Looking out over the Five Rocks Headland & Beach

Recently my family and I did a drive up to the Byfield National Park area, which is located around Five Rocks, Stockyard Point, and Nine Mile Beach. Access is 4WD only, so we took along our new Nissan Patrol. This was the first time we’d ever done sand driving, or proper four wheel driving for that matter, so it was exciting to be testing out the 4WD.

Byfield National Park covers an area of around 15,000 hectares or 37,000 acres, so it’s a huge, fairly unspoilt area. Notable features include the huge sand dunes in the Nine Mile Beach area. For more information about camping spots and facilities in the area, please visit this page on the EPA’s website.

Most people visit the Five Rocks area to four wheel drive, fish, camp or explore. Some do a combination of all these things. One good piece of advice for anyone wishing to go and visit this area is to bring someone in separate vehicle along, as there are plenty of potential for getting bogged in soft sand and the like. Anyway, below are some photos of our day trip up there:

Our convoy on the road to Five Rocks, as you can see the whole track there is sand.

Driving down the hill to the Stockyard Point Lookout. From here you can look north to the Five Rocks Headland or south over Nine Miles Beach.

Our parked cars at the Stockyard Point lookout.

The view to the Five Rocks Headland from Stockyard Point.

Looking down to the start of Nine Mile Beach, jutting up to Stockyard Point.

I took this picture from the top of a small hill, overlooking the end of Nine Mile Beach. It was a beautiful place for swimming.

The Orange Bowl. This gigantic pile of orange sand is a great place to rev it up and spin some wheels, but rangers are handing out spot fines for anyone driving in the bowl itself.

Stony Creek is a large camping and picnic area, with the main feature being, of course, the creek that divided those two areas. To cross there is a concrete causeway which is covered by about 10cm of water in normal flow. After heavy rain the picnic area is sometimes cut off because the causeway is too deeply covered.

Stony Creek has many important facilities such as toilets, free gas barbeques, picnic tables, taps, and bushwalks. Because the Stony Creek area is protected, no domestic animals such as dogs or cats are allowed. There is one marked bushwalking track, which winds along beside the creek for kilometres. The main circuit is only about 1km long however.

Camping can be booked through the EPA website.

Below I’ve put in some photos of Stony Creek from the day:

The Stony Creek crossing, looking towards the entrance and camping area.

The Stony Creek swimming area. This is the main swimming area, looking from the road crossing.

Looking in the other direction from the above photo, Stony Creek merrily continuing on its way downstream.

This view shows the platform on the picnic side of Stony. This is where most people jump in the creek from. The drain in the middle helps keep the water level over the crossing down.

Water spilling over the other side of the road crossing.

Looking over the road crossing towards the day use area of Stony Creek.

A small bridge on the main walking track. The blurred corners are an added effect.

One of the many lovely plants growing along the walking track.

Rows of pine trees on either side of the road on the way out from Stony Creek. Again, I’ve added the blurred corners.

Last but not least, above are the two panoramas that I made from photos taken at Stony Creek. Click on the thumbnail images to see the full-size versions.

View of Stony Creek Crossing, Byfield, #1. Click photo for larger view.

View of Stony Creek Crossing, Byfield, #2. Click photo for larger view.

Some of the very tropical looking trees right next to the creek. The two just in front are mango trees.

Waterpark Creek on an overcast day. As you can see its a bit bigger than your average creek!

Planting native shrubs and bushes along a small section of Waterpark Creek. Due to the flooding at the start of 2008, all the soil was sandy.

Hey all you Yeppoonites, this is where the town water supply comes from (until the Rocky to Yeppoon pipeline is finished anyway). These pipes are up on a high section of the bank, about 5-10 metres away from

Another view of the town water pipes.

These leaves are from the famous Byfield fern, which is native to the Byfield area where it grows prolifically.

Another view of the Byfield Fern.

My sisters having a swim in Waterpark Creek, along with a couple of stick-mad dogs.

Claudie pulling out the horse carriage. The horses are hitched up on either side of the wooden bar in front.

A row of very young tea-tree trees. Every few years or so a whole section is cut down, then processed to make tea-tree oil and mulch.

The facilities at Red Rock are pretty good. There are men’s and women’s toilets, taps (although you’re not supposed to drink the water), camping areas, picnic tables and a car track around the whole camping area. The road into Red Rock is all dirt, but it’s only a few kilometres long. There is also a self-registration booth at the entrance to camping area.

In summer Red Rock is known for its terrible swarms of mosquitoes, but in winter they’re all dead and we were only bothered by one or two single mosquitoes.

Below are some of the photos that I took while camping at Red Rock:

One of the many forestry tracks winding in and around the Red Rock area. They’re all dirt, but hardly anyone uses them and they’re really good for long walks or rides.

Some baby pine trees next to the road in to Red Rock. The forestry department log these trees once they grow big enough.

A few more pine trees, which appear to be leaning a lot but really aren’t. It’s just the camera angle.

The beautiful Stony Creek running just down from the camping area. This particular spot is about 800m downstream from the camping area.

Looking downstream in the other direction from the above photo. I reckon it looks like somewhere from the Northern Territory! But don’t worry about crocodiles too much, the water in the creek was much too cold for crocodiles to survive in it.

A really pretty flower in the gardens. I think I’ve finally cracked taking photos of flowers. I’d say the basic rules would be: Put the foreground in focus and make the background blurry, get real close in on the flower and try to shoot in sunlight!

On the way back from Byfield we also dropped in at Red Rock State Forest, which we’ve camped at before. It is known for being infested with mozzies, but because of the cool weather there weren’t too many around. The creek there is really pretty, although the rangers have fenced it all off because of crocodile sightings.

The next stop before home was Cooberrie Park, which is a wildlife sanctuary (a bit like Australia Zoo on the Sunshine Coast – Bindy and Terri have actually visited Cooberrie Park BTW) so that my sisters could get some rats from the owners. They will breed them and then give Cooberrie Park some of the babies. Anyway on the way out we nearly walked past a Tawny Frog-Mouth Owl, which was just sitting on the railing.

It didn’t fly away when we approached, and a staff member said that we could pat it! I think it had been hand-reared since baby-hood. Patting the owl was like patting any bird, except if you touched the Owl’s beak it would open up it’s mouth (which is really wide and yellow inside) and gives you a very gentle bite.

Patting the Tawny Frog-Mouth owl. It has really cute little feathers sticking up from it’s head as you can see.

This time looking very alert. Maybe it had just seen the rats .

• http://thetension.blogspot.com/ : Has quite a lot of photographs of Talisman Saber 2007 (a joint military exercise between the US and Australia. Expect more of an ‘official’ view of things.
• http://ablekaneadventures.blogspot.com/ : A blog written by some sort of photographer for the US Army. I like this blog as Joe (the author) writes about his experiences around this area. Nowhere near as official as the previous blog.
• http://www.peaceconvergence.com/ : This website presents the other point of view, that Talisman Saber shouldn’t be taking place at all. Lots of news about issues concerning the enviroment and protestors.
• http://simonreeves.blogspot.com/ : This blog is written by a peace protestor, and I thought it especially interesting because this man was in a group of five who were arrested after they entered Shoalwater Bay and walked to a base.

Anyway, hope the above will keep you interested for a while!

So, a friend had birthday yesterday. And to celebrate it, he decided to go to Waterpark Creek, a National Park in the Byfield area. Being his friends, we went too. As soon as we arrived there, we all wanted to go for a swim. Waterpark Creek has excellent swimming facilities (just joking) including nice tall trees to jump off, and rope swings. There are also some submerged branches in the water, but they are only close to the bank.

There were also some English men there with their Aussie friends, who had competed in the recent sailing competition at Rydges. They were enjoying themselves a lot.

While I was swinging on one of the ropes there, I decided it would be fun to climb back up the rope. The only way this is possible is to use the your toes to grip the rope. Anyway, while I was climbing up someone from the English group saw me and said, “Hey, look what that kid is doing!”

They all looked up, and I think they were fairly amazed. They shouted out to jump into the water, but I didn’t want to get tangled up in the rope on the way down and end up hanging by my ankle, upside down, and dangling. After I had almost reached the top, I decided it was time to go down, so I did. When I got out of the water my toes hurt a bit, though!

After all the fun, we decided it was time to have our barbecued lunch. We had brought along some mushrooms and eggplant, but we forgot the onion (a bad mistake). Below are some photos of the eggplant on the barby.

Lunch finished, we needed a walk, so we went on the short rainforest circuit that starts just below the picnic area. The walk didn’t take long, and when we arrived back at the picnic tables we played around for a bit, waiting for the half-hour to pass so we could go for another swim.

Nothing eventful happened when we did, although I experimented with the camera and came up with the photos below.

Just before we were leaving, the person whose birthday we were celebrating decided sit under the deluge of water that was going over the causeway. A bubble of air is created when he sits under it, so he can breathe for a while. I took a few photos of that, and decided that the one below was the best. Because of that, it can be found on my photoblog, listed under the 26th February. I have included it below too.