Kenilworth TJM 4wd Weekend - Day 1

Friday 6th February, 2015

Doing something different for our first weekend camp in 2015 - we're joining other customers of the TJM Sunshine Coast store for a 4wding weekend in Kenilworth.  We'll all be camping at the Kenilworth Showgrounds tonight & tomorrow night, going on a 1/2 day drive through some tracks, cooking competition on Saturday night & then a more challenging 1/2 day track day on Sunday, finishing with TJM supplying a sausage sizzle for lunch before heading home.

We wouldn't normally go out of our way to camp in close proximity to a heap of people, so lets see how we go then.

We actually got on the road early for once!!  (I know right, how excited do you think I was). About 3pm we were on our way to Kenilworth and since it's not that far from home we took all the back roads to stay off the highway as much as possible.  We arrived about 4pm and headed straight to the TJM tent that was erected on the oval at the showgrounds.  Signed in, got the info from Jeff on where we could camp.  Decided we'd plug into the power for the weekend, easier then putting out the solar panels and probably safer for the solar panels to stay packed away with all these 4wd's coming.

Unloaded the camper for the weekend and erected the big awning over the galley, it's going to be hot so lots of shade is going to be appreciated.  Beer in hand, Craig took Boris for a walk around the oval and a bit of a play - he's a patient little dog, waits while we setup camp then he knows he gets his attention time.

Boris's time

What a good looking little man

I wander who enjoys this playtime
more?

Quite impressed with what the Kenilworth Showgrounds has to offer campers;  grassy campsites, fire drums, power, toilets and showers, pool, skate park.  There is also a dining room/kitchen available for groups.  All of this for $16.00/night powered or $13.00/night unpowered. The oval where we camped is a large area and there is also some more space on the other side of the cricket oval to camp.

Camping area at Kenilworth
Showgrounds

We chatted with our new neighbours as they arrived, while having some afternoon refreshments. Dinner consists of Lemon, Mint & Parsley Couscous served with some yummy lamb kebabs & chicken kebabs that I put in a lovely yogurt marinade last night to fiesta. Nothing happening tonight, so after dinner we cleaned up and headed to bed. Big day tomorrow.



Saturday 7th February, 2015
Up with the birds this morning and greeted by beautiful blue skies.  Bacon & Egg burgers for breakfast this morning and then we assembled under the TJM tent for our track instructions (Kenilworth hills via Charlie Moreland camping area and to Booloumba Creek) - yah!  We all lined up and got our vehicle numbers (29 cars was the total I think) and then we were off on our 1st adventure for the weekend around 9am.

Hema Cloud Map of Saturdays Track

Coming through Charlie Mooreland
Campground

Car behind crossing the creek

Convoy crossing the creek

One section of the track

picture perfect scenery

A little surprise along the track

Giving a helping hand

Just so pretty

About 3/4 of the convoy took a wrong turn, we all pulled up and waited on instructions to get us back to the rest of the flock.  It was a pretty spot we stopped at and there were thousands of butterflies around.

The lost sheep

Waiting.....

Beautiful butterflies everywhere

The flock is re-assembled

Great tracks

More prettiness

Little downhill descent

Front of the convoy heading home

Back of the convoy heading home

Pretty creek

A spot of lunch, chatting with the people in the cars surrounding us in the convoy about the drive, having a look a the photos I took on the computer, we sat in the shade and had a few drinks with our closest neighbours (father & daughter from Brisbane who share the love of fishing & camping, so gorgeous). Tonight is the big night of the camp cooking competition, which I've entered for a bit of fun. 

About 3.00pm the cooks around the campground started organising their hopefully winning dishes.  I'm doing our Mungungo Butter Chicken (when we camped at the Mungungo Pub last year, Trish the publican was kind enough to share her recipe with us for her butter chicken, which I've tweaked a little bit).  While I busied myself browning chicken and what not, Craig was walking around to our new friends campsites asking what they were cooking and announcing to them they may as well not bother as my curry was going to win - he's a shocker, yet such a cutie.  Mind you he had beer in hand and I think it was mostly to do with socialising then anything else!

Craig decided to "pose" for a photo for the
TJM photographer so it looks like he's
hard at work on the cooking comp....
(Photo courtesy of TJM)

Judging is at 7pm tonight, there was a fair bit of banter with Chris and his daughter next door, little bit of taste testing and helping Chris adjust the seasoning a bit - I know right, helping the competition as it was!  All in good fun.  Craig finally arrived back from his wanderings and we continued our afternoon drinks & chats with the neighbours as they came and went.  All in all it was actually a really fun afternoon (the lady who's name I cannot remember got on the giggle juice as Craig calls it with her friend early in the afternoon and burnt her rice 3 times, it was hilarious even to her).

Take the camp oven & rice over to the judging table about 6.55pm (Craig did the rice, he's very good at the absorbsion method now).  Even served up some poppadoms (the ones you buy ready to go from the supermarket).  The idea is that all the competition meals will feed all the campers tonight - hope there's enough!

Some of the crowd including Colin
the winner at the back left in black shirt

more of the crowd

Simon from All 4 Adventure & Hilary
from TJM

Our rice burning neighbour

We had Jason & Simon from All 4 Adventure (4wd TV series if you don't know who they are). 

Simon & Jason from
All 4 Adventure
(Photo courtesy of TJM)

They started at one end and went along the table, there was even a couple of desserts in there.  I don't envy the boys having to judge all those meals but they did.  

The judging table

They've started judging

Tasting the neighbours curry

Tasting my curry!

Think Jason likes my curry
(I like the tongue poking out)

Not sure if Simon likes it or he just got
spice hit

They came back for a second tasting of our neighbours lamb curry and also my curry - hmm must be close!!  So the results were:

First Place goes to Colin with his Beef Curry with Dumplings - Prize:  Auspit
Second Place went to:  Our neighbours daughter & myself (yah!!!) - Prize:  All 4 Adventure shirts.
Third Place went to:  The young fellow who did a lamb roast & veges on the coals (good effort I say).

2nd place winners with Jason
(this is one of the rare times you will
see me in a photo!)
Photo courtesy of TJM

A terrific amount of fun was had by all tonight and the raffle tickets bought by everyone supported the Royal Flying Doctors.

After judging everyone tucked into the meals, our camp oven was empty!!  As you can imagine after everything was cleaned up there was a bit of comedic banter going on around the various campfires.