Agnes Water and 1770
After a very wet night at Maryborough we were lucky to wake to clear skies and conditions remained fine for our long (by our standards) drive up to Agnes Water. We had four nights booked at the 1770 Eco Camp. The camp was a complete antithesis of what Matthias likes in a campground. It was full of young "lapping" or long-term travelling families, and it had a very "commune" feel about it. The kids loved it. It had a cubby house, sandpit, toys and books, a table tennis table and a pool table. But it was the TV, screening endless kid's movies, that impressed and paralysed my kids the most. It was an evil we could only escape by taking ourselves out for the day. But the afternoons and evenings were unavoidable. The only sweetener for Matthias was that it had a very good free coffee machine.
It rained non-stop our whole first day. But we made the effort to tear the kids away from the TV and managed to do the short Bush Heritage Paperbark Forest boardwalk between showers. We then hung out in the Agnes Water library till it closed for lunch. We weren't the only family taking advantage of the library's outstanding selection of toys and tolerance for non-library decibel levels.
After lunch back at camp we again braved the weather and went to the 1770 headland lookouts. Unable to stand sitting cooped up in the steamy car waiting for the next shower to pass, I chose to don the wet weather gear and walk in the rain down to the Captain Cook monument. The kids followed and we all got soaked to the bone. It turns out my favourite 10 year old rain jacket is no longer waterproof and my sneakers never stood a chance. Matthias sat smug and dry in the car.
Blessedly the forecast changed over night and what was supposed to be 20mm of rain the following day turned into blue skies, all day! We had a fabulous day kayaking and playing at the Bustard Bay foreshore in 1770. We returned to the same lookout to enjoy it under contrasting conditions.
Our third full day was another beauty. We did some short hikes around the Discovery Trail Lookout and to Chinaman’s Beach where we hung out for the afternoon. I added a handful of new birds to my list. Matthias took his board out at Agnes Water main beach where Hugh befriended a German boy around his age. The two hit it off kicking the “Fußball” and jumping in the waves together.
We had time on our final day, after packing up camp, to go out to Springs Beach. This was a magical spot, a short walk through beautiful eucalypt woodland. It was a popular surf break and while Matthias went on to explore a little further around the coastal headland, the kids and I lazed under the sheoaks and splashed in the shallows watching the longboarders ride the surf.
We broke up the drive to Bargara, our next house sit, with a free camp just off the road near Baffle Creek. It wasn't much more than a turn around track next to a small dam or pond, but it was teeming with birdlife and it was so refreshing to be back in "nature" after so many nights in organised campgrounds.
