Picnic Point Reserve - Free Camping at its BEST!

Welcome to another episode, in this one we head to Picnic Point Reserve, which is in between Knockwood and Kevington on the Mansfield to Woods Point Road. A beautiful free camp right on the river which is a great place to base yourself to explore the various 4wd tracks in the area to places like Mount Matlock and the small towns/villages of Jamieson and Woods Point. If you've enjoyed this podcast be sure to find us on Youtube and subscribe!

Transcript

Welcome back to Shire Travels. In this one, we are heading for a weekend away camping at Picnic Point Reserve. This is in between Kevington and Knockwood. The closest major, I guess, towns that people might have heard of are Jameson and Woods Point, and the campground that we're staying at. Pitna Point Reserve is a beautiful free camp and it is right on the river. From Melbourne, you're probably looking at about a 2 hour, 2.5 hour drive to get to picnic point reserve, and it's only Mansfield to Woods Point Road. On this road, you will find a heap of different campsites, some which are kind of official and marked out with some dropped toilets, whilst others are just off the main road. Might only be a spot big enough for 110 or a rooftop tent. There are heaps of different options on this road. Most of them have really good river access as well. We left it about lunchtime on a Friday and drove along the Mansfield Woods Point Road, just pulling into the different campsites and seeing which one we thought would suit us best. That we were towing our 14 foot caravan, and we had friends and family who were coming to stay with us. One had a small pop top caravan. The others had a Tandemax or 19 foot van, and we also had another friend with a camper trailer. So ideally we wanted a spot where everyone had enough room to spread themselves out. We wanted the site to be somewhat level so that people wouldn't have it too much difficulty getting themselves set up. And I had done a bit of research beforehand into some of the campgrounds that I thought might be suitable. But it's a bit different when you see them in real life as to how far they are off the road, for example. There are a couple that we stopped at, which would have been perfectly suitable, but were really close to the road. The Bansfield towards Point Road. It isn't very busy. It is a gravel road. It can get quite dusty though. So we didn't want to be too close to it. The other thing is that we're travelling with young kids and we also would have dogs with us, with the kids riding around their bikes and dogs running around. We just didn't want to have the risk or the anxiety of having to constantly wash them just in case they did get too close to the road. So then we headed down to a picnic point reserve and as soon as we pulled up, I was like, yep, this is the spot. It's absolutely beautiful. As you drive into the campground, which isn't very big. It's only a couple 100 metres by a couple 100 metres. There's a road which kind of loops through it. Now it's just a dirt trek, and there's a few big trees in the middle, and the campsite basically sits in the middle of a horseshoe bend on the river. It's absolutely beautiful. You're almost like on a little island. The good thing about this campsite as well is that it does have a drop toilet. Now, we do have a toilet in the caravan, but people coming with us. It didn't have toilets, so that was perfect. Now all the campgrounds in this area, they are free. They can't be booked. It's just 1st in best rest as to whether or not you get a space. Now we were there in winter, so we didn't really have to fight with the crowds. If you're there in summer, though, I imagine a spot like this would be really busy. The other thing which I probably should have mentioned at the start is there is a picnic point campground and a picnic point day area in Lake Ilden, which is probably about an hour away. When we drove into Pinot Point Reserve campsite and we found the spot. We didn't have any phone reception, so we fired up our little zolio device. This has a messaging service on it, so we sent out a quick message to say, this is where we're going to be. Tom went for a bit of a drive to find some firewood, managed to get some firm reception and our message group had kind of blown up with people saying, I'm not camping there. It's going to be too busy and all of this. Turns out they had got confused with pitnip point campground in Elden, which I think you do have to book it through parks. It is very busy. So just make sure when you're heading to the area, you do put in at picnic point reserve. In saying that, though, there is also a picnic point reserve near Barnsdale. So just make sure when you're putting in your GPS, you're heading to the right spot. Now, we got ourselves all set up, part the caravan up in a fairly level spot, quite close to the river. The river there, it's not super wide, but it was actually quite deep and it was very fast flowing. The water was absolutely freezing, coming down from the mountains. It's all the melted snow and ice, so it is so cold. In summer though, I imagine it would be very refreshing. Now, where the dirt track in the campsite kind of looped around following the curve of the river, there were a few small bollas, just so you couldn't park too close to the river, and there was a spot there where someone had had a campfire, so we thought that would be perfect. We'd make the campfire there, we could sit around quite close to the river. And there was quite a big kind of pebbly beach going down to the river as well. This was great. The kids had a ball there kind of digging up the pebbles. I don't really know what they were doing throwing them in the water, which, you know, you do you, they absolutely love doing that, entertains them for hours on end. Now if you really want to appreciate just how beautiful this campsite is, you can check out our footage on YouTube, just search for Shy Travels. I've got the drone up and fluid around and it is just absolutely stunning. Now, it is in a little bit of a valley or there are some quite tall hills around it. So in the morning and the afternoon, it doesn't get too much sun, but once the sun pops its head over that hill, It is lovely and warm. So Tom went and found some firewood. He brought it back to camp and began cursing it up. And inside the wood, we found a heap of witchy grubs. Now this was quite interesting. We hadn't actually seen them before, and the 1st time that we found one cutting open a log. It was quite exciting. We then realised that all the wood was absolutely full of them. Not one that we came with actually thought to bring a fishing rod, even though we were right on the river, which is a bit of a shame because they would have made ideal bait. Safe to say they got to live another day. We kind of covered them up as best we could and put them near a tree. To be honest, though, a bird probably did come and eat them. Now we knew it was going to be a cold weekend, so we got the fire going early, got it nice and warm, and then our friends arrived, and they got themselves all set up. Kids had a bit of a blast riding their bike around. We then decided to make dinner and it was time for bed. Dinner that night, we did pizza on our Webber barbeque, which is amazing. We absolutely love it. Another thing we love, and yet we're a bit soft, is the diesel heater in the caravan. We had there absolutely cranked. It was so good. The next morning we woke up and it was frosty. This did actually make for quite a beautiful morning, in particular. There's steam rising off the river, and despite only being a couple 100 metres off the road. It was a really peaceful tranquil place to camp. In saying that, though, we did have a couple turn up probably about 10 o'clock at night and start setting up. The strange thing was that they decided to park right next to our friend's camp trailer. Now, when I say right next to it, I mean if they had put their arm out of their car window, they would have been touching it. Fortunately, our friends had a dog with them and the minute they started getting close to the car, the dog started barking and they drove to the other side of the campsite. Now, as I said, the campsites are free. You can't book them. So if someone else wants to stay there, too bad, too sad, they ended up staying on the other side of the campsite, that's fine. We had a couple of other friends coming. But even if those people had decided to stay, There would have been room. It was just very strange that they would try to camp like right, right next to the camper trailer. Talking about quite a big campground and it was just very strange. I don't know whether they felt unsafe or what it was, but maybe just keep that in mind. If you are rolling into a campground late, Maybe don't park like literally right on top of someone else if there's plenty of other places to stay. Now, the other couple did pack up and leave quite early. It was quite fortunate as well because they did have a small dog with them and the dogs that we had with them were kind of a bit anxious about it. So, it was quite good when they did pick up and decide to leave. We had our other friends come and join us that morning in their cars and another friend that popped in just for a day trip. Everyone got themselves set up. And then the sun poked its head over the top of that hill and everything warmed up and dried off. It was fantastic. The kids, to be honest, do struggle when it is really cold, despite us telling them to, you know, pull layers on and sit by the fire to keep warm. They just find it is much more easier just to whinge about how cold they are. Worst comes to worst though, I do let them sit in the caravan. They can have the heater on if they want to. But I do kind of worry that they're going to, I don't know, press buttons in there that they shouldn't or just generally get up to mischief, which our kids, they just tend to do that all the time, especially our youngest. She is just an absolute menace. Once the sun was out though, and everyone was warming up. The kids then got on their bikes, they made some little jumps, had a great time riding round. And then we thought that we would do a bit of a drive. Now, even though we were only going to be away from the caravan for a couple of hours, we always tried to still lock everything up. We are just leaving it there open, anyone can drive in there. It's not a proper campground. not as if there's anything to stop anyone going up to our caravan. So we just try and make sure that we lock the door. Anything valuable we have, we put inside and hide it away. We lock our kitchen area and our storage area, and then any bikes or chairs or tables that we have. We just generally tried to tuck them away under the caravan and just keep them out of sight. We also try to zip up most of our windows. So in our caravan, we do have the pop top. We mainly do this just in case it rains. And if you're winter camping as well. The one thing that we find is that the caravan heats up quite quickly. And so keeping those windows zipped up during the day and having the sun on the caravan. When it comes to the evening, actually still is quite a nice temperature in there. Once everyone was ready, we decided to drive up to Mount Matlock, and we did this via Frenchman's Gap and Cornhill. Now in terms of four-wheel driving, it really wasn't anything too technical or difficult, typical tracks in this area are quite narrow, you can usually only get one car passed. The track in some spots was a little bit muddy, but nothing too difficult. We also use this as an opportunity to stop and get a heap of firewood. Because the campgrounds along the Mansfield was point road are so accessible. They're very popular, getting firewood in the campgrounds is pretty difficult. And so in most cases, you will need to go for a bit of a drive to find some. This was the 2nd time that Tom and I have been to Mount Matlock together. The last time that we were there, we saw an alpine dingo. Now this was pretty cool and interesting to see. At 1st we thought it was a kelpie. It was on the track in front of us and as we kept driving forward, it would stop and turn back, run ahead, then stop and turn back. We thought that maybe it was someone's dog, maybe we're going to find someone injured or maybe it was lost. But then when we got to the top of the hill, right at the very top where there's a fire tower and a trig point, it disappeared. We saw it come out every now and again, kind of skulking in the bushes, I guess, looking for a bit of food and doing some Googling. It's an alpine dingo. Unfortunately, no dingoes at this time, we got to the top. Now, for those of you who know their land cruises, we had a 80 series, 79 series, a 100 series, and a 200 series, all in white. We parked them all up and got a picture of the white land cruiser club right at the top of the hill. And then we decided to drive down the other side and actually head to the Woods Point Hotel just to have a drink. Now we've never been there for a meal. We've only just been there to have drinks on occasions if we're passing through. It's a really nice pub. They've got a beer garden out the back with a heap of pitnip benches, kid friendly, good if you've got big groups, you can see all groups of cars driving through there as people go about on their four-wheel drive trips. At the other end of the street in Woods point, which is pretty much just one street. There's a very small general store and then just past that is the Bowser from the old Woods point, I guess, service station. It's quite a famous spot for people to stop and get pictures of their cars. We'd done that a few times. Once we had had our drink, we grabbed a bottle of the tear us gully pour, if you know what, you know, and we decided to have bet camp. We made some dinner, had some drinks. The kids also had a turn at toasting, some marshmallows. Then once they were in bed, we enjoyed just sitting around the fire and catching up with our friends. Once again, it was a very cold nights. We were grateful to have the fire going. That morning, it was very similar to the previous morning. Really cold, lots of frost on everything. And we got the fire going again, nice and early. Now, one thing that we took on this trip, and we're going to start taking it on more trips, is our little HP Sprocket printer. Now, this is an inkless printer. I don't know how it prints. just magic basically. And you connect it to your phone via Bluetooth and it prints off little Polaroid size pictures. And so we took a hoop of pictures with the kids on the weekend, printed them all out, and then they have a little adventure journal that they stick them in, and then they basically just pick like what was their favourite point of the weekend, which is usually, you know, eating marshmallows or throwing a rock in the river. Yeah, it's really good. I think it only cost like a couple $100 new. The paper is expensive, granted, but it's something fun to do, particularly in this day and age where everything is digital. It's nice to print something out and stick it onto some paper. So if you're someone who likes to travel a lot, even if you don't have kids, it's just something that you want to have for yourself. It's a really good thing to get, especially with Christmas coming. I also think Kmart do their own version of this. I can't say how good it is. Our HP one, and they have all different types of sizes and ones which can do all different things, whether you want it to be just standard photos, the ones that we've got stickyback photos, These little printers would make a really good Christmas present. If someone you know loves travelling, they're actually quite small as well, they're probably a little bit thicker than an iPhone, a bit shorter and a bit wider. The one that we have, which is the HP sprocket, comes in a little bag, has a pocket in it for the printer paper, and then an area where you can put the cable to charge it up. As I said, there's heaps of different brands that do them, so that's something that's worth checking out. We got ourselves all packed up as we had to head back home. One thing that was really great was the sun came out and managed to dry off the awning before we wound it back in, which, if you know, you know, if you have canvas in any way, shape or form and your setup. Getting it dry before you have to leave is so good. That was the end of our time at Pin Point Reserve. We love this area. Other places which are nice to visit as well. Our places like Jameson. There is heaps of four-wheel driving to do in the area, depending on your experience. There's all different tracks with different ranges of difficulty, nice towns, nice walks, beautiful river. It's fortunate to be one of those places which is really beautiful all year round. We were there in the middle of winter and it was absolutely beautiful. I guess just in summer, you have to expect that it will be really busy. If you are heading to one of those free camps. You want to try and get a good spot. My tip would be to try and arrive maybe on Thursday or Friday morning so that you beat the weekend crowd. As I said before, if you want to see any footage of this trip, please feel free to find us on YouTube, Shire Travels. We also have Instagram, Shire Travels, but in all honesty, it's very difficult to find the motivation to update it. I thought it was just me, but actually I've been watching a fair bit of YouTube and other people saying that compared to YouTube where you might spend hours or days, editing a video to upload it, trying to find the motivation to put something out on Instagram is just really difficult. It is a bit of a drag. So sorry if you do find us on Instagram and think they're not very active. I am going to try and make it a bit of a goal next year to be more active on it. Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next one.