Black Rocks is about 20km (mostly dirt road) off the Pacific Highway, and is an unstaffed campsite. There are drop toilets to answer nature's calls but you have to take all your own water for drinking and washing (no problem I thought with our 60L tank in the camper, and 20L in the car). The site has about 30 odd pitches that are mostly hidden from each other by the thick bush, and the beach is a 2 minute walk over the dune. What more could you want!?
On most of the pitches there was a very handy fireplace, complete with cooking plate and an arm for camp ovens.
On the first night it was dark by the time we had the camper setup so we made a small fire and cooked some burgers on the plate. It must have been nearly 9pm by the time we ate, and Ness starts starving at 6:05pm (like clockwork everyday). We learnt 2 things: 1) we need to start the fire earlier, and 2) the truckload of firewood we were hauling from Tamborine was very difficult to light, and very hard to cut without a chainsaw. Chainsaws are not allowed in a National Park, and neither is collecting firewood. It seems that quite a lot of things are not allowed in National Parks, while almost anything goes in State Forests. More and more State Forests are being converted to National Parks - there are mixed opinions on whether this is a good thing or not.
The following evening we decided to add a slow chilli to our camp oven repertoire. After struggling with the fire the previous evening, and nearly losing my sight with the excessive smoke, I thought that it would be OK to take a small piece of driftwood off the beach just to get the fire going. While I was cutting the piece of driftwood into smaller pieces with the bow saw I caught a whiff of something, but it could have been me. Then, to quote Kenny when I set fire to it, "it felt like I had been hit in the head with a poo bat". With my vision still blurry from the previous evening, I managed to pick the pieces out of the fire and carried on by blowing on the smoky Tamborine logs for the next 2 hours. By the time the chilli was ready I was legally blind. The chilly tasted awesome though!
While there were no official staff at the campground, they did have a toilet attendant. Unlike the annoying staff in London clubs and bars, this one didn't pick up the soap for me, offer me deodorant, or give me a lolly... it just made sure that there were no rats.
This Diamond Python was there for a few days and in all that time Ness only saw it move once, when it was hanging over the edge in an S shape ready to dart out and catch its prey. The rest of the time it just lay there, happy for humans to use the facilities while it chilled out on the walkway. Apparently this is common behaviour for these snakes, and it will move on (a couple of hundred meters) once it thinks it has caught all the prey in the area.
After a few trips to the beach and couple of dusty walks, we all needed a shower. With no level indicator on our water tank I was reluctant to use our water supply for showers, so we decided to take a drive to the nearest campsite with showers. After driving for about 20 minutes I started wondering just how far this "nearest shower" was... A 100km round trip later we were all smelling fresh as daisies again.
The coastline in this part of the world is absolutely beautiful and I was glad that I made the effort to go and take some pictures early one morning.
There was also a vivid reminder of why you shouldn't drive a Niss... umm... of why you should always know the tides when you drive on the beach, and why it is a good idea to have a backup plan (2 vehicles, sand ladders, etc).
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