Bellthorpe State Forest
Sunday 6th November 2005
A rather overcast morning greeted us on awakening and after a phone call to Dave Martin we were convinced the trip would go ahead. We met at BP travel centre at 9.00am and were not surprised to find the other 6 trip members congregated around Dave’s Suba Rhino. Perhaps not the best choice of Dave’s many rides but with the help of strong wrists we had his roof cover fitted. With no more people to arrive we hit the road out through Woodford and arrived at Stoney Creek day park where we enjoyed morning tea and watched Ron Penfold putting one of his remote controlled boats thru it’s paces.
From here we headed with blind faith along dirt tracks behind Dave’s Rhino. The tracks were not hard but we continued to meet up with fallen trees, as a massive storm must have passed thru here in the last weeks. Bruce and myself were having our first experience in our new company car a Nissan Navara, Bruce was finding it a bit difficult trying to decide which gear to use as 20 odd years in a Suby things were not the same. A call came over Dave’s UHF from 2 more club members who were looking for us due to a mix-up in meeting time. We arranged to meet them back at Stoney Creek at lunch time. After having a leisurely lunch, we took off again on more tracks which gave us some spectacular views over the Glasshouse Mountains even though the rain clouds were closing in. After a few small showers, the tracks became quite slippery for us in the Navara as it only has road tyres. There was one particular downhill section that we slipped and slid down while I hung on to my “O God bar”. We drove to a lookout that Dave and Ron had been to on a previous trip only to find that the trees had grown somewhat but there was glimpses of views to be seen. Everybody was travelling along quite well when there was a call from Big John that his check 4WD light came on and it wouldn’t engage 4WD so we all travelled down to the main road where we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways except for Dave and a couple of the others who headed back up the mountain to tackle a few more tracks. Thanks Dave for an enjoyable day out plus good company to boot.