Heading for Tewantin

The plan was to hustle a brand-spankin' new Mitsubishi Triton up to Maroochydore, on the Sunshine Coast, where Free Spirit has its workshop. It was to be a hook-up-and-go visit, cruising up through Noosa and then up along the back roads to Tin Can Bay for a bit of fishing and R&R. Too easy. I should have known better…

As is often the case when you just want to hit the road that bugger Murphy and his flamin' Law got into the act. The portable brake controller I'd organised to be delivered got sidetracked in transit somewhere, leaving me kicking my can and cursing the delivery system. After it had knocked half-a-day off the trip it finally turned up and then caused more than several headaches to fit. By now, almost a day had been eaten out of the trip… my fishing hand was getting real itchy.

Still, better late than never, I guess. Finally, we hit the road with the caravan in tow, aiming for a caravan park in Tewantin. Now, for all those 'vanners heading into Noosa Shire, here's an exercise for you. Count the roundabouts. Fair dinkum, I think the original designer of roundabouts is still the town planner at Noosa - there must be hundreds of the bloody things - big ones, mid-sized ones with trees in the middle, and wee little ones slotted into spaces where no self respecting roundabout should be.

After negotiating the hundred and eleventieth silly circle we made it to the Noosa Caravan Park (in Tewantin). That's yet another bone of contention with the Tewantin locals - calling things the Noosa this or the Noosa that when it's in Tewantin, not bloody Noosa! Just trying to cash in on the name I guess.

So the Noosa Caravan Park (in Tewantin) is quite a neat park, with a handy kiosk and clean amenities. Our site was tucked in among the palms alongside a creek of sorts, and we whipped the caravan off for some photos before the sun set.

Setting up was pretty easy. Drop the corner steadies, plug in the power, wind out the awning (love those wind outs - they're so simple even I can use 'em), and prop the little ladder up to get inside. The permanent fold-out steps were not fitted to this prototype, but it didn't make much difference. You'll notice the steps though. This is one high-clearance caravan - probably the highest I've seen.

After sunset we decided to shout ourselves a feed, and caught the bus just outside the park. As we took off the bus driver started singing: Just a Gigolo and entertaining the passengers. Different, to be sure, but a happy bus trip none-the-less, and it took our minds off all those bloody roundabouts. Why the bus? We were nicking into the Tewantin/Noosa RSL for a feed. When I'm on the road and don't feel like cooking, a club or pub feed is usually the most reasonably priced way to get a decent dinner. In fact, these bistro-style meals are often far more substantial than many a restaurant dinner. Yep, often the more highly-priced the course, the less you get. We all know the feeling, shelling out a pile of dollars for a triple teaspoonful of some exotic fare sitting in the middle of a plate the diameter of my Troopy's spare tyre. Sure, it may taste delightful, but you can't live on it.

Anyway, I digress. Tewantin is a neat little place, with magnificent Poincianas shading the main street and all the facilities you'd need for a long stay. It's in the midst of a bunch of lakes and is the ferry point for the Noosa River crossing for those wanting to run along the beach up to Double Island Point.

How did the caravan fare on its first night? Pretty good, actually. The fridge worked fine, the bed was comfy and the windows let in lots of cool fresh air.

Heading for Tewantin

The plan was to hustle a brand-spankin' new Mitsubishi Triton up to Maroochydore, on the Sunshine Coast, where Free Spirit has its workshop. It was to be a hook-up-and-go visit, cruising up through Noosa and then up along the back roads to Tin Can Bay for a bit of fishing and R&R. Too easy. I should have known better…

As is often the case when you just want to hit the road that bugger Murphy and his flamin' Law got into the act. The portable brake controller I'd organised to be delivered got sidetracked in transit somewhere, leaving me kicking my can and cursing the delivery system. After it had knocked half-a-day off the trip it finally turned up and then caused more than several headaches to fit. By now, almost a day had been eaten out of the trip… my fishing hand was getting real itchy.

Still, better late than never, I guess. Finally, we hit the road with the caravan in tow, aiming for a caravan park in Tewantin. Now, for all those 'vanners heading into Noosa Shire, here's an exercise for you. Count the roundabouts. Fair dinkum, I think the original designer of roundabouts is still the town planner at Noosa - there must be hundreds of the bloody things - big ones, mid-sized ones with trees in the middle, and wee little ones slotted into spaces where no self respecting roundabout should be.

After negotiating the hundred and eleventieth silly circle we made it to the Noosa Caravan Park (in Tewantin). That's yet another bone of contention with the Tewantin locals - calling things the Noosa this or the Noosa that when it's in Tewantin, not bloody Noosa! Just trying to cash in on the name I guess.

So the Noosa Caravan Park (in Tewantin) is quite a neat park, with a handy kiosk and clean amenities. Our site was tucked in among the palms alongside a creek of sorts, and we whipped the caravan off for some photos before the sun set.

Setting up was pretty easy. Drop the corner steadies, plug in the power, wind out the awning (love those wind outs - they're so simple even I can use 'em), and prop the little ladder up to get inside. The permanent fold-out steps were not fitted to this prototype, but it didn't make much difference. You'll notice the steps though. This is one high-clearance caravan - probably the highest I've seen.

After sunset we decided to shout ourselves a feed, and caught the bus just outside the park. As we took off the bus driver started singing: Just a Gigolo and entertaining the passengers. Different, to be sure, but a happy bus trip none-the-less, and it took our minds off all those bloody roundabouts. Why the bus? We were nicking into the Tewantin/Noosa RSL for a feed. When I'm on the road and don't feel like cooking, a club or pub feed is usually the most reasonably priced way to get a decent dinner. In fact, these bistro-style meals are often far more substantial than many a restaurant dinner. Yep, often the more highly-priced the course, the less you get. We all know the feeling, shelling out a pile of dollars for a triple teaspoonful of some exotic fare sitting in the middle of a plate the diameter of my Troopy's spare tyre. Sure, it may taste delightful, but you can't live on it.

Anyway, I digress. Tewantin is a neat little place, with magnificent Poincianas shading the main street and all the facilities you'd need for a long stay. It's in the midst of a bunch of lakes and is the ferry point for the Noosa River crossing for those wanting to run along the beach up to Double Island Point.

How did the caravan fare on its first night? Pretty good, actually. The fridge worked fine, the bed was comfy and the windows let in lots of cool fresh air.

Tin Can Bay

The morning pack up was as easy as the set up. Hitching up was also made easy, thanks to the Vehicle Components Hitchmaster drop-on system. This unusual hitch has a pin rather than a ball, and the coupling drops onto the pin easily. A swinging latch locks the hitch and pin. It provides plenty of movement for a rough-roader, but it's easier to connect than a Trigg or a Treg style pin and block hitch. On the road it worked just fine.

Speaking of the road, we hit it fairly early. Michael Ellem, the photographer, is one of those fanatical folk who drink real coffee, not the stuff we get in jars. We rolled back into Tewantin for some morning photos and some coffee with fancy patterns in the froth.

As mentioned, Tewantin is the launch point for those wanting to head up the sand to Double Island Point and Rainbow Beach. My plan was not to run the beach however, primarily because the tides were wrong, and anyway, my recovery gear was in the Troopy back in Brisvegas, not in the Triton I was driving.

Besides, I'm not a big fan of taking caravans along the beach. Sure, many of them are capable of doing it, and many tow cars are equally capable of pulling them, but don't forget old mate Murphy. If anything does go wrong you have a heck of a job doing a caravan/tow car recovery, and on the beach: time, tide and surf are big killers. Sink your rig on the beach and it could get very, very expensive. Not to mention very, very wet.

Instead, I planned to work my way through Pomona towards Kin Kin, then head onto the Cooloola Way through pine forests along the back of the Great Sandy National Park, up to the Tin Can Bay/Rainbow Beach road. I've been on this road before with caravans, albeit after loads of rain, and at that time it is a pretty rough sort of track. If a caravan ain't really a rough-road 'van, well, this road will show it up pretty quick indeed.

Pomona is a cute little town with a very American sounding name. There's a sign in the main street with directions to the US town, but it's a long tow from the Noosa backblocks.

We grabbed yet another coffee, fuelled up and wandered off down pretty country roads towards Kin Kin. These back tar roads were comfortable, but it wasn't long before we hit the dirt.

These dirt roads were relatively benign, with few corrugations to rattle the teeth, though there was one stretch of winding road that made the Triton work a bit. Still, the caravan followed along like a well-trained pup. After a bit we came to the intersection of the Kin Kin road and the Cooloola Way. Here a sign declared that the Way was not maintained for normal vehicles and that it was more or less 4WD only. And that was just what I wanted to check out this Triton/Free Spirit combo. Um, I didn't want to break anything, just see how it handled a bit of rough stuff.

The first inkling that something was amiss came via our noses. Bush perfume, the smell of a distant bushfire, was in the air. When some folks in an old Jeep came rattling along the track saying a side track was closed, we began to suspect a problem. This soon manifested itself in a faint haze of blue smoke beginning to show up in the distance. Still, they didn't say the Cooloola Way was closed, so we pressed on.

Some folks have a funny idea of what 4WD-only means. This road was pretty bumpy, for sure, but conditions were dry and there was nothing there that required a shift into 4WD.

But the smoke was definitely getting thicker and we were about 30 kays along the track when we rattled around a bend to see the dreaded yellow and black sign on the road. No Entry.

I was sorely tempted to keep on going, but with the smoke now towering in the distance before a nor-easter I thought I'd best be a good little munchkin and turn around. The trouble was there was really no easy way of doing that. With a bank on one side and some ground ripped up by 'dozers on the other, well, it was finally time to get the Triton into 4WD-low. The high ground clearance of the Free Spirit came in handy here. The Triton bucked and jumped over a few boulders and crunched over sticks, scrub and sandy ridges, but the turn was pretty easy.

After the rough roads the cupboard doors stayed shut, but the latches we had on the test rig were not the ones you'll get if you buy one. We had temporary ones, where the production latches will be much more secure. Still, we didn't end up with cornflakes and tomato sauce all over the floor, so that was a plus.

Backtracking was boring, but as we ran further along the Kin Kin road a short cut through the pine forests appeared, which would bring us out on the Tin Can Bay road. This road was a manicured gravel highway, a pretty drive with tall stands of pine on the flanks. The Tin Can Bay road was a tarmac highway and being close to lunch we barrelled along at the speed limit looking for our destination (and some munchies). The Free Spirit rolled along nicely at this point, with no hint of it getting out of shape. In short, it towed nicely behind the Triton.

The town of Tin Can Bay is on a peninsula poking out into Tin Can Bay, which in turn runs into the bottom of Hervey Bay at the southern end of Fraser Island, and it is one spread out little village. You hit the 60km/h sign well out of town, and the road then leads on through sparse development for what seems like miles before you actually see the town, ahem, CBD. Like any fairly isolated village it operates at its own time, which is decidedly slower than the watch on my wrist. Still, there's nothing wrong with being laid back.

As you get deeper into the village the bay opens up on the right, easily accessible right to the shore. Trouble is, when we arrived it was a vast expanse of sandbank, with the deeper water way out in the distance. This would present some challenges for a shore-based fisho! On the other side the water is deeper close in, but access is much more difficult, with marinas and mangroves blocking off most of it.

We found a café and ripped into some fish 'n' chips, and contemplated how we could find a fish in amongst all that sand.

After a bit more exploring and a flat tyre on the Triton, we rolled into the nearest caravan park - The Ace Caravan Park. This is a small park across the road from the marina, and occupied mainly by permanents, but it had some tidy 'van sites, a clean amenities block and a camp kitchen right across the road from our site. The site we were given wasn't at all difficult to access, but even so, reversing the Free Spirit was easy, because of its longer drawbar. We lobbed it into the site, unhooked the Triton, and set about exploring.

After a quick shop at the local IGA we checked out the access to the water (sand). The tide was coming in and I was looking out for some close-in channels where a flathead might be lurking. A lot of casts proved fruitless, save for my lure being rattled by little grunters and such. This really is an area where you need a boat.

Still, the scenery wasn't bad, even if the fishing was. It's a heck of a pretty spot, with boats dotted around on the sand, more moored out in the channel (way out!) and some very pretty foreshores.

After picking up a mega splinter walking out onto a marina (where fishing was banned) and hunting around fruitlessly for a fish, the worms began to bite. Since the fishing was off and the day was late, we figured it was time to head back to the 'van park for a cold ale or two and think about some dinner. Didn't take much thinking - sausages on the barbie in the camp kitchen.

As is usually the case in caravan parks, we soon got chatting to other travellers while we waited our turn on the hotplate. Most were from Brisvegas, though there were a couple from Perth and a pair of young ladies from Holland.

We had to return the Free Spirit the next afternoon, so rather than flog the sandbank with lures again (no good anyway, the sand rubs the paint off 'em), we decided to find a bit more, um, adventurous country to drive through. On the way back through the pine forest we steered onto some of those logging tracks to see just what the Triton/Free Spirit combo would do.

Here we found soft, silty sand, lots of sticks just waiting to spike a tyre or get hung up in the suspension, and a genuine need for 4WD. Great fun! The Triton did fine, and that high clearance of the Free Spirit walked over lots of nasty bits without problem.

After that little play we headed back through Kin Kin, across to Gympie and onto the Bruce Highway for the run back to Maroochydore. This was the highway run part of the road test and as before, the caravan followed along behind without any hint of a tail wag, even with trucks belting by, and a crosswind to boot. The rig seemed well balanced and stable the whole way, even when nudging up to the 110km/h speed limit.

All in all, our little fishing jaunt wasn't really successful (no, lets say it, it was a bummer), but in terms of comfort, on-road and off-road performance, the Triton/Free Spirit combo was pretty neat. And besides, Tin Can Bay is a nice little place to visit - but if you're going fishing there, bring a boat along.

Australian Caravan+RV magazine, issue 15, February/March 2010.