Behind the scenes - Blencoe Falls camping, without a bottle opener...

I treated myself to a fantastic 4 days away back in July.
I dragged my nephew along and we headed out to Blencoe Falls just south and west of Cairns. The turnoff is actually only 67km inland from the coastal main highway, but it took 3 hours to drive it! This gives you a bit of an idea of the road. Actually it wasn't too bad but the numerous blind corners winding up the mountain, black snakes sun baking ON the road, corrugations and a couple of creek crossings on the dirt road meant an average speed of 20-30 kms per hour. I wouldn't try a low normal 2WD sedan on it, though I didn't actually need low4 until I arrived as the most of the campsites were right on the creek bank and quite sandy. After a bit of exploring and deciding on our site, we set up camp and enjoyed the absolute tranquility.

It was then we realised the crucial item from our kit was missing. With an esky full of ice and coronas, and no bottle opener, we had to get inventive, so eventually we discovered a good old tyre iron sufficed.

When I camp (which I try to avoid as much as possible) I only take bare essentials. The idea of dragging along just about every item from home is just way too much work. I take a tent, mattress, chair, esky and basic cooking gear, (camp oven, saucepan and jaffle iron for baked bean toasties). The only drawback is whenever I need coffee I have to light a fire, but you know...there's a little bit of pyromaniac in all of us :)

Heres a couple of phone pics of our setup.






The following morning I woke up to the mad symphony of bird noise and the thickest lowest fog I have ever seen. Living in Cairns, fog is a rarity, so I was out there clicking away before my first coffee; also a rarity :)

This is when I made one of my favourite images.



It was also a great time for dew covered spiderwebs, but ho hum, we've all seen that before.



Our campsite was surrounded by fantastic natives on three sides, mostly wattle trees, and Blencoe Creek itself on the west side. Wildlife was pretty much limited to birds and possums, with the odd water rat. The campsites are on a cattle station so we had a couple of bulls visit us too!





Anyway heres some pics from my time there and would highly recommend a trip if you want to get away from it all, just don't attempt it in the wet season, though the falls would be much more glorious other than this trickle...
The campsite is actually few kms away from the falls, there's a walk that goes from the campground to the falls lookout, maybe an hours hike through the bush, but if you want to go to the top of the falls you would have to do some serious bush bashing. We drove around to this lookout which was about 5kms away.




Will be uploading some of these onto my website shortly.
Blencoe Creek and the old bridge crossing.
















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