After having bacon and eggs for breakfast, we packed lunch and headed to Byfield National Park. Our first stop was Upper Stoney Creek where we had to cross the creek to get to the parking area. We walked to the swimming area and noticed that the signs warned about there being freshwater stonefish in the creek. They suggested that you swim rather than walk or wade! Darren, Mitch and Thomas walked back across the creek on the road we had driven on, and decided that the water was too cold for swimming.
The visitor guide showed a track to the beach that was a medium 4wd track, and we decided to go for a look. The first part of the road was bitumen, which soon turned to gravel. We met a few cars going the other way, and stopped to chat to one guy that was pumping his tyres back up. He said that the view was awesome, but that the first hill was a “doozie”. Before long we came to an area where you could pull off the road and the sign suggested that you let your tyres down for the next part, so we did.
It wasn’t far before the track change to sand and we were thankful that we had let the tyres down. Darren was enjoying the chance to drive in the different conditions. The first hill was steep and sandy, and seemed to go on forever. When we reached the top the ground flattened out but the sand continued. We completed the first track and decided to do the Death Valley Loop, which was more of the same. We finally came out at a small secluded township called Stockyard Point. It was made up of three sandy tracks and maybe a dozen houses. The population was 10. One of the roads was Thong Ave, and it had string across the street in about three places. On the string was a sign saying “Thong Ave” and a heap of pairs of thongs.
We drove out onto the point where there was a lookout. It gave us a beautiful view of a long sandy beach one way, and Five Rocks Point the other way. Then we took another track to Nine Mile Beach.
We drove along the beach a little way before coming to an area where the water was running across the beach along a bit of a channel. Darren checked that it was safe to go across, before we actually crossed it. We parked at Waterfall Creek parking area on the beach, and the boys played on the sand dunes. Then we had lunch, and headed further along the beach.
Darren was in his element driving along the sand, but as this is something I am a bit phobic about, it was a white knuckle drive for me. It didn’t help matters when we came to a part of the beach where the tide had not gone out far enough and the sand was a bit soft. Darren turned around and drove out of it pretty easily, but not without scaring the hell out of me in the process.
We drove back to some orange sand dunes called Orange Bowl, where we parked the car and the boys ran off to explore. Darren and I sat on the beach for a while, then followed them for a look. When we had enough we dusted off the sand and got back into the car. Darren found a book of Queensland National Parks Legislation on the sand so he picked it up and put it in the car.
The road to leave the beach was over a small sand hill through a narrow gap. Darren did not hit it on the right angle and we all got thrown around on the way over. Then we followed the 4wd sand track to take us out of the park. We hadn’t gone far when Thomas noticed that there was another car following us. Darren pulled off the road to let them pass. When they pulled alongside us they stopped and we saw that they were rangers. Darren asked if they had lost a Legislation book, and it turned out that it was theirs. They were pretty happy to get it back.
Back on the road again, we made our way out to the area where we had let down our tyres, and this time we stopped and used the compressor to pump them back up.
Once back at Yepoon, the boys wanted to climb on the “web” again, so they did that while Darren got some things for an oil change from Super Cheap Auto. Then we went to the car wash and washed off some of the sand, before heading back to the caravan. The boys went to the skate park while we cooked tea, and then we walked over to pick them up.
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