Helping at Lake Gkula Camping A Creative Easter Adventure
During the past school holidays, I was lucky enough to be invited by a creative friend to help out with workshops at the beautiful Lake Gkula Camping at Woodfordia — the home of the famous Woodford Folk Festival — on Jinibara land in the Moreton Bay hinterland region.
Lake Gkula Camping is open during the September and Easter Queensland school holidays, and it’s truly a hidden gem. The bushland site is stunning, with fantastic facilities, and a highlight is swimming in Lake Gkula — a huge, man-made, naturally filtered swimming lake.
Early morning swims were the best — the water was clearest then, and you could spot loads of fish, the occasional turtle, and even (if you were lucky) one of the resident lungfish! There's even a sunken boat with a skeleton resting at the bottom of the deepest part — a little bit spooky and a lot of fun to dive for!
Lake Gkula Camping is like a camping holiday with a Woodford Folk Festival twist.
There’s morning yoga by the lake, creative workshops throughout the day, live music, campfires each evening, and a general store café and bar for food and drinks.
I was invited as a volunteer to help run creative workshops. Over the two weeks of the Easter holidays, we hosted a variety of crafty sessions and family activities:
Scrapbooking Workshop
Attendees created a collaged scrapbook page featuring a polaroid photo taken at the start of the workshop — such a lovely keepsake of their holiday!
Visible Mending Workshop
We taught patching, stitching, and embellishing techniques using salvaged fabrics and simple embroidery stitches. It was all about creatively repairing beloved clothes and keeping them out of landfill.
(The photo on the left shows my own jacket, which I finally repaired after seven years — thanks to a hole made by Dipper when he was a mischievous puppy!)
Family Activities
We also ran some super fun family activities, like a scavenger hunt (sadly I forgot to take photos!) and family games: sack races, obstacle courses, skipping relays, egg and spoon races, and some fiercely competitive parents’ races. It was so much fun seeing families laughing and joining in together!
A huge thank you to Carol and Johanna for inviting me into their creative world at Lake Gkula. It was so much fun to work with them! You can check out their beautiful work below…..
I’m already counting down the days until the September school holidays — can’t wait to return for more lakeside creativity and fun!