Comments by "Andy Dee" (@AndyViant) on "American Blown Away By BEST National Parks in Queensland, Australia" video.

  1. It was just on -5 Celsius (23 Fahrenheit) at Girraween less than 2 weeks ago (9th May) and it's not even winter yet. Winter in Australia is from 1st June to 31st August. I've been down in that part of the world when it was -7.7 degrees (18 Fahrenheit) on a motorcycle and it was cold enough that I nearly crashed due to not being able to move my hands to use the brake. Queensland really does have it all, as you'd expect from over 1,800,000 square kilometres (700,000 square miles). Even snow, occasionally.
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  2. National park access is free, but overnight camping is paid. The money goes to maintenance of the facilities. Most parks have camping areas with toilets, barbecue areas, and many have showers as well. Popular parks such as Girraween have multiple shower and toilet blocks, wheelchair accessible toilets and showers, barbecue equipment at many of the campsites, well maintained trails, and pads for caravans to be parked on. Standard fees are $7 per person per night or $28 per night for a family.
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  3. Crazy thing is that you're probably still talking 18 or more degrees water temperature now in May (over 64 fahrenheit) and that's too cold for most of us to take a swim, so the beaches are basically empty except for surfers and bushwalkers. It's 21 degrees here right now (70 fahrenheit), we're 2 weeks away from winter and I'm freezing my butt off. For most of the world that would be high summer temperatures and beach weather, but not for coastal Queensland.
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  4. 17:24 Just came back from there that was the "big trip" for this year with my NP300 Navara. 7pm at night it was still 42 Celsius (107 Fahrenheit) and in the middle of the day out on the salt flats were way over 50 Celsius (over 125 Fahrenheit). I don't know exactly how accurate my thermometer is but we recorded 55 Celsius (131 Fahrenheit) whilst my mate was stuck in the middle of one of the salt lakes out there. We were the first people to legally cross the Simpson from East to West from Birdsville to Poeppel Corner for the season, setting out at 4am on the first day of the season opening (track is closed for summer due to extreme heat and risk to life). We waited for sunrise before tackling the first sand dune. Magnificent place.
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