With all things sorted , and goodbyes done yesterday , we headed off at 9am - smiles getting wider again , the further we went down the road .
Todays drive was taking us out to Kyogle , through Grevillea and up toward Woodenbong , before turning back toward Brisbane , through Rathdowney and on to Beaudesert , before arriving in Canungra .
Leaving Lismore , the road wasn't terrific , but improved as we got out of town further . We were driving through rolling hills and river flats till Kyogle , when the road started to climb gradually and follow the Richmond River in it's smaller stages . Through Grevillea and we started climbing again , the views were of rainforest covered mountains , with less pastureland as we climbed closer to the top of the range . The imposing stature of Mt Lindsay , with the top shrouded in cloud , was ever present -we kept driving around it - as you will see from the photos from 3 different sides .
As you can probably tell , Mt Lindsay is a volcanic plug - remains of a volcano - there were many smaller plugs similar around this area of the Scenic Rim .
The drive down from the top of the range toward Rathdowney was great - a windy , narrow road that goes through some of the best rainforest , with numerous palm trees , tree ferns , huge white straight Flooded Gum trees and lots more . Best still , we had very little traffic going our direction , so we weren't holding anyone up as we drove slowly down - so we could take in as much of the view as we could . There was plenty of traffic going the other way - mainly motorbikes , a bit like Macquarie
Pass on the weekends . The worst part - there weren't enough areas to stop & take photos !!
Reaching the bottom of the mountain , the pastureland started again - a bit like Macquarie Pass also .
A bit further down the road , we found a park beside the road with a toilet block - so a stop was in order . It turns out that it was also the free camp at Rathdowney , and had a few vans parked already .
We tend to attract some attention from onlookers when we drive in places , and a couple of them came over and started chatting - very curious to know how many slide outs we have , wondering about this , wondering about that , telling us their life story , etc , etc - we passed about half an hour chatting , and amazing them .
Back to the road and into Rathdowney , where they were having a huge horse event at the show ground - not a spare blade of grass to be seen - it was covered in horse floats & trucks & 4wds and horses of course !!!
Continuing on we drive through a lot more flatter areas toward Beaudesert , lots of horse properties , paddocks with grass over a meter tall and thick as - some were making hay out of it , some were just letting it do it's own thing .
There are some interesting names for localities - Wonglepong , Biddaddaba , Benoble , Tabragalba , Mundoolun and more .
We arrive at Canungra and turn into Coburg Rd - where the show ground is - and drive over the causeway and find we have to do a U turn to drive into the gateway - not that easy when you are 14.5m long . The show ground appeared to have quite a few caravans there already - when we got inside we found there were even more and a large amount of tents as well . We set up in the main show ground , with a lot of eyes watching us - thankfully we are self contained as there are only 2 shower / toilet blocks here , but it is a nice place to be .
The drive today let us bypass the Gold Coast and all of that traffic - well worth the diversion !!
Here is todays map :-https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z1G8gwwxwyYo.kz2pyb9TxXLA
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