Thursday 3rd October 2024
Millmerran Camp Oven Festival, never been, neither have we.
I thought you could take your dog to the camping area but not into the festival area, so with Boris being a little bit needy we couldn't leave him alone, so we didn't go. BUT, turns out you can take dogs into the festival area. Never mind, we are finally going.
Our plan is to leave today, go out to Kaimkillenbun and stay the night, check out the little reno they've done to the public bar, maybe a couple of drinks and dinner of course.
BUT FIRST, let's not get ahead of ourselves we have to do lunch at the Exchange Hotel in Kilcoy of course!
We rolled into Kaimkillenbun around 2.30pm and since you have to book into the campground at the pub, it'd be rude not to have a drink or 3 wouldn't it...... Got talking to a couple of locals that were in the bar, we bought a dozen bum nuts from Tonka (that'd be him in the photo below, sitting at the bar in the singlet) and when I say bought, he wouldn't actually take any money from us, so we left payment for a drink for him with the bar staff who we're going to tell him after that we'd done that.
The Bun Hotel campground: $30/night for power and water, and you get a $10 voucher to redeem at the pub. Amenities block with toilets and showers and a laundry.
And you see the most amusing things on the roads out west.... it did have a pilot car in front!
Everyone headed into The Bun for dinner tonight, We sat outside with Nick and Jen and puppy Jack. The meals are delicious and a generous size.
Everyone headed into The Bun for dinner tonight, We sat outside with Nick and Jen and puppy Jack. The meals are delicious and a generous size.
Sorry, I remembered to take a picture about half way through.
Big afternoon, so everyone wandered off to bed after dinner was done. We can honestly say it was another enjoyable stay at The Bun Hotel and that Parmy for me is about an 8 or 9 out of 10!
Friday 4th October 2024
No need to race off this morning, we've only got about an hour and a half to travel today, to reach Millmerran.
We were surprised to learn last night that each of the people we met, were all going to different festivals this weekend, there's about 4 festivals on out this way over the long weekend. Nick and Jen are off to an acoustic music festival (they are musician), the other people we met in the Scout 14 Hybrid Pete and Tanya and the Kedron Caravan Warwick and Kylie (I think I had the ladies names right) they were all off to the Big Skies Festival at Jimbour House which was just up the road and us off to Millmerran.
Our fellow campers in the Scout and Kedron were off on their adventure before us. We bid farewell to Nick and Jen and Jack the puppy and headed back to Maclagen about 8.30am, because Craig wanted to go to the butchers he saw yesterday that were advertising cheap eye fillet steak at $29.90/kg. They also had some great looking beef ribs and Malay Satay Lamb sausages, thank goodness we had room in the freezer! Yep I hear you and I said the same thing, why didn't we just stop yesterday as we were going past!
We were intending on heading to Dalby for breakfast and so I could take a photo of a catenary lighting job we supplied in Dalby, however instead of turning right we went straight ahead so ended up in Oakey, but that's okay we hadn't travelled that road before. Breakfast at a little cafe in Oakey in the main street, that had really friendly staff and served up a massive yummy breakfast. Fuelled up after breakfast and headed to Millmerran.
Enroute to Oakey and you come across the strangest things. It wasn't quite high enough for us to just go underneath 😂
Arrived at the Millmerran Showgrounds about 11am I think, and it was a very organised and easy check in to get our campsite. Once again greeted at the front gate by a volunteer, who pointed us to the line up for campsite check in. Two lovely ladies greeted us, checked our tickets, gave us our wristbands and programme booklet, then we were told to move forward to the barrier and wait for someone on a quad bike to escort us to our campsite (Millmerran you can book an actual campsite, rather then just get randomly allocated one). I booked us a site at the end of the aisle looking toward the airfield, firstly because someone wanted to be able to go out in the middle of the night and do a piddle and also he thought it would be interesting to watch planes landing and taking off.
Our site was about 100m to the entrance to Camp Oven Alley, which is where the camp oven competitors are cooking and also about 100m to a block of portable toilets. We had some horse event stuff stored in the area next to our campsite but we didn't have passing traffic which was ideal.
After reversing into our campsite, we spied our neighbour and introduced ourselves - Deb and Mark are their names but Mark was off helping friends set up. More on our camping neighbours later 🤔 Campsites are really roomy, we've unhitched the car and set up all the shade walls we have, including putting one up from the caravan awing over the back of the car to help keep the fridge in the back a bit cooler - it's going to get a bit warm this weekend. Took us about an hour to set up and fiddle fart around with everything but we weren't rushing.
Time to relax now for a bit - the festival opens at 4pm. We met Mark we he got back, they seem like nice people. We do have another camper across from us that we'll refer to as "the keeper of the bin", she's quite possessive of that bin near our car in the photo above 😂 Anyway, it went missing during the afternoon and she stomped over asking if we moved it and we said no, she said well where has it gone, we were some what gobsmacked at the importance of this missing bin considering there were 2 more about 20 metres down the road! She found her bin again and stuck a lovely little note on it, to say it was her bin and don't move it or take it 🤣🤣 There's more to the bin story to come!
Around mid afternoon, we thought we'd stretch our legs and go over do a bit of a reccy around the festival area. The camp oven competitors are setting up their cooking areas and across from them where the judging area is we came across a collection of camp ovens, skillets, fry pans etc. Standing there having a look and this lovely older fella (Wayne) came over and started talking to us about the collection, Craig asked "are these all yours" his answer "yes"!! Wow, it was an awesome collection of SOME of his cast iron camp ovens and things and after talking to him for a bit, he was saying the Potjie pots he imported from South Africa and the big fry pan with the divider in it, he brought in from Germany where they are used in street food stalls! Craig jokingly said to him, he should keep an eye on me because I'll probably try and put some of his camp ovens in my handbag 😆 I must have a bloody big handbag!
This is a Furphy jaffle iron with the kangaroo impression on side and koala the other,
on the inside of the jaffle iron.
Continuing on looking around the festival area, we headed over to the market stall area and stumbled across the Shady Character guys (Shady Gear is their name) that we bought our end walls and the one over the push out bed area from. Thought we'd pick up another wall for put over the front of the caravan to try and cool the tunnel boot where the Fridge lives in the caravan. Jan and her apprentice helper (who's name I did not get) are very funny and entertaining to talk to you and Jan is very helpful, she knows her product extremely well. Back at camp we put up the new shade - temperature inside the boot when we put the shade up is 39.5 degrees, after about half an hour it had dropped down to 34 degrees! It is helping keep it cooler, yay.
The rest of the afternoon involved chatting to our neighbours Mark and Deb for a bit, and then enjoying some yummy Wurst Pepperoni sausage from one of the stalls with smoked cheese and biscuits for nibbles with a few afternoon drinkies. We got all the toys out for our stay this weekend including the Baby Q and are trying pizza on it for the first time - yep we got the pizza stone, see how we go. Probably cooked more pizzas then we needed, well I know we did but I had four flavours I wanted to do - Rosemary and Salt (Craig's favourite), Garlic and cheese, Supreme we'll call it and I had a hankering for Ham and Pineapple. While we were cooking them, a volunteer stopped next to our campsite doing his rounds, so Craig went and had a chat to him. I thought he must be getting hungry and offered him a couple of pieces of pizza, which he seemed to enjoy.
Yes we had a fair few pieces of pizza left, so Craig popped over to our neighbours Deb and Mark to ask if they wanted any - they were happy to help us out and eat some. We popped over and joined them and friends John and Fran for a couple of drinks and a few laughs. We did discuss the crazy bin lady, everyone seems to be a bit gobsmacked by her obsession.
Saturday 5th October 2024
A nice leisurely pace this morning, showers, coffee, breakfast then headed over to wander around the festival before it gets too hot. Watched the camp oven competitors going about cooking their competitions meals, it sounded like they started around 5-5.30am this morning, it'll be a long day for them. We took our hat off to one competitor that had 3 or 4 kids to wrangle while Mum and Dad were cooking (at one point in the day we went past and I'd say it was the 2 youngest were flaked out in the camping chairs at the back of the area 😴) Plenty of camp oven cooking demos to watch, there are workshops you can do also with past cooking champions, bush poets on the main stage and singers, market stalls to wander through, a bar to stop and have a rest at, food trucks a plenty, oh and most importantly for good boys (which apparently I live with one of these), an ice cream vender that adds real fruit to the ice cream - someone might have been very keen on this.
There was also a Snowys Outdoors pop up store, which had lots of camping gear to look at. We picked up a new poo shovel for the van with a handle that screws together in about 3 pieces I think, so it packs down small. If you bought over a certain value you got a ticket into a raffle draw that they were doing Saturday and Sunday afternoon for some of their products.
There was also old machinery, engines and things:
and a working blacksmith - the bellows was amazing that the blacksmith was using.
The old engines were great, my favourite was the one with the little water tank because it looked so cute! And my other favourite is the Hit and Miss Engines, they sounded so funny.
We did slow cooked marinated beef ribs in the Baby Q for dinner tonight with chips and salad. Had drinks with the neighbours and watched the sun go down while dinner cooked.
Now, remember I mentioned about the "keeper of the bin" earlier..... well the lovely Rotary Club volunteers came through on Saturday afternoon to swap over the bins and well they took THAT bin and didn't replace it because the boss man said there were 2 bins just over there. Okay, so that just sent me into a fit of giggles and we didn't hear another peep out of the bin lady all weekend. We did hear from one of the organisers that a lady did complain about "her" bin being taken away 🤣
Sunday 6th October 2024
So we didn't win anything in the raffle draws yesterday at Snowys pop up store, see how we go today.
Back over to watch the camp oven competitors and demos a bit this morning, go back and buy some more Wurst sausage. We came across a husband and wife team selling ready made products such as pies of amazing flavours, a variety of ready made meals such as lasagne, curries, meatballs with pasta, ribs with irish mash, along with roasting and smoking joints of meats. We just bought some a couple of pies to take home with us. Best thing is they have an online store and delivery 👍
We bought another shade wall for the length of our Fiama awning today 🤦♀️ I think we have a full set now LOL!
I must admit, when we put up the long wall it was instantly cooler under the awning when you walked in, we were very surprised.
We went back over for the final raffle draws at Snowys this afternoon, unfortunately we didn't win anything but there was plenty of happy people that did !
Met our neighbours at the Snowys draw and we all headed back to camp afterwards. It was nibbles and drinks time and we were joining that lot next door again. Doing a slow cooked marinated bonesless butterflied lamb leg, roast potatoes and broccolini for dinner - first time in the Baby Q, see how we go.
Now I said earlier I'd say more on our camping neighbours later - well later it is. We have done a lot of travelling and camping over the last 24 years, a fair bit of it on our own. We have met some nice people and have even met some people that we ended up travelling with for about 2 weeks off and on up Cape York. Normally though when we go away you just sort of do the hello how are and maybe have a bit of chat - pleasantries. For us this time, from the moment we sat down with Deb, Mark, Fran and John on Friday night to have a drink after dinner it was so much fun. We would not normally have drinks/nibbles each day with our neighbours, we like to give people their space but this trip we did and it was like sitting down with old friends and your cheeks hurt by the end of the weekend from laughing so much.
I must admit when we got up Saturday morning, we were talking about the previous night and kinda went sheit what was everyone's name again - I could remember Deb's name 100%, other then that I was a little dusty. So we decided to use any old name for each person until one stuck, so funny and everyone played along and by end we were know as - Mark and Deb ended up Ethel and Brian, Fran and John were stuck with Sylvia and Pete and we got Beryl and Claude 😂😂😂 We can honestly say we had an absolute blast with these people and feel so lucky to have had them next door! Hopefully we have made a couple of new long term friends. Cheers 🥂Ethel and Brian and Sylvia and Pete, thanks for the memories. And no, they didn't pay me to say this 😆
Back to Sunday afternoon, like I said drinks and nibbles, watched the sun go down. Mark set up their TV outside so everyone could watch the NRL Grand Final. We ate our lamb roast and shared some for a taste, game finished time to clean up and go to bed.
Ollie and Maggie
Monday 7th October 2024
Heading home today sadly, back to the real world. Farewelled our new friends who left before us and we were off about 9am.
A little over an hour later I got a message from Ethel (Deb), saying they were broken down in Pittsworth, they had only been able to do 50klm and limped into Pittsworth. Just quietly between me and you, they were probably the people holding up everyone travelling between Millmerran and Pittsworth 😉
They were collected by RACQ and towed/transported home and looks they need a new catalytic converter. As Deb said it's just a part of the adventure!
So, that's it for our latest adventure, not sure if we'll get away again this side of Christmas, but you never know!
We do have a few things organised for early next week year, we have some friends picking up their new Swag van in February so we'll be doing a couple of shake down weekends with them before they head off on their WA adventure and we have a longer trip planned early next year too.
Stay safe and have fun until the next time!
