Little Mount Widgee 2000

It was Wednesday night and l was pondering and reading the club magazine looking at the "What's On" page when excitement came upon me - Mount Widgee. Yes, we have been wanting to go on this trip for about five years now but due to other commitments, and one reason or another we have not yet made it.

Knowing we had nothing on our agenda for that day, I made a quick call to the trip leader, and preparations were under way. My car has been a little second-hand since returning from the Cape where the corrugations played havoc on the shocks. A call to one of our magazine sponsors and I am now in possession of four neatly boxed new ones. Thank you Mike. Back ones go on fairly quickly, the fronts were to take a little longer with another phone call to our ever helpful David M and over to his place I go to obtain his assistance with pulling struts to pieces to reassemble them again into useable ones. Then to top it off with some rally rubber that I have come across and had mounted on my 14 inch wheels. We are nearly ready to go and do this Mt Widgee trip. I am excited.

Sunday morning arrives and fingers crossed, we have had a light rain over night and I am almost convinces this trip will be off once again. The phone rings, David says the trip is on and we are out the door to the meeting place. Golden Arches at Beaudesert and this brings me to the reason I am writing this report, I drove in the gate behind our leader, so this made me last to arrive at the meeting place. No one got into any trouble during the day so I could not hand over this task.

A casual drive out through the farming district of Kerry and Darlington Park to the base of Mount Widgee where we sat on a high vantage point looking at the mountain and having morning tea as Ron P explained where we would be driving and gave a drivers' briefing. It was a beautiful clear morning and the area had had light rain the week before to settle the dust.

Ron, in the Challenger was first to make the ascent, and on reaching the various points he called up the next car being Cameron, Brian and Malcolm in the MY wagon. In turn Cameron called on us to follow in our MY Brumby, we called up Greg and Kathy and Alex in the Bravo with David bringing up the rear. The track was steep and had a lot of loose rocks with the occasional wash out. The second last climb was the only one that gave me any sort of trouble when climbing the whoa-boy on the steepest part my car developed fuel starvation. On reaching level ground in the whoa-boy it cleared itself and proceeded to the top without any further trouble.

The views just got better as we drove up the mountain. O'Reilly's could be seen to the east and the cattle below looked like ants. The Subarus were able to make the hairpin turns in one go but the larger cars need a couple of turns. The last one near the top of the steepest part would have been a little hair-raising I bet.

On reaching the top of this section we headed south along to a lookout on Buchanan's Fort. This gave us views of the Christmas Creek valley and Border Ranges. The conversation settled around the wreck of the Stinson which crashed in 1937. Bernard O'Reilly was to locate the plane a few days after the crash and instigate the rescue of the survivors who were brought down from the mountain on what is now known as the "Stretcher Track". This track was visible from our vantage point.

While we were having lunch and basking in the glory of this beautiful trip and magic scenery, the Brisbane 4WD Club arrived with nine cars in convoy and the conversation carried on some more.

After lunch it was back down this track to go to the northern end to the trig point where views of Mt Barney, Beaudesert and O'Reilly's could be had. As we were packing up clouds were closing in and one would think by tonight they were in for some rain.

The descent down was almost as slow as going up but once again with care the little cars did the trip with style. Here 1 would like to thank David and Ron for a magic day and one that will stay with Marilyn and I for a very long time.

As the day was still young, a trip over to Christmas Creek was in order for afternoon tea. Driving over through Hillview to Lamington then taking the left fork bringing us to Stinson Park located on Christmas Creek, a great picnic spot and an area available for camping on an idle weekend. The discussion again settled around the Stinson wreck and some of us would like to make the trip, a walking trip of approx. nine hours return. I am told September is a good time anyone been there?

We said goodbye to Ron, Cameron, Greg & Kathy while David and Marilyn & I meandered up to the end of the road to the start of the National Park walking tracks - a nice drive with a couple of creek crossings. A great day.