FLIGHT OF THE BANDIT

The Isla Gorge is the traditional land of the Wulli Wulli and Jiman Aboriginal people and there is also a hand laid rock road on the western edge of the park, accessible via a dirt track. It was made in the 1860's and was used for getting wool from Roma to the port at Rockhampton. The area has been created over millions of years by water carving the soft precipice sandstone. There are still three major watercourses flowing through the park, and they all eventually lead into the Dawson River.

The whole area covers some 82,000 square kilometres with some 25 separate mountain ranges branching off from the Great Dividing Range and in some places rising to approximately 1,000metres above sea level, giving the region the nickname of "The Roof of Queensland".

From the Isla Gorge I kept heading south and then turned off for the 26km blast to Glebe Weir. It's a nice sweeping hilly single lane sealed road that at speed forgives no mistakes. It is an unfenced road, so cattle abound and here I came across my first 'roos for the day. No close encounters here, they heard the screaming angry 600 ridden by a long haired red eyed madman from quite a distance and wisely scattered.

The Glebe Weir road does not forgive mistakes

As you approach the weir, there is this seemingly nice straight bit of road begging to tap out on. My advice is don't, upon tackling this stretch, even at the posted speed limit, it's as rough as guts and strictly for motocross riders.

The Glebe Weir is on the Dawson River and apart from that, I know stuff all about the history of it. Every time I've stopped there either by myself or with some mates, we've been to busy getting pissed and wreaking havoc.

I thought about heading out to Lake Murphy and then onto Expedition National Park, but after eyeballing the innards of the fuel tank, I decided it would be wiser to head more or less directly to Taroom. Along the way I dropped in and had a sticky at the Palm Tree Creek and the unique Livistonia Palms of the upper Dawson River catchment area. There is a picnic area there, and although camping isn't allowed, it's far enough from the highway and quite enough for me to have stopped there a number of times; one such time waking up to find some mangy mongrel looking Alsatian mutt obviously eyeing me off for breakfast. An axe emerging seemingly of its own accord from the swag soon dissuaded him from such thoughts.

No mutt this time around, but a couple of chook chasers were camped there along with a support vehicle and it turned out they were from Toowoomba and had been out to Ayers Rock and back. The fire was still going, and they kindly loaned me some heat from it and told me stories of their trip. I was envious of them.

If I had of known they were there, I would have joined them instead of staying further back up the road. They certainly were good company in the short time I spent with them, and they were still feeling a little furry from the night before?

All up there were 4 bikes, a DR650, two KTM 990's and a KTM 950.

After fuelling up in Taroom, I decided to set about becoming one of those coffee latte angels, but alas, the road gods didn't agree with that and the coffee machine was broken.

Ludwig Leichhardt passed through this area in 1844 on his way to Port Essington, Northern Territory from Jimbour, Queensland. Since it appeared that I wasn't going to become a coffee drinking weekend warrior latte angel, I figured I might as well keep moving and proceeded to take a back road that would lead across to Cracow. When I came to a major sealed road that looked very familiar and then saw a truck that looked very familiar from earlier in Taroom, I reckoned something was a bit sus here. I dug out the Hema Central Queensland Map and then wondered why I even pack those maps, they are as useful as tits on a bull. Then I remembered: they make for good fire starting material?

The Leichhardt Tree at Taroom

I dug out Thommo's map of Queensland and quickly found that I'd managed to loop my way back to the Leichhardt highway and was just north of Wandoan. Umm... That Bugs Bunny saying of 'I knew I should have turned left at Alberquerque' sprang to mind. This left me with no other thing to do but turn right around and plunge right back into those dirt tracks and eventually worked my way across and came out near Biloela with less than a litre left in the tank. Lucky I always carry spare go juice!

When going to pay for the fuel in Biloela, I noticed some pancake in a bottle premix, one of those 'add water and shake' deals. One simply can't walk past that when on a road trip, pancakes for brekky, far more exciting than bacon and eggs!

As I strapped breakfast onto the bike I also saw one of those pie van blokes selling fresh seafood, and out of curiosity more than anything decided to have a sticky, figuring the bastard would be pretty expensive. To my surprise, he was asking pretty fair dollars and with a bit of beatin' around the bush, picked up over a kilo of prawns, some oysters and some ice to keep it all chilled in my little cooler. Not 3 feet away, a birdseye chilli bush was growing, not only was I going to have a late lunch of prawns and oysters, but have a few coated in freshly made chilli sauce.

With seafood, some stolen chillis, and a couple of other ingredients scabbed within a few mins, I set off to the Callide Damn, figuring I'd have a nice late lunch parked under a shady tree by the dam. Boy, was I disappointed when I got there. Callide isn't much to see these days. The water lever is near non existent, and the picnic area didn't look like it had been used much in years.

So now what, I didn't feel much like stopping here for long and I was getting hungry! I could go to the Kroombit Tops national park, the site of a crashed B-24, but it was getting a bit late to be scrub bashing around there, and I didn't like my chances of even getting the 600 to the crash site. A bit of a scratch of the brain cells soon discovered that the Cania Gorge was less than an hour away, and after a quick inspection of lunch I decided that it would serve just as well as dinner. Decision made, it was time to set about getting down there.

The last 15 kilometres or so before the turn of the park is bloody good, you go over the range and the ride isn't bad at all. You can ride thru there at a pretty cracking pace: nothing tricky about the road unless you can't ride very well?

The road into Cania Gorge on the other hand... the closer you get to the dam the more it demands that you grab it around the throat with both hands and wring it's ruddy neck! The last 3km especially. Absolute beaut road.

Just before Cania Gorge: an absolute beaut road

I got to the dam itself and after having a quick walk around to find a good spot I noticed all these signs saying 'No Camping'. Bloody everywhere they are. Sifting through the clouds of paint fumes that dwell in my head I couldn't recall this rule from last time I stopped here. Ummm.. Stop here, eat and keep running down the road and find somewhere quiet or keep going? The tape worms were getting pretty savage so that signed the deal until walking back to the bike and I saw that I had a leaking fork seal and a good 'un too at first glance.

What to do? I remembered seeing a caravan park 3 kilometres back down the road, and from the quick glance I had of it as I blasted past at a vast rate of knots, it looked OK. The time was around 4pm. Still plenty of mileage left in the day, but I needed to eat and to know wether the front end would be good for the rest of the weekend; so I signed up for a camping spot in the van park. Nice joint, but phuk-in-hell, I damn near dropped dead when told the price for an unpowered site. Even with the lurks and perks they offered, it near made me keep running down the road.

It's a nice sized park, and I was given the run of a whole section down the very back if I wanted it, which sounded good to me -- too many kids in the other areas for my liking.

I found myself a good spot a few meters away from a covered area, and again 'No Camping' inside that little bit of cover! No rolling the swag out on the table top tonight! Oh well... Camp was quickly set up as usual and I started organising a good feed. My Coke was a bit on the Kimberly Cool side and I reckoned the cans needed to be chilled a little more, so I put them in the little mesh bag carried for this purpose, tied a piece of rope to it, and threw it into the creek about 30m away to chill out while dinner was cooking. Must have the snakebite medicine chilled if I was going to have prawns for dinner.

Dinner under way at Cania Gorge

It didn't take long to make my chilli sauce brew up and have some prawns soaking, well more like throw 'em in, swish 'em around and throw 'em on the cooker, once cooked repeat again. Nothing like eating freshly cooked prawns. In between all of this, a mad dash down to the creek to retrieve my now 'chilled' coke cans, whip out some high grade snakebite medicine: camping in absolute luxury.

What more can ya ask for? Fine company is one thing you could ask for, and that's what I ended up getting. I didn't take much notice in my mad frenzy of cooking, but one of the Wicked camper van thingies had pulled up not far away and as I found out, contained three Danish tourists who were wandering up to Cairns: two sisters and one with her better half.

In the end, I didn't get all those prawns and oysters to myself, but I was well compensated for that loss. Then I did the dishes, and this is where I liked this place after all: they had a little sink with gas hot water system, a gas bbq, and even a bloody microwave!!! Not too shabby at all, and in an unpowered camp site to boot.