” voice, using really short sentences.

And there were some words that he simply couldn’t say. Like “genetically modified”.

The gorge was absolutely spectacular … and in typical fashion, I took about 200 photos of the gorge and none of them do it justice.

The gorge tour consisted of a 2 parts: a boat thrip through the gorge, and a walk through the nature reserve including a walk over the glass bridge.

The gorge tour was started with a safety talk which is to be expected given that we are out in the bush.

But it is always a worry when the first thing that you are told in the safety talk is where to find the defibrillator.

And the second thing that you are told is that “if anything happens to your guide, take the walkie-talkie off his/her belt and call for help.”

OK, that’s not particularly comforting but … all good to know.

Unfortunately we were the last ones to get onto the boat … but fortunately that meant that we ended up at the front, with perfect views of the gorge.

Here is a fun fact: Cobbold Gorge wasn’t discovered until 1992. That is only about 30 years ago.

Why? Because the people who owned the land raised cattle. They knew that the waterhole was there because that’s where they watered their cattle, but everything else was scrub and sandstone, so they simply never bothered going and looking.

It was only when their son and his friend brought a small tinny (aluminium boat) to the creek and followed it upstream, that they discovered the beauty of the gorge.

Then they turned 15,000 acres into a nature reserve.

After the boat trip we went for a 1.2km walk through the bush.

It was a fabulous day. Seriously hot up on the sandstone with not a cloud in the sky. But a fabulous day.

Nobody needed the defibrillator, and none of our guides needed assistance.

Grant must have had his whole commentary memorised, because if someone asked him a question, once he’d answered it you could see the cogs turning in his head as he worked out where he was up to in his spiel.

We got back to Elsie to find …

I don’t really believe it was actually 49 degrees outside, but it certainly felt like it.

We did the 37km of gravel and 3km of bitumen back to Forsayth in about an hour.

Topped up Elsie ready for the trip towards Pinnarendi Station and then the Undara Lava Tubes on Sunday.

Now before I forget … Pierre-Jules Boulanger.

He was the boss of Citroen during WWII. The Germans wanted to buy his trucks and he couldn’t refuse without becoming at risk of execution, so he played a trick on the Germans. All of the trucks that he sold the German army had a fake dip-stick installed with the oil level markings incorrectly labelled.

So when the German engineers serviced the trucks, they thought that the oil tank was full, but it was actually desperately short of oil … causing the trucks to break down and the engines seize.

The Germans thought it was just poor engineering, but it was actually Pierre-Jules Boulanger sabotaging the trucks.

You can read all about that here.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

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