how not to get to Canungra...

It all started with the debate as to whether I should take the coastal or the inland road; the two basic options for travel to the Gold Coast from Sydney. My destination was Kokoda Barracks, a military base just outside of Canungra, which is approximately 40km inland from the Gold Coast. Each route had its own pros and cons: The inland road was less developed and windier, however it was largely empty and bereft of roadwork. The coastal road was wider and better road, however littered with traffic and grey nomads (retirees with caravans travelling 30km below the speed limit). After receiving a great deal of advice from various sources I opted for the inland road. I had my trusty GPS with me so I was confident I would be able to find my destination, in case that fell through I also had a print-out from Google Maps with directions.

I quite enjoyed the drive early on, I drive a Mazda RX-8 sports car, its 50:50 balance made it perfect for the winding roads and I was having a ball of a time. There was also some great scenery to take in through the Hunter Valley. This good run continued right through to Tenterfield and the NSW/QLD Border. It appeared that as soon as I crossed into the Northern Land however, things started to go wrong. When coming through Tenterfield I had about half a tank of fuel, I probably didn’t need to fill up, but something told me to, ‘just to be on the safe side’, it turned out to be probably the best decision I made that night because for the rest of the trip I didn’t pass a single service station and I certainly wouldn’t have made it all the way to Canungra on half a tank.

We will pick up the story as I depart Tenterfield.

Coming out of Tenterfield it is just coming up to Twilight, which is a dangerous time on these roads because it’s the time the kangaroos move from their day-time hangouts to their night haunts. As I drive out of Tenterfield a few cars waiting in a road-side car-park pull onto the road behind me, as if waiting. It occurs to me later that they were likely waiting for a ‘blocker’, a term I make up on the spot, meaning the car in front of a convoy that would be the first one to startle the kangaroos and hit any that decided to cross the road, I am the chosen chump.

Only five minutes into the trip I see my first and what later turned out to be my only kangaroo, I see it early enough that it isn’t a problem however. About 10 minutes into the trip the blocker theory goes out the door when one of the cars behind me decides to overtake. Well… why let a perfectly good theory go to waste? I decide that this fool and his BMW are going to be MY blockers, no hitting roos for me tonight. This does mean I have to drive at an average of 5km/h faster than I am comfortable with, but when I imagine the kind of damage a roo would do to the front of my beautiful car it seems like an easy decision.

As I begin to ascend into the Great Dividing Range I notice the ominous clouds up ahead, there is the occasional flash of lightning in the distance. Further up the mountains the road becomes wet and though it isn’t raining the car I’m using as a blocker is kicking up enough water mist that I have to use my wipers fairly regularly. I see the occasional tiny frog hop along the road, I take care to give him a wide berth so as not to hurt him. Occasionally a wisp of mist is seen lifting from the road.

Ahead I go, further into the hills and closer to the storm, it is now fully dark and I can see nothing other than what my headlights reveal (on low beam due to the blocker ahead). Eventually I stop climbing hills and descended into what must be some kind of high altitude valley; I come to this conclusion not because of any land features, but because the mist which is rising from the road clearly has nowhere to go, so it gathers in one thick cloud through which I am forced to drive.

As I drive through the mist, I realise I am now surrounded by the lightning, which is now flashing roughly every three seconds, I see fingers of lightning stretching right across the sky, and for a brief moment the mist around me appears to glow blue. The tiny frogs still hop over the road, but I am too caught up in the spectacle to pay them too much notice. Then, the strangest thing for the night; there is snow beside the road… snow… in mid September… in Queensland. I’m not talking about ‘it’s a bit cold and the grass is white’ snow, I’m talking about piles of snow lining the sides of the road. If it wasn’t so misty I would stop to make certain it was actually snow and not just huge piles of salt dropped by some unwitting truckie, as it is however, a stop on the side of the road would be a guaranteed rear-ender. It is obvious that there were some strong winds before my arrival in this part of the world, because leaves and twigs cover the road, so much so that in some places you can’t see the lines painted on it.

It occurs to me that it feels as though I am descending into some unknown level of hell, with the blue lightning, the creepy snow, the plague of tiny frogs and the mist. I half expect to clear the mist and see seven headed dragons filling the skies.

I do manage to clear the mist and alas no dragons, although in hindsight I’m not so sure I wasn’t in hell. About another ten minutes drive and I come to the turn my GPS is telling me to make, into ‘Woodenbong road’ (only bloody rednecks could invent such an absurd name). I abandon my blocker and turn down the road, however not 100m along it and I see a sign ‘ROAD CLOSED’. ‘Bugger’ I think to myself, ‘oh well, doesn’t matter, I still have plenty of time to get to Canungra’. I start navigating the menus and options on my GPS, telling it to ‘avoid the roadblock 100m to my front’. It starts calculating its alternatives and tells me I have to continue along the hell road for about another 4km and take an alternative crossing route.

‘Great,’ I think as I set out along the new alternative route. The turn off is sign-posted and the new road is bitumen, however that’s about the most anyone could say for it, the road is narrow (barely wide enough for one vehicle), the edges are grown over with grass and there are pot-holes everywhere, something my low riding car with stiff suspension does not like one bit. Oh well, my GPS is telling me I only have to go along this road for 10km and then I’ll be back on the right track. Unfortunately however, only about 3km down the road the bitumen comes to an end and I am now driving on dirt.

‘I came this far so I may as well keep going’.

I cross cattle grids and drive-ways to farm properties. The road is very dodgy, with gravel and deep wheel ruts I’m afraid will cause my car to bottom out and become snagged. I fight on, determined to make it through.

Another couple of hundred metres down the track and I have to slow down, as cattle have chosen this section of road for their night sleeping spot. They stare at me with dull, un-amused eyes, as if their entire existence is so dreary that they’ve completely forgotten how to be startled when they’re about to get hit by a big scary metal monster with glowing eyes who is shouting (well, honking) at them at the top of its voice.

About another two kilometres down this track I see a flat-tray twin-cab one-tonner with its hazard lights flashing and two guys in orange jumpers clearing dead-fall off the road. One of them notices me, gives me a look that appears to be a mixture of confusion and annoyance and comes back to talk to me… this isn’t looking good. As I wind down my window I see who can only be described as the poster-boy for red-neck weekly, a fifty something year old man with missing teeth, tanned skin and wrinkles deep enough to smuggle small marsupials interstate.

I’m not from the city originally, I’m from rural areas, however I don’t consider myself a retard when it comes to the ways of the country; despite this I certainly feel like one when I tell the red-neck that my GPS has brought me this way and I have been following it blindly. I tell him I’m going to Canungra and he informs me that this road is also out. The redneck tells me I have to go back and rattles off a list of four small town names, I forget the first one. I reach for my GPS to add the town names as waypoints, but when I look up to ask him what they were again I realise he is still talking and I am missing more vital information, something tells me this marsupial-smuggling red-neck doesn’t like to repeat himself. Even though I miss the names of the towns, I do manage to deduce that I need to go back about 40km to the other side of a bridge I had crossed earlier to find the alternate route.

I turn the car around and head back along the dirt road, I dodge the cattle yet again and eventually get back to the bitumen area, then the hell road joining it. I turn back the way I came and pass the original Woodenbong turn off that was – and still is – closed. The frogs are still hopping all over the road, but I make no effort to avoid them, if they get hit it’s their own stupid faults. I drive back through the misty hell gates and find myself back on the other side of the bridge, once there I stop and take a moment to plan my next route.

Although a person working on logic would have given up on their GPS at this point, I still have blind faith in it, so I tell it to avoid the route I have just driven back along, and it tells me I have to go backward another 5km and take yet another road that appears to travel roughly parallel to Woodenbong… great… it’ll probably take me to the same road I was supposed to go to in the first place. I travel back the 5km and take the turn off, which is a worn road, but still bitumen and two lanes. Things get much worse however in about 3km, when I go to take another turn and discover the road I’m turning into is yet again a dirt track.

I stop at the edge of the dirt track for some time, my GPS tells me it extends for 26km, I have two options.
1) Travel the dirt road and hope it is not blocked (which, given the previous track record is not promising), I would be travelling well off the grid, miles outside of any kind of phone reception. There’s the potential to crash or get bogged and if that occurs I would be beyond help, what’s more, if I travel 24 of the 26km and discover the road to be blocked, it would be a very demoralising trip back to where I have come from.
2) Continue along this bitumen road and try to find another option north. I check the GPS map and it appears as though the only option is a LONG way away however, and if I take it I will definitely be late to arrive at Canungra.

I decide to take the dirt road.

About 2km in the road turns to bitumen and I almost scream for joy, thankfully I don’t however because the bitumen only runs for about 100m before the road turns to gravel again.

About 5km down the road I have to stop for another herd of cattle who’ve decided that sleeping on the road is a good idea, I beep my horn to get them to move… they take their time.

6km into my trip and a small marsupial hops out onto the edge of the road. It’s too small to be a kangaroo, or even a wallaby, but it’s certainly from that family, I think it likely he has just escaped from the redneck’s face wrinkles. He stares back at me, his eyes glowing bright green from the reflected light of my headlights. It occurs to me that if I have indeed crossed into hell, this little guy is probably the devil’s pet imp, which would make the redneck the devil; perhaps I was luckier to get out of there alive than I first thought. The marsupial gives me a confused look and I’m convinced he has never seen a car before in his life, and the presence of one in his homeland has confused him somewhat.

About 7km down the road I come up to a low point crossing a re-entrant, there is water running over the road and it seems to have eroded a bit of the dirt track away, I drive through and hope like hell I don’t bottom out, luckily I don’t.

The frogs are all over this road too, they are taunting me. I make a conscious effort to hit one but miss, damned frog.

9km and my CD player is skipping from all the bumping, I turn it off. I’m driving faster than I should to try to get through this as quickly as possible; however a couple of times I nearly slide out as a sharp corner appears on the other side of the crest of a hill. I decide to use my GPS map to gauge all upcoming corners for their severity.

At 11km it occurs to me that the guy who inspired Wolf Creek probably lives out in this neck of the woods, I make a conscious decision not to stop FOR ANYTHING. For some reason my GPS recognises the area I’m passing through as Duck Creek; really original name, even though I’m on the edge of a hill and there’s not a creek in sight.

At 15km I come up to another piece of road crossing a re-entrant with water running over it, this time the water looks deep, and I consider getting out, stripping down to my jocks and wading in to make sure my car will make it, however I remember the decision I made at 11km and just risk it. I got lucky again.

At 18km my car’s Dynamic Stability Control warning light starts flashing at me as if to say ‘Mate, I can’t help you here, you’re fucked’.

At 20km the Dynamic Stability Control light is almost permanently on, I’m doing sideways sliding turns around corners at 20kph.

22km, I see two tiny frogs both on different sides of the road, I slow right down to try to hit one and then turn sharply across to the other side of the road to try to hit the other, I miss them both… how they taunt me.

23km, only 3 to go… 2… 1, if there’s going to be a block in the road it’s going to be here. Then… magically… a street sign, naming the bitumen road I have arrived at and the redneck towns in each direction. My GPS directs me left and left I go.

The road is still winding, and pot-holed, but its two lane and its bitumen so I’m happy. I pass through some redneck villages, one of which is called Woodenbong, which explains why the earlier road I encountered had that odd name, now someone just needs to explain the name of the town.

Further on I find a town with streetlights. My relief at finding civilisation fades quickly however when I see a sign saying that to get to ‘Upper Duck Creek’ I need to follow ‘Duck Creek Road’ up ‘Duck Hill’. These rednecks must have like ten words in their vocabulary; wood(en), bong, duck, creek, road and hill makes six, cool, I’m 60% of the way towards learning a new language.

Gradually the roads start to change their name from Track, to Street, to Road, to Highway and I stop worrying and start shifting my thoughts to the damage to my car, I battle to put those thoughts out of my mind until I reach my destination.

I travel some more winding roads up hills, I spend another short stint on a gravel road until EVENTUALLY I arrive in Canungra with 15min to spare. My GPS has taken me to Canungra town however. I had originally suspected I could just follow the signs to the military base, however there are no signs to be seen.

I drive around town a bit but don’t find the base. I stop and try to call someone who knows the area but I still don’t have phone reception, I go back to the town centre to get reception, but alas still none. I go to the town information board and look at a map, nothing there. I try to find an open service station but there isn’t one. I look at the map of the Canungra base to try to correlate it to the map on my GPS, but the road names are difficult to read and the way the GPS is programmed makes the whole thing difficult. Eventually I go back to the ‘drive around aimlessly’ plan and somehow by miracle I find a sign.

I arrive at the military base with two minutes to spare. I get changed out of the back of my car into something respectable for the mess and go to collect my keys from the bar not one minute before it closed.

I get to bed by 2330h after spending the rest of the evening preparing for the first day of the course.