Governor’s Chair / Mt Matheson

By Joe Elmore

We left Neuman roadhouse about 8am for a leisurely day in the mountains around Cunningham’s Gap. There were 12 vehicles from the Caboolture 4wd club and 13 from our club. It was good to see so many new members to our club on this trip.

After a quite drive up the Cunningham Highway to Aratula we turned left to travel up to the Governor’s Chair at the foot of Spicers Peak. The sheer drop and magnificent views are amazing.

This area is full of history and everywhere we went there was something to read to help the traveller to understand how significant this area is and how the men and women pioneers endured all sorts of hardships during the building of the road through from the sea ports to the downs. We returned to the Pioneers Picnic area for morning tea after stopping a Moss’s Well. Edward Moss was believed to be the first road contractor and this well was the only water for travellers and their teams traveling west.

After morning tea we traveled back to the Cunningham Highway and headed up to road into the western side of the range.

From the very start it was obvious that a 25 vehicle convoy would take some managing. We all just fitted into the car park at the Governor’s Chair and over flowed at the morning tea stop. The gate on Spicer’s Gap road is back from the main road and hidden from approaching traffic by a mound of dirt, the road between the highway and the gate is only about 20 metres long, flat out fitting 5 vehicles in, and the speed limit on the highway is 100kph, so we stopped at the service station just over the Gap, to regroup. Allan came with me in the first group and stayed on the highway so everyone could get the turn right. Second car in the convoy stayed at the gate, and Marty and Mario let the other vehicles out of the servo in groups of five. It worked everyone got in the gate without incident.

The track in had dried out considerably since we had done the recce so mud and water weren’t an issue. There is a couple of short but tricky down hills, going in, that surprised a few people. The radio chatter was quite interesting.

After about an hour we arrived at the clearing for our lunch break. There are two tracks down to the creek, again a short trip. One track is tricky at the top of the slope and has a deep rut in it. Two of the Caboolture crew had a go with only one succeeding, Nissan of course (see pictures).

From the clearing it is about 1.5km to the top car park at Mt Matheson. Again the car park can only fit 6-8 cars so with a bit of car pooling the first group went up. I think we had a few more than 6 but with a little creative parking we a managed to fit in. It was decided to walk the 1.6 k’s to the Governor’s Chair. This was a first for a lot of us and there was interesting little boards that old us about the road making techniques, and the drainage used when building this road.

I we returned to the clearing to find some had already headed off, so the rest of us said our goodbyes and headed out to the highway and home.

I would like to thank everyone who come along on this trip. Marty & Allan for their help on the day and Mario for his help with the recce and for everything he did on the trip.