25 August 2012 - Cania Gorge Tourist Retreat, North Burnett, Queensland

Before we left this morning, I popped out to count our numbers; we were seven in last night so the pub should have done alright. Pizza was on offer from the kitchen; alas our dinner was underway when we learned that.

We passed through Monto after picking up the weekend newspaper and filling the fuel tanks with undiscounted diesel of an unfamiliar brand, but just as far as the caravan park on the northern edge of town. We had decided that we needed to be settled into a caravan park this evening to ensure we would be able to catch the All Blacks complete their slaughter of the Wallabies and retain the Bledisloe Cup for another year. Chris went in to the camp office to ask after television reception. The proprietor was un-inspirational and Chris was not at all satisfied, so we elected to move to Option B, a camp up the Cania Gorge recommended by our overnight neighbour. They were sporting both a brand new caravan and one of those very strange looking figure eight vertical aerial’s which would surely pick up Channel Nine, and were kind enough to offer to share their television since they were headed in the same direction.

Views back to our camp

And so we drove up the wide flat valley north of Monto, toward high sandstone cliffs and afforested mountains. The road was sealed but a mere single lane and the oncoming traffic almost seamless; rigs like ours all heading off to their next camp. This meant that one or both of us had to pull across to the gravel verge frequently however we persevered and no harm came. When we pulled into this camp, we knew we had made a good call although the television business was still an unknown. We quickly set up and found we could tune into the camp’s satellite dish to pick up four channels, one being Impargia, the country version of Channel Nine which broadcasts advertisements for cattle sales and … the rugby.

Assured all was sorted for the day, we set off on up through the Cania Gorge National Park to Lake Cania, a manmade earth and rock dam completed in 1983, stemming the flow of the Three Moon Creek and covering an area of 630 hectares. The recreational area on the south side of this lake is just lovely and today well patronised by fishermen and their families all enjoying the summer like weekend weather.

We lunched beside the lake, delighting in the birdlife, as usual, and especially delighted to find a family of Lazy Jacks, such funny birds with the oddest voices and group behaviour. During the afternoon we did several walks, one a wander up into the historic Shamrock mine site and the other a combination of more challenging walks at the southern end of the park.

Posing beneath overhangng rocks

Gold was discovered in this area back in February 1870. The Kroombit, a little north of here, and Cania gold fields covered an area of about 130 square kilometres. Here on the Three Moon Creek, a town was established to support the growing population which by June 1870 peaked at 1600, fifty of whom were Chinese. Alas by the late 1870s many of the workings in the area had been abandoned. Over the next thirty years, the population fluctuated as miners were drawn to follow more lucrative discoveries and finally the gold mining industry here at Cania collapsed during the 1920s.  Small amounts of mining went on by the ever hopeful over the years, however came to an absolute end when plans to build a dam on the creek were approved in 1974. The town now lies below the waters of Lake Cania and local myth tells of gold being discovered during the dam’s construction, a fact that was kept hush hush so no one would stake a claim over it and disrupt the construction.

All that remains now for the tourist is a track about the hill where once the Shamrock mine was situated. The area supported both alluvial and reef mining from 1870s and by 1910 was the principal mine in the Cania goldfields. Now there is just evidence of deep shafts, a replica gold stamper and lots of lovely eucalypts.

Palms and rocks of Cania Gorge

Back toward our camp, one of two here in the area, we walked up creek beds, along sandstone cliffs, through dry rain forest, eucalypt woodlands, past weathered caves and up masses of rocky stairs on walks named Dripping Rock and The Overhang, Dragon Cave and Bloodwood Cave and the Gorge viewpoint. By the end of all this, we were all walked out and happy to return to this very delightful camp.

The camp is wonderfully laid out, very professionally run, very popular, and set in the loveliest of landscapes. It is apparently less costly than the Big4 up the road which boasts bouncy castles and real coffee, but still costs $28 in the off peak season. Normally this would put us off, or at least put us off considering extending our stay; it has not although that is not to say we will. In the meantime we have watched the slaughter of the Wallabies yet again, this time 22:0 and will show respect for our fellow campers in the morning by not referring to the matter.