After an impromptu night at the neighbours house, we agreed to join them and some of their mates on camping trip to Grabine Lakeside Holiday Park. This place is located right next to Lake Wyangala and is popular place for water skiing, jet skis, drinking and fishing (probably in that order).
We took the Friday off work to get ready and to sort out a few things at home before we left. Rosie’s uncle was staying in Canberra over the weekend, so we offered to let him stay at ours while we were away. We did warn him about the cat before we left though.
On the road we headed up the highway towards Goulburn, but once again Google Maps kept trying to take us down terrible backroads in order to shave 2 minutes off travel time, despite us constantly trying to take the Goulburn to Crookwell route for an easier drive. Waze was no good either – I don’t actually think it has maps for Australian country towns.
So we headed along some bumpy paths heading through Breadalbane, Grabben Gullen and Gurrundah on the twisty narrow roads we’d set out to avoid, but we made it safe and sound to Crookwell, then continued on through to the town of Bigga to stop and stretch. Those are real names for real places by the way.
After a bit of a rest, we headed on towards the holiday park. It’s a long and winding dirt road to get to the lakeside, but the road in is fairly well maintained and has enough width in most spots for two cars to pass. There is a lot of complaints about this road on Wikicamps and it might be a different story in the wet, but we didn’t have any issues besides the usual rattling and bouncing around across corrugations.
We arrived a bit early and we weren’t sure if anyone else had made it yet. So we did a slow drive by of the various areas of the holiday park. This place is huge, probably the largest campground we’ve ever stayed at. There are no designated campsites beyond the few powered sites, so you just pull up wherever you’d like and set up. The ground here is mostly sloped down towards the lake, but there were a few scattered level places we could see.
The big drawcard for this campground is the lake. The relatively gentle slope means it’s fairly simple to launch a boat or jetski from almost any part of the holiday park. All weekend people were out on the water on jetskis, power boats and water skiing, making this a loud campground during daylight hours a different ambiance than we’re used to. Eventually we spotted some friends on the other side of a bay and went over to join them. Their rig and setup makes it fairly easy to identify them, even from a distance.
They’d chosen a good spot in a slightly less busy northern side of the park and had pulled up right on the lake shore. We came over, said hello and then set up next to them in the start of a large semi-circle, in anticipation of the rest of the crew coming later that afternoon. Setup was pretty quick. Given this was a multi-night stay we put the large front awning up, but that only adds a couple of minutes to our setup time.
That afternoon the kids had a swim in the lake directly in front of our site. The water was relatively warm until you got into deeper parts, but it was very muddy water close to shore and the area we were in had a lot of chopped up weeds in the water. Once you got a bit deeper though the water was great, and the kids didn’t care about mud or freshwater seaweed. It was quite a hot day so the adults had a swim later in the afternoon as well.
The way our campsite was facing meant that we got the sunset directly at us, but we just kept moving our chairs around to make sure we stayed in the shade. With nothing else to do, most of the adults starting having a few afternoon drinks before dinner.
Our friends had Optus/Vodafone mobiles, so they had service. The entire park doesn’t have Telstra service strangely. They were able to tell us that the rest of the group was in Crookwell waiting for others so they could come in via convoy. Dinner that night was sausages, then some more playing and mucking around. We put Ollie to bed around 9pm, and by that time no one else had showed up.
Eventually they did show up in a huge lit-up convoy around 10pm. They weren’t the quietest bunch, but they quickly got to work getting the caravans situated, levelled and setup. By about 11.30pm everyone was pretty much done and the engines had all been turned off, with a big lit up area between our camps and the lakes edge. By this stage myself and Rosie had been drinking since 4pm, so we were a little tired and decided to turn in.
The next morning we woke up to warm sunny day. That mornings breakfast was bacon, egg and halumi, and then we settled in for a lazy day around the campsite enjoying watching the water skiers go past.
Ollie spent most of the day in the lake. His swimming has come a long way, so we felt pretty safe with him on the edge of the lake playing with his mate Sash. There was a bit of excitement when one of the fisherman of the group picked up a decent sized fish. Then later that morning the same kid went out on a kayak and picked up an even bigger cod. Ollie got to see the insides of a fish as it was being cleaned and filleted.
Just after lunch a cricket match broke out next to the lake. That lasted a little while, fortunately with no major injuries despite the participation of middle-aged men.
That afternoon was quite hot. We put up an extra awning blind at the front of the camper to block out some of the light. The camper stayed pretty cool considering, probably due to it’s height and ability to catch any breezes that came past. One of our friends remarked that it felt like the coolest overall setup of the group. That’s probably not true all day though, as our neighbours had a petrol generator they would turn on in the afternoon so they could run their air conditioning unit.
The most coveted piece of camping gear we’d brought ended up being the Ryobi fan with built in misters attached to our trusty Bunnings bucket. We just filled with lake water as the pump has a filter and it did a great job cooling a group of around three people down. It’s pretty bulky, but a great item to take camping.
As the sun started to set, we noticed that both myself and Ollie had missed the same one small part of our bodies when applying sunscreen. The small of our respective backs was pretty red – they really need to make longer shirts as standard for us tall people.
That afternoons sunset was pretty epic. We cooked up some chicken fajitas for dinner while the rest of the crew were cooking BBQ beef spare ribs over coals. It tastes fantastic, but takes ages to cook up. Most of our party was using fire pits to cook, so there was some risk that someone would notice and report the group, but it didn’t happen.
The holiday park doesn’t allow fires from around November to April every year, no matter the fire danger that day. They neglect to tell you this until after you’ve booked and don’t mention it at all on their website. It’s a dirty trick, particularly with their ridiculous cancellation policy, and part of the reason that I don’t really enjoy going to Reflections-branded campgrounds as much as other places that follow Rural Fire Service fire risk ratings.
The next morning was Sunday 26 January, Australian Day, and we had the same breakfast as the day before. We then proceeded to have pretty much the same day as before. Rosie and I did take the van to the kiosk for a coffee and to use the wifi. The holiday park has a kiosk and petrol station on site which are great features you don’t often see in the more remote caravan parks like this one. (It doesn’t make up for the fire ban though)
That afternoon Ollie and Sash were pretty much in the water for 4 hours. They did come out briefly to help Rosie mix up some dough for flatbreads. We enjoyed them later in the afternoon with a great charcuterie board set up by Justin.
The wind picked up that afternoon forcing people to tie down awnings and loose gear. The wind was blowing out towards the lake, and a pool noodle escaped. One of the kids in our crew headed out on a paddle board to recover it, but wasn’t able to paddle back because of the wind. Eventually we heard him crying out and his dad went and towed him back to shore in a kayak. He was a little shaken up, but otherwise okay.
That evening someone on the other side of the bay we were camped on set off some fireworks to celebrate Australia Day. It was a great way to finish up our last night camping.
In the morning we set about packing up along with everyone else in our party. Somehow we were the first to get packed up. We said goodbye and headed off back down the long dirt road towards Bigga. On the way we passed quite a few cars pulled over – some had engine problems, some were retying gear and others we just on the side of the road for no discernible reason. The van just kept plodding along though.
We made it into Crookwell and stopped for a bit to eat at Paul’s Cafe – a big traditional style takeaway that made decent food. Recommended if you’re down that way. After that we ignored Google Maps and just followed signs down to Goulburn, heading past the huge wind farm that way, then jumped on the Hume and headed back home.
All up this was a fantastic weekend with a crew that we’ve not camped with before at a place we’ve never really considered before. Lake side camping has a lot of benefits, but it’s definitely not a quiet, peaceful style of camping. Big thanks to our friends for inviting us along.
Boring technical stuff
After installing a big 9″ screen into the dash, I really need to find a better way to anchor the moulded plastic. It’s designed to replace a small tray in the dashboard and press fit in, but corrugations mean that it gets shaken out of place. I’m thinking some small clips should keep it in place.
The camper brakes got replaced the week before we left, so this trip was used to bed them in and dial them in. The old brakes were very worn out but it was a relatively simple job to replace them with entirely new brake units. They fit perfectly and the trailer handbrake even works now, something that we’ve never had before!
We had the solar blanket out for half a day on the Saturday, but it ultimately wasn’t really needed. Battery power was pretty good considering the days were all between 32-35 degrees and we were powering three fridges.
We learnt that the remote for our giant light pole (literally a light on the end of a long stick) works for other models of the same product. We had a great time pissing of one of our friends by turning his lights on and off haha.
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