Camping at Upper Colo Reserve

http://www.hawkesbury.nsw.gov.au/community/parks-and-recreation/upper-colo-camping

My first camping trip in the Australian bush was spent at the Colo Reserve for a friends (Matthew) birthday. The site about 100km outside of Sydney is pretty remote and roughly 5km from the main road on small winey track. The site has a toilet block with cold showers only and no suitable drinking water, so basically it is in the middle of nowhere. The site ranger also informed us that the snakes are now becoming more active and advised us not to get bitten by anything dangerous (which is pretty hard in Aus) because the helicopter evacuation service takes 40 mins to get to site. CHEERS PAL!

Seven of us made the trip in total and myself and Claire were first to arrive and set up base camp in the dark. I was quite surprised with how I managed to pitch the tent in the dark in all honesty. Anyway we were soon joined by the birthday boy and a few other lads and with tents pitched and beers cooling in the eski (a cool box to any Brits reading) we set about making the fire so Matt could prepare his all in one pot, stew (which was excellent).

I think I have mentioned before how relaxed everything seems to be here compared with back home… this can be seen when comparing camp sites with those back home. Kids running around enjoying themselves with music coming from different groups of campers throughout the site and the fact that open fires were allowed. My experience of camp sites back home were certainly not the same.

The first night was spent devouring the stew which Matt made from scratch on the open fire (pretty impressive) with crusty tiger bread, before cranking up the tunes and getting on it all gathered around the fire… I am not really sure what time we all got to bed but it didn’t seem long before I was being woken by the morning chorus of the bush…. Kookaburras, macquarie’s and all other birds was pretty awesome. After bacon and egg sandwiches expertly cooked by yours truly some lads had to return home for work so that left four of us to enjoy the river and surrounding area. After a brief trip to stock up on supplies…well just booze manly and enjoying the river we set about constructing the BBQ for Saturday night’s dinner. Matt again didn’t disappoint with some great burgers which went down a treat. The rest of the evening was spent again around the fire until midnight before hitting the hay.

Sunday was over pretty quickly after de-camping and we were on the road for 9.30am and stopped in Windsor for breakfast before returning home to Sydney; back to normality with phone signal and warm showers. A great weekend was had by all thanks again to Bob for lending me his camping kit and to Matt and Claire for organizing all the weekend and all of the food etc.... Hopefully more trips to come!!

Pics FYI.