Day 14: Friday 8/3/24 - Lake Coolmunda to Murphy Creek Escape
It blew a gale all night long, then for a brief period early this morning it was reasonably calm, we had coffee inside then got straight into packing up, by that time the wind was already starting to pick up and be uncomfortable, such a shame.
Heading into the Inglewood Bakery for breakfast and looking Husband I don't think he's awoken in the best of moods 😩 Pies for breakfast which we took to the free camp area to eat, which was now vacant. Not bad pies but Deepwater Bakery still gets the trophy on this trip.
We are heading through Millmerran and potentially our overnight stop will be at the pub in Cambooya the Bull and Barley Inn. The road the last couple of days have been absolutely horrendous, you get bounced around, tossed side to side, kidney slapping headache making bumpiness - it was actually making travelling very uncomfortable, not fun and making us crumpy and feeling unwell. The roads are just crap!
We eventually arrive at the Bull and Barley Inn in Cambooya, lovely pretty old pub at first glance from the outside. Found a park and wandered in, locals not particularly friendly when we entered, I gave a cheery hello and got one bloke "yeah gidday" very unenthusiastically, then dead silence and stares. Staff behind the bar were approachable, but disappointingly when we went back in to ask when lunch service started and to order another drink, we were told to wait and then ignored while the bartender went around everyone else at the bar and asked if they wanted a drink, then serviced new people that walked in and eventually came back to us and we asked when does lunch start and got a blunt you can't order until 12pm (it being 11.45am at this point in time) and then we asked if it was okay to order another drink...... you can only imagine how impressed Craig was by this time. I reckon if he hadn't of been hungry we would have just left and probably should have.
I asked about the camping and was told there was camping available on the block next door that the general store owned as long as you were self container. We back outside and peered over the fence at the block, not particularly inspiring, and being Friday night might be noisy - Craig not impressed so I guess we're not staying here. We ordered lunch which were just Entrees, my Bruschetta arrived first and I had finished it by the time Craig's meal came out, which wasn't the Entree, but a main meal size and the calamari was not cooked well - geezus this is not going well! He ate most of his lunch and said very crankily "I do not want to stay here tonight", I can't really share the rest of his sentence or it would just be a long line of 🤬. Said to him that's fine, you'll just need to give me a couple of minutes to find somewhere else to go. Fat chance of that with the mood he was in, got in the car and started driving 🤬
Onto Wikicamps and find somewhere not too far away. Came across the Murphy Creek Tavern and back up was Murphy Creek Escape. Happy with those suggestion we set off in that direction trying to miss the middle of Toowoomba but being he was in a mood and followed the car GPS and didn't listen to me, well we ended up going through town didn't we - that went well.... After what felt like a very long time we arrived at Murphy Creek Pub, we drove in and out of the car park with Craig saying it wasn't inspiring and he didn't like the camping area 🫤
Back down the road a few kilometres to the turn off to Murphy Creek Escape, I hope this place is a nice as the website pictures it. After what felt like an extremely long time, we came to a very low bridge, our Hilux is 1.9m high and the caravan is 2.7m high - left hand side of the road we'd fit the car only under the bridge, right hand side of the road we were close with the caravan, I think from memory the bridge was 3m high. So you may need to drive on the wrong side of the road to get under the bridge. The road to the campground was a narrow road and I'm not sure you would be able to pass another caravan on it, we passed a small car and had to come to a complete stop and it was very tight. You cross over a causeway and the entrance to the campground is up the hill from there on the right. Driving in it is not what I was expecting after looking at the website, you pass through the unpowered sites, stopping near the office and the powered sites at the end of the property to book in. Hmmm, powered sites are devoid of grass and just rocky ground, with quite a lot of permanent camps to one side - overall not a good look.
We booked into the unpowered section and headed back to near the entrance where it was pretty level and not too close to anyone else. We set up and then went for a walk around the campground, there is an amenities block in the unpowered area that looks like it has quite a lot of toilets/showers. Most of the area seems to be not mowed or well maintained. We check out the amenities and the room is a toilet/shower combo, very basic, old but pretty clean. Out of the whole building, it was the only door unlocked and by the evening as campers came in, there would have been maybe 20 or so more people for the night - only one toilet/shower open.
We finally had a campfire on our last night, although it did get windy later in the night. After dinner, we sat around the fire for a while and had a visit from a possum. We eventually put the fire out, closed everything up because there might be showers tonight and headed to bed.
Murphy Creek Escape: Powered and unpowered sites, amenities, campfires, pet friendly. Lots of rules to follow. Unpowered site $28.00/night 2 people.
In all honesty, disappointed with Murphy Creek Escape. It does not look like their website or photos that I have seen in past years. We will do not go back.
Look, we are not caravan park campers, you will see that if you've followed our blog or read about the trips we've done in past years. We generally like bush campgrounds, less people and the serenity and peacefulness of camping in the bush but we just didn't find this campground nice or enjoyable and there really isn't that many campgrounds that we've felt that way about.
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