The Steamers are a series of volcanic plugs/out croppings in a remote and rugged section of the Main Range National Park in SEQ. They are so named for their vague resemblance to a steam ship. At the western end, or the front, is the Prow, next is the Funnel, the Mast and finally the Stern. It is a really impressive collection of, well, rocks!

Andy and I have been wanting to reach the top for quite a while. I think somewhere between 18 months to 2 years. And, if you don't follow my YouTube channel, this was our third attempt. If you follow my YouTube channel you will already know what happened in the past. For those who don't, let me quickly recap.

So our first attempt was a non event before it even began. We were a bit gun-ho and headed out in the warmer months. There were bush fires around, we met an old guy who said there'd been a fire along the prow the previous night and *strongly* advised us not to continue on. We heeded his advice and camped at Lake Moogerah the night. We still had a great time, but no Steamers.

Attempt number two was a few months ago. We headed back out with good weather. No fires. But we ended up at the wrong car park on the wrong side of the steamers. Instead of parking on the western side, we parked on the southern side. We tried furiously to scramble through very difficult terrain. We got to the base of the Prow, but could not get to a foot pad to carry on. I fell and injured my arm, and in the end we called it and went home.

We learnt from our mistakes. So this time we were better prepared. We researched the correct place to start from, researched the trail, and I even purchased a hand held GPS to aid with navigation. We felt ready. So, on Saturday August 1st, 2020, Andy, Matt and myself left my house at roughly 0815 and went to pick up Robin. We grabbed a coffee near Robin’s place and hit the road.
After stopping at the Shell in Aratula for one of their world famous* potato scallops we carried on.
We initially (me) missed a turn off and lost a bit of time, but eventually we got to the correct car park to begin our trek.

Now the whole idea was to camp at the top of the Stern. We began our hike at the car park and followed a fire trail of sorts for a time. We crossed the small creek and hit the off track section up to the Prow. For the first part of this initial off track walk the gradient wasn’t too scary. we were going up, but not too rapidly.
We knew that the steep part was coming though, and we were not (or maybe we were??) disappointed.
It was steep. Really steep. And a bit slippery. Here is where things went slightly awry.
Out of the blue I got quite dizzy, quite suddenly. I actually passed out. Unconscious, blacked out. For somewhere fully between 30 seconds and a minute. I am not 100% sure why. We were exerting ourselves a lot, blood sugar probably low, and we also think that I took my pack off and stood up too quickly and passed out due to a blood rush. I fell forwards down the hill a bit, but luckily there was no serious injury at all. What seems to be a sprained finger as well as some bark off. I had some sugar, some water and a little rest and we powered on.

As something like this is really a team effort, Robin and Andy were good enough to get my pack up the next section of scrambling while I scrambled up without the weight to recover a little.
With little more than my dignity injured, we pressed on.

Looking towards the setting sun through the beauty of a recovering forest

From here it was relatively smooth sailing. For a while.
We had a defined track at the base of the mountain. It was relatively flat. We checked the navi every so often and kept going. But apparently we didn’t check the navi often enough…. Our next mishap befell us when we missed the turn to head along to the funnel. We ended up half way around the other side of the Prow before we realised. It was a bit tougher going with no defined trail, which is how we realised we were heading the wrong way. Checked navi for confirmation and turned around. Now this would have been easily avoidable had we used the navi even more regularly. Where the trail branches off there are some rugged rocks, but after those the path is clear. We just missed it in our determination to carry on.
After we back tracked and found the right path it was, once again, relatively easy for a while. We had a fairly flat walk for a bit to help recover and then we started going up as we came to the Mast. This bit was quite steep, but still well defined. We continued up as we approached the Stern.

We'd gained most of our elevation by now and had just once last REALLY steep scramble to do. It was steep, slippery and slow going. But there were a reasonable amount of foot and hand holds to help. we got up the top into the quite sparse (due to fire damage) forest on top of the stern and high tailed it along towards our potential campsite and the look out. It had taken longer than expected, so we were cutting it really fine for sunset. And really, sunset is the reason for going up the Steamers. The Stern lookout looks to the west with the other three formations visible lined up with the sun setting behind. That’s THE money shot.

We all ditched our packs at a tree along the path, Andy and I grabbed our tripods and cameras and headed to the look out as quickly as possible.
IT WAS WORTH EVERYTHING. This 100% has to be the best view in Queensland**. Looking out across the Steamers with more of the Main Range in the distance as the sun sets is really something else. The light was nice, although we didn't have any high clouds to catch any colour. But, hey, you can't change the conditions. It was still sensational. After Andy and I had a grabbed a few images we headed back towards our packs.

The best view in Queensland?? This was our prize!! It was worth it.

Now, I just want to mention the look out. It is quite precarious getting out there. If you are afraid of heights, then it is probably not for you. Take it slow, and be very wary of your surroundings. There is potential for some really easy falls.

Ok, back to us. We grabbed our packs and walked back a couple of hundred metres to a fairly clear area that had evidence of being camped at before. We all set up our tents in darkness and set in for the night. We all cooked our dinners using small gas stoves, we had a drink or two, talked some rubbish and got ready for bed.

I took a few pics of my tent before I went to bed, as one does, and then got comfortable. The night was quite cold, but probably not so bad as we were expecting. I had a sleeping bag liner, a -2 Celsius rated bag and an emergency blanket under my bag, as well as wearing full length merino thermals. I woke up at roughly 1230 sweating, but then by 0300 it was much cooler. I was still comfortable all night.

Andy and I arose at just after 0500 to head back out to the lookout for sunrise. The hope was to get some nice soft light falling on the Steamers as the sun rose. There was quite a lot of heavy cloud out to the east over the Pacific Ocean (as there often is in the morning), so the light didn't hit the formations as early as we'd hoped, and it wasn't quite as soft or pink, but it was still lovely to be there for sunrise.

We actually met a couple of other guys who also camped the night up there. So we made some new friends! After this we headed back to camp, made some breakfast and coffees and started packing down. The trek down was somewhat nicer. Firstly, we were heading downhill, and that's always easier. Also we were all carrying noticeably less weight due to consuming food and water. And knowing where we had to go helped. We had no mishaps on the way down and got back to the Adventure Rig at roughly 1230. From here we headed to the Yangan Hotel for a well earned beer and lunch, and then headed home.

If you've stuck with me through this blog, thank you. I had originally planned on making a video for YouTube of this hike and camp out, but in the I didn’t simply because it was so intense. But we are planning to head back again soonish, hopefully for some astro photography, and if we're lucky, some high clouds at sunset. After having successfully completed it now I feel like it will be much easier to make a video next time.

Here are some photos from our expedition. Please enjoy.
Nathan

* The potato scallops may or may not actually be world famous
** I haven’t seen every view in Queensland….

Camping at The Steamers