We went for a drive down to the end of the camp area where it meets the river mouth, great spots down there as well (but no toilets). Our destination today was Stanage Bay, it's one of those places we've heard/read about and have wanted to go see, so we are! For those who don't know where Stanage Bay is, you turn off the Bruce Highway near a town named Kunwarara north of Rockhampton, you head north skirting the Shoalwater Bay Training Area north to the point of Stanage Bay - Now, don't tell anyone and good luck finding the turnoff......
We stopped at the servo in Carmila to fill up and get breakfast. While I was getting our sustenance, Craig was speaking to an older gent, who mentioned it would take about 45mins from the highway to Stanage Bay. So we headed off in search of the turnoff to Stanage Bay. We put our destination into the GPS and it found it, feeling confident we turned off and followed a dirt road, crossed over a cattle grid, turned a bend and could see a homestead up in front and cows grazing around us - hmmmmm, me thinks this isn't the road to Stanage Bay but to a property....... U-turn before property owners get upset with us, yell at the GPS and tell it how stupid it is, then we decided to continue south for 5 mins and see if we can find the turnoff, if not, turn around and head north from this point for 5 mins.
So, off we went south not seeing a turnoff sign for Stanage Bay but then came across a fruit stand/secondhand stand on the other side of the highway in the middle of nowhere. We turned around as we wanted some fruit & veg anyway and thought he might be able to give us directions. Bought the fruit & veg, then asked the nice man if he could tell us where the Stanage Bay turnoff was. He laugh and referred to himself as the "gateway to Stanage Bay", the turnoff was only maybe 800m north of his shop where you could see a clump of trees (the gentleman was telling us that the locals keep pulling the sign down because they want to keep it a secret!). So we headed back up to the turnoff where you can see the empty poles where the sign should be, then once you turnoff you see all the signs about Stanage Bay which are off the highway.
The road is bitumen which is a surprise, for some reason we were expecting a dirt road. At least it should be an easy, pleasant drive out to Stanage Bay then..... so we thought! Well, the dirt road soon disappeared and it became a gravel road, although it wasn't in too bad a condition and the scenery was pretty. There are a number of little creek crossings and keep an eye out for woopty dos - Craig didn't see one and we hit it at full pace, getting all four wheels airborne on the exit and I should add it wasn't a little bit airborne, it was alot, needless to say when boy got us to a safe stop he jumped out of the gaylux and went around to check the tyres, suspension and make sure the camper was still securely connected to the tray of the Gaylux. Everything checked out, so we continued on our way, maybe just a tad slower then before! (NB. We were only doing about 60-70klms/hr before our launch into the air, but afterwards slowed down to 50-60klms/hr). Don't misunderstand, we are careful when driving on dirt/gravel roads, whether we're out west or up in the Cape, however, this particular woopty do just snuck up on us.
So we thinking to ourselves it's been 45mins since we left the highway and we haven't come over a range or anything yet (we could still see the range in the distance ahead of us)........ Lets say about 1 1/2 hours after leaving the highway we came over the range and looked out on Stanage Bay and what a beautiful sight that was! (for a number of reasons - mostly because the road didn't stay in good condition). We drove through looking for the camp area we'd seen on Creek to Coast, kept following the road until I recognised the pub/general store from the story and then the sign popped up in between the trees "Endeavour Park" and with a great yell I said "that's it, that's it, stop, stop, stop" - all I heard was laughing and Craig trying to say ok, ok, ok. We ended up driving down to the end of the street where the boat ramp is, turning around and coming back, having a look at the entire camp area as we came back to the first entrance. It was around 1.30pm when we arrived and there were quite a few people already camped there, so we found an area that everyone would fit into (Craig's brother Donny, his partner Frances and her adult children were joining us for a couple of days). We checked with the fellow who was camped next to us, that we weren't too close to him and it was time to setup for a few days.
Stanage Bay Camp Area "Endeavour Park" has 2 lots of toilets, campfires, dogs allowed all for a donation, which you can make at the Plumtree General Store - they use the donations to help keep it clean and cover the costs - well worth the donation!
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