Along the way to the 2018 Mt. Hogan Treasure Chase

Dear Reader,

I have been a little lax, so far as blogging has been concerned, since my last posting detailing our Carnarvon Gorge adventures.  Considerable time has elapsed and many kilometres have been travelled since then so an update is well and truly overdue.  Some of you may well have asked yourselves ‘WTF? - Where ARE The Farrows?’, while for most of you it probably hasn’t even crossed you mind.  Either way, the answer to that question is at hand.  Please read on…

Upon leaving Carnarvon Gorge we resumed our journey in a generally northerly direction through Queensland towards Mt. Hogan Station in Etheridge Shire (inland approx 400km NW of Townsville & 400km SW of Cairns) where Heather was to participate in the 2018 Mt. Hogan Treasure Chase (a metal detecting competition that we have wanted to check-out for a while).

Our route from Carnarvon Gorge to Etheridge Shire in North Queensland

We did as much free and low cost camping as possible along the way with simple overnight stops  (some good, some not so bad and, one ugly) and a few multiple night stops whenever we found ourselves at a particularly nice location.  One nighters included:

• Emerald Free Camp (FC) in the town of Emerald;
• Bundoora Dam FC near German Creek Coal Mine;
• Cape River Bridge Rest Area FC (roadside rest area ~110km south of Charters Towers);
• Prairie Hotel FC
• Mt. Surprise Caravan Park
• Cumberland Chimney FC (~20km west of Georgetown)
• Flat Creek Station (~45km south of Georgetown off of the Forsayth Road)
• Bush camp on the side of the Einasleigh-Gilberton Road

While staying behind the Prairie Hotel we met their resident pet water buffalo 'Buffy'.  The pub has plenty of Bush Pub character and is one of the 51 hotels featured in a book titled 'Australian Bush Pubs'.  We decided to buy a copy and have the publican sign their page and date it with the day we called in.  Right there and then we resolved to visit all of the bush pubs in the book and get each publican to sign and date their respective pages so you can expect to read about our progress so far as knocking each one off of the list during our travels!

'Buffy' the pet Water Buffalo at the Prairie Hotel

'Challenge Accepted'!
We intend to visit ALL 51 pubs featured in the book.

The longer stops included:

• Lake Elphinstone (~90km north of Moranbah);
• Fletchers Creek (~40km north of Charters Towers);
• Porcupine Gorge National Park (~70km north of Hughenden);
• Bush camp on the bank of the Einasleigh River (~30km SE of Einasleigh);
• O’Briens Campground (in the gem fossicking fields ~35km NW of Mt. Surprise);
• Forsayth Caravan Park
• Mt. Hogan Station and the 2018 Mt. Hogan Treasure Chase

At Lake Elphinstone we set up at a lakeshore campsite but relocated after some advice from a couple of different folks that the sandflies and ‘midgies’ were unbearable at sunrise and sunset.  Rather than risk be eaten alive we moved to a site about 50m away from the shoreline and proceeded to enjoy our stay ‘un-molested’.

There is a reason the lakefront campsites are 'available'.
The sandflies and midges will feast on you if you stay too close to the water.

We stayed for 2 nights at Porcupine Gorge National Park.  We did a ‘self-drive’ tour by stopping at ‘Points of Interest’ signposted along the 70km drive to the park from Hughenden.  In the park itself we did a couple of short hikes.  One along the rim of the gorge and another into the bottom of the gorge and back.

The aptly named Pyramid Rock from the bottom of Porcupine Gorge

The Forsayth Caravan Park made for a good base to explore the area.  There are plenty of properties in the area that permit you to go metal detecting for gold (and relics or whatever else you may be targeting).  For $10/day you can detect for gold and keep whatever you find and several people staying in the caravan park when we were there had done quite well for themselves!  One bloke in particular, John ‘The Legend’ Flynn, had found about 90 grams of gold (~ 3 ounces @ US$1,250/oz of gold = US$3,750) worth about A$5,000 across the duration of his stay up this way.

Not a bad haul while detecting near Forsayth!  Nice bloke too!

We met ‘The Legend’ once again at Mt. Hogan Station as he too was to take part in the 2018 Mt. Hogan Treasure Chase!

At the 2018 Mt. Hogan Treasure Chase there were 51 entrants all detecting the hard ground beneath long prickly grasses and the sandy creek beds for gold and/or 17 ‘planted’ tokens.  This was a tough competition as the tokens (these were new horseshoe nails tied to a small square of leather), had been dispersed across the more than 200ha (~500 acres) of one of the paddocks of the cattle station.

Prizes were awarded for the most gold found by an individual, the most weight of ‘garbage’ detected and collected (wire, horseshoes, iron, etc), and the most tokens found.  The 2 days of competition yielded a total of 60 grams of gold (winning competitor found 9 grams), 20 kg of garbage (winner turned in 7kg) and just 7 tokens (winner found 2 tokens).

Heather working hard digging in a dry creek bed at the 2018 Mt. Hogan Treasure Chase

The Treasure Chase wrapped up with an awards ceremony then all entrants and guests shared a camp oven dinner around a fire while some live music played in the background.  A good time was had by all.

After a couple of weeks ‘out-bush’ in the dust and brown grass laden with seed prickles (which we were constantly picking out of our socks), we were looking forward to seeing some green on the ground once again.  First thing next morning we broke camp and hit the road again.  The coast sounds nice.  Perhaps WTF? - Where are The Farrows? will go there for a while…