Wow, what a weekend. The outdoors club on campus, Activate, put on a camping weekend which I eagerly signed up for. Little did I know what I would really be in for – hard and hot hikes (that were just a bit painful), but an amazing weekend overall.

Saturday

I started the morning bright and early at 6:30 am to Skype Logan and get a bit of talk time before my action-packed weekend began. Needless to say, starting the morning with talking to Logan always makes for a great beginning to the day!  At 8:45 am Michael, Luke, Alex, Erin & I all headed over to campus where we met the rest of the 5 crew members joining us on the trip: Hayley (the group leader from Scotland), Vanessa (from Germany), Naomi (from South Korea), Kimon (from Germany), and Joe (from Norway). We grabbed tents, sleeping bags, sleeping mats, and miscellaneous camping gear from the Activate storage container and then at about 9:30 am we were on the road and ready to start the weekend adventure! With ABBA blasting through the speakers of Michael’s car, we made our 40 minute drive up to Noosa Heads.

We parked and headed into Noosa National Park and started on the 10.8km return Coastal Walk. (Link to Noosa National Park Map) After a short walk, we arrived at the Boiling Pot viewpoint. But as you’ll quickly learn about the Activate Club, they don’t like just looking at things… they like experiencing them. So we climbed down and across some rocks and went to check out the Boiling Pot in person.

As you can see where I’m standing in the picture, it is a little deeper than the surrounding rocks, this is called the Boiling Pot. This is because it’s actually like a pot and fills up & drains with water as the ocean waves come in. It was the coolest and craziest thing I’ve been in! The water would drain and it would get quite shallow and then would fill up over the height of the surrounding rocks.

After a cool swim, we laced up our shoes and headed back onto the costal walk. The paths were easy and mostly paved, but the heat was a whole different story. The high for the day was 86 degrees, so you can imagine that plus humidity made it a bit warm for hiking. We were all happy to when we arrived at our next stop, the Fairy Pools, because that meant we got to jump in the water again to cool off.

The Fairy Pools were gorgeous – both in the pools and the view out to the ocean (you can click on the images to make them bigger). There were 3 different pools right next to each other, and we of course checked each one out. There were lots of small fish in there, but nothing too harmful. After swimming around for a while, we ate lunch with a view up on the rocks.

Next, we headed to the viewpoint called Hell’s Gates… and let me tell you, it was gorgeous!

We definitely didn’t climb down to this one… this was one point where we were just there to enjoy the view. After taking a little break there, we decided to make the trek back. We took the 8km Tanglewood Walk trail back and got to see a lot of the forest. Once we were back to the start, we loaded up the cars, ate some food, and drove about an hour into the Hinterlands to our camp site in Kenilworth near the Charlie Moreland camping area.

Driving into the campsite was quite an adventure since we didn’t have a 4-wheel-drive car but we succeeded in making it through the creeks! We unpacked, put tents up, and got our campsite all set up. Once that was done, a handful of us decided to cool off in the creek and wash off all the dirt and sweat from hiking all day. It was definitely cold, but felt so refreshing! The next couple hours consisted of eating dinner, campfire games, and talking before calling it a day.

Sunday

I got a lot of on-and-off sleep since every little sound generally wakes me up. I will admit that when I wake up @ 1:00am, in a tent, and I hear noises… I was definitely a bit scared. After hearing many stories off all the animals that could harm or kill me (Drop Bears, Goannas, spiders, and snakes to name a few) it was a little hard to sleep when I heard noises outside the tent – but much to my pleasure, I woke up the next morning unscathed.

    (Can you spot the Goanna on the left & spider on the right?)

    We packed up camp, loaded up on sunscreen, had some breakfast and headed out for a day of hiking @ 8:45 am. Our hike was to Mount Allan Fire Tower, about a 14 mile round trip. This hike was what I would call a bit painful for someone who is not used to the area (aka me). Thankfully, the whole hike was in tree shade, but that did not stop the 88 degree temperature and high humidity from getting to you. Let’s just say it was a very sweaty 1.5 hour hike. Somehow we managed to make it to the top and enjoyed lunch while sitting on top of the fire tower looking at the view.

The hour hike back down Mount Allan was a lot less painful, but still very warm and sweaty. Needless to say, we were all enthralled when we were back at the creek adjacent to our campsite. Jumping into that cool water felt amazing! Although we had to watch out for the occasional small snake that slithered across the top of the water, we all enjoyed swimming there. After playing chicken, keeping a balloon above the water, and cooling down we decided to head out and get some food at a local IGA grocery store.

Let me tell you, hot food and white chocolate Tim Tams hit the spot after a long day of hiking. We decided to make one last trip to a waterfall nearby, but quickly got rained out. We braved the downpour to run out, look at the waterfall, and run back into the car.

As soon as we knew it, it was time to head home after a great camping weekend. With sore legs and a tiny bit sleep deprived, we all hugged goodbye. Once we got back to the apartment that evening, the roomies & I decided to drive over to Mooloolaba, grab slurpees and Krispy Kreme donuts from the 7-Eleven, and sit by the ocean while listening to the waves crash against the shore. It was the perfect way to end an adventure filled weekend.

Note: I will be putting together a video from the trip within the next couple days, but since it is Monday (which means school again for me) it will probably take me a little bit to put it together.