Glasshouse mountains - Tibrogargan

Wednesday 5th July

Inspired by my energetic start to the week, I’d determined to climb ‘Tibrogargan’, which I’d passed on the way to Australia zoo with Rebecca and which Margaret had informed me, so arriving here and checking the lay of the land, I was ready to get stuck in! One of the striking things about ‘Tibrogargan’ is that it looks like a Gorilla hunched by the side of the road and is quite a challenging climb apparently. I couldn’t wait!

Whilst cooking some grub at the camp kitchen, I recognised a ‘Wicked’ van I’d seen at Brisbane – this one was the ‘Love Wagon’ and was being driven by 2 German girls whom I recognised from Brisbane but hadn’t spoken to. Wasting no time, we got chatting and it turned out that they were here to climb one of the mountains as well. After a bit of sales spiel, they decided to go for ‘Tibrogargan’ as well and so we arranged to meet up in the morning and head off to climb together. Winner. First of all though, I had to find somewhere that was showing the deciding match between NSW and Queensland – the final State of Origin test. Interestingly balanced at 1-1, I would be watching the final test in Queensland and so I was looking forward to seeing how the match would pan out. I found a place ‘about 10 minutes up the road on the left’ as I was advised by a helpful Aussie guy so I dutifully set off. After 25 minutes, I realised that he meant ’10 minutes’ by car, doing 110kph! Of course, by this point, the path had ceased to exist and I was walking along the side of the road and diving in the bush whenever a truck or car came past, which was annoyingly often! After about 40 minutes, I came to the area, which was disturbingly called ‘Glasshouse Town ship’. Now, I’m an easy going and open-minded guy but seeing anything called a Township makes me edgy and I’m sure that’s only because of the connotation to African Townships. As it happened, the boozer looked quite respectable so in I trotted. It turned out to be a very interesting and enjoyable evening. Once in the door, the barmaid, on clocking my accent, couldn’t be more helpful (‘We don’t get many of your lot here’ and I couldn’t tell if that was a good or bad inference!). The experience got more bizarre, when after squeezing myself into a corner and quietly nursing my drink whilst watching the match (NSW were leading quite well at this point), the guy next to me turns and mutters something in what is, I have to say, the broadest accent I think I’ve ever heard, let alone in Oz. He was nodding and smiling manically while making this comment and I’ve still no idea what he said, but encouraged by his friendly face, I affected as strong a ‘wockney’ accent as I could and replied ‘Nice one mate, but I haven’t a facking Scooby what you just said. Great facking game though, innit?’ It must’ve been OK, cos we fell into a kind of match commentary chat as the game progressed. A fair few beers later and Queensland, somehow, had snatched a win! The bar was going off and my new mates wanted to get on it, inviting me back to theirs and what not. It was an ordeal to extricate myself, but nicely done. I was saved in fact by a text from Amanda and made the excuse that I needed to phone the ‘ball and chain’, which they loved! Top place – long walk home, gutted!!

Thursday 6th July.

Meeting the girls at 8am, we headed up the track, but not before meeting a guy in his 70’s or 80’s who has that annoying air of great health and sprightliness that you don’t see in British octogenarians. He climbs Tibrogargan 2-3 times a week and does it in 90 minutes – just to ensure he belittles our achievement before we even started!! And he even smoked – bastard. His English was good enough to make me think he was a Cloggy.

Beerwah on left and Coonawrin on right.

Suitably chastened, Martina, Theresia and I trudged off to climb. Aboriginal legend has it that the Glasshouse Mountains are a family, of which ‘Tibrogargan’ is the Dad. Mum is called ‘Beerwah’ and sits south of Dad and is a large, squat mountain. The talegoes that Mum is pregnant. They have 3 children, ‘Coonawrin’ and ‘The Twins’. As the story goes, Dad, noticed that there would be a great flood and so encouraged the family to move to higher ground to escape. As Mum was preggers, he told ‘Coonawrin’, the eldest son to help her. ‘Coonawrin’ however, bottled it and ran off. When he got back, Dad was so pissed that he clipped his son round the head and broke his neck, which gives ‘Coonawrin’ it’s lopsided look. Afterwards, he turned his back so he didn’t have to look at his craven son and thus forever hunches over the road in a mountainous huff! Great story.

The climb was excellent – pretty tough at points as it was almost like rock climbing. Nearly at the summit, we met the Cloggy, who, on discovering the girls were German, launched into German as well. Is there no end to this mans talents? It transpires he was Austrian and came over here 50 odd years ago. He also told us he was 79, so doing some quick maths I realised he’d’ve been 18 at the end of the war and I began postulating about whether he had to disappear because he had a dodgy past…! I realised now that his air of hale heartiness was obviously because of his former SS officer training – but as he could probably still kill me with his little finger, I just nodded politely!!

All too soon, the climb was over and it was off to our various places of interest. For the girls, this was Hervey Bay and Fraser and for me, it was Maroochy and HMAS Brisbane. We loosely arranged to meet up in Cairns, which would’ve been great as they were a great couple of girls, but we’ll see!