Hiking in Qld Australia

Why do people like to go hiking? Carry a rucksack and a long drive to get to the mountains, then an even longer exhausting walk just to look down from the top? Cannot be! Too much! I have told people about my hiking experiences in Germany and Norway, South Africa, New Zealand and finally in Queensland Australia, where some majestic and hardly known mountains exist, the names of which some people in Brisbane or at the Gold Coast have never heard of!

Mount Maroon? No idea, never heard this name! Beaudesert? Where in Queensland is that? Never heard this name! And why go there? What do you do there? There is nothing to do or see at all …

Hmmmm, of course I do not want everybody to go there and check the trails out, however today I wish to write about one of the most exhausting hikes I have ever done! One of the most challenging hiking experiences of my entire life!

I am not a very experienced and well trained hiker, however throughout my life I went hiking again and again, mostly because I had the time and felt like doing so. When in New Zealand for nearly 5 months in 1994 — not working at all, just camping and looking around the North and the South Island of NZ with my first wife and my two children, aged 15 and 16, who should have been in school then, as they did not have any school holidays for so long, we did a lot of hiking, because this is what you do in the beautiful places and National Parks of New Zealand. I will come to these experiences in another article.

My Brisbane based friend Marcel is a very experienced climber and hiker, and when he suggested to climb Mount Maroon at the QLD and NSW border, I got most excited! I could not imagine from my city life in Brisbane, that during a one day drive and hike we would be back on the same day at home. So of couse I agreed, and we arranged to start the day around 4 am to drive there and then do the hike, back in the evening to finish the day with a good bottle of Red near the University of Brisbane UQ.

We arrived after a two hour drive from Brissie and reached the car park at Mount Maroon around 6 am, early enough to see His Majesty in the mornig sun, surrounded by fog. A view I will never forget …I felt like saying good morning to GOD himself.