FLANAGAN’S
RESERVE
May 22nd & 23rd,
2004
On Saturday 22nd May we (Glenys, Ron and Wade Penfold, Pam and Bruce Ottway
and Greg Bryant) met at McDonalds Beaudesert and wasted half an hour waiting for
Pat and Arnold Shoemaker who had forgotten that they had put their name on the
trip sheet. Bruce took the lead and after getting temporally disorientated led
us to the camp site at Flanagan’s Lagoon.
Bruce and Greg went about setting up their campers while Wade and I went
model boating. We brought 4 of our 12 boats, a fast warship, and an aircraft
carrier, which launches aircraft, a pleasure cruiser and an amphibious LARC. The
lagoon was about 50 metres long and 10 metres wide with rapids at either end.
The up stream rapids were the best, there were small to large boulders in the
water and on the bank and even a place for the LARC to get in and out of the
water. Wade found a narrow passage up the rapids and managed to drive the fast
narrow warship up a set of rapids, turn around and come down the rapids. I
managed to lose the prop on the LARC and had wheel only drive.
After flattening a battery in the warship we went back to camp for a fresh
one. Greg amused us all for half an hour putting together his new gas camping
oven. Many hands might make light work but many mouths giving instructions do
not. We then had lunch.
After lunch it was back to boating, a fresh battery in the warship and off to
the rapids again. While we were there David Martin, Forester John, Kathy Bryant
and kids arrived. The kids wanted a go at sailing the boats, so we went back to
camp where the water was free from obstacles, and a few kids (more than the ones
in our group) had a sail.
The new arrivals wanted to go driving, so we took the boats off the water and
went for a drive to the Lower Portals car park and Yellow pinch for a look, no
walking for us. On the way back from Yellow Pinch we spotted a few wild lemon
trees covered in fruit, so we stopped and picked some. Greg wanted Kathy to cook
him a lemon meringue pie in the new gas camping oven. Glenys used ours to make a
lemon sauce pudding.
After returning to camp we packed the boats into the car and headed for home,
as we weren’t staying for the night, stopping at McDonalds for tea.
Thank you Pam and Bruce for finding such a great model boating pond.
Ron Penfold SC002
