My first ever camping trip at Lake Moogerah

Ok, so I am ashamed to admit it but I have never actually been camping! I know! Its disgraceful! Living in Australia where its almost a rite of passage to go camping but I just never thought I would like it. I mean, why would you sleep on the ground, get eaten by mosquitos, share public facilities or worse yet, have to use a pit toilet? But I was asked recently to be a first time camper for Queensland Tourism and go camping with 3 guys I had never met. Of course I jumped at the chance and then thought, wait, that doesn’t sound crazy at all! haha.

So Matt came to pick me  up at 12pm and we realised that his car was going to be way too small to take all of the gear that we had so we jumped in my car with our gear headed over to Andrew’s place to pick him up and his gear and hit the road after a pit stop to get some food and supplies. Lake Moogerah is about 1.5 hours south west of Brisbane. We all got to know each other on the trip out there while Andrew did some filming on his Go Pro. We met up with Tony at Aratula and had some lunch at the bakery before heading to the Lake.

Once at the Lake we got into setting up our tents which I must say was pretty quick and easy. It only took us about 10 minutes. Mine is the little green one in the picture above. It was cosy that for sure!

After our campsite was done we headed to the other end of the Lake for sunset which was a bit of a moody one with the thick cloud in the sky.

After the sun went down we headed over to the picnic area at the dam and cooked a BBQ for dinner then headed down to the water to photograph the Milky Way. Luckily the cloud had cleared for a bit so that we could get some shots in.

Heres a little time-lapse of the Milky Way as the clouds were moving around!

After we had all done some Milky Way shots the sky was starting to cloud over again so Tony and Matt got the steel wool out to do some steel wool spinning. We headed down the steep hill back to the water and as I was walking down my feet went from under me and I landed on my bum and went sliding down the hill. It was pretty funny! If you can’t laugh at yourself then who will?!

After Tony got burned on the head we thought we would go back to our campsite and light our fire and relax for a bit! I was very impressed with the boys fire lighting skills. (Tip for newbie campers: firestarters come in very handy 😉

The moon that was rising that night was creating an awesome purple clouded sky so of course we sat back and enjoyed it while taking some photos of it of course!

By this time it was almost midnight and we all had to get up early for sunrise so we hit the hay and got a few zzz’s in our little tents. It was so nice to wake up just before sunrise and stroll down the lake to photograph it rather than getting up at 4am to drive an hour to somewhere interesting!

After sunrise we had a BBQ breakfast of bacon and eggs and then went for a bit of a bush walk near the dam.

After our bush walk we went back to the caravan park and hired some kayaks and went for a paddle around the lake. Well Tony did most of the paddling! 🙂

After some kayaking we headed back to our campsite to pack up our tents and head home. It literally took us 15 minutes to pack everything up. So all in all, I had a really fun time for my first ever camping trip at Lake Moogerah and look forward to the next one. The only thing I would change would be finding something a bit comfier to sleep on.

The facilities at Lake Moogerah caravan park are really good. There are showers and toilets, electric BBQ’s and fire pits. So as a newbie to the camping world it really wasn’t like I was roughing it at all. A great spot to try it out for the first time!

Are you a regular camper? Do you have any tips for a newbie like me? I would love to know, so leave a comment below!