Our Travel Blog

We left Townsville this morning after a (mostly) pleasant stay! We were only traveling a short distance today up to Cardwell about 200km North.

Lyn has just about fully recovered now, with the exception of her multi coloured eye. We chose a short trip today as there were a couple of places we wanted to go to before heading to Cairns, and we are both enjoying the more relaxing mode of getting into the hotel mid afternoon rather than  early evening. Before we left Townsvile we saw what appeared to be large ocean kayaks.

First order of business after checking out was to find a craft store that we missed the other day. Google listed two stores with the same name. One was a new store the other has been sold, we went to the old one the other day. Today we found the new one. Once the store had been given a thorough going over we headed out on The Bruce in search of some water falls.

We didn’t hold out too much hope as every creek and river we had passed had been bone dry, but after an exciting drive off the The Bruce up a steep twisty road we found them. The parking lot was quite full but we didn’t see any people. That changed as we headed down to the water.

After spending some time people and water watching we hit the road again in search of lunch. Horror of horrors, Australia closes down on a Sunday. All our usual sources of food, e.g. bakery, pie-shops, cafes were closed. We finished up at MacDonald’s, or Maccas as they are called over here. The Australians love to shorten many of the longer words. Truck Driver = Truckie, Registration = Reggo etc.

After our 5 star lunch we headed back up The Bruce which was now closer to the coast after being inland for a while. Our next stop was a couple of lookouts giving views across some wetlands to Hichingbroke Island.

Unfortunately the last few days have been quite hazy, so the pictures are not too clear.

We also took a back road through some replanted forests before heading to the hotel in Cardwell, yet gain a nice ocean view from our room.

 

We had a couple of small world episodes today; earlier in the afternoon we passed the “peace car” we saw up on castle hill in Townsville. Tonight at the restaurant we met a young Dutch couple who were on the same boat as us going across to Magnetic Island. The guy was memorable because he was sitting on the open deck when the wind and waves conspired to give him a good drenching!

We’ve got as far as 18 degrees south of the equator so far, tomorrow its further north to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef. Hopefully the wind and wave action dies down so that the water will be clear and calm.

Despite been deprived of wine last night (doctors orders, Barry’s enforcement), Lyn continued to improve and woke up as expected this morning. The most noticeable difference in her appearance being that the bruising from her forehead has dropped down to her eyelid and socket. She has a real shiner, but for some reason doesn’t want the photo published!!

Lyn was happy enough to go exploring today so we headed off, not back to Magnetic Island, but to the local aquarium which had some wonderful live coral and sea life exhibits. Again the pictures can do the talking.

The aquarium was excellent, a majority of the fish were in a VERY large central tank probably 25ft deep. Well worth the visit.

Lyn was still fine and up for more exploring so we headed up Castle Hill, at the top was a look out with an old WWII fort, complete with graffiti.

This is the hill looking up from our hotel parking lot

This is the hotel from Castle Hill, its the tall white building just to the left of the escarpment.

This “60’s painted” car was more likely a more modern rendition referring to Brexit? Its slogan down the side is “Anarchy in the UK”

We saw this fruit tree in the area, we suspect it is a Pomelo. Anyone agree or disagree?

Buy nw the heat was building so we headed down to the town, I wanted to get a couple of things from my new favourite store Jaycar, an Electronics store of the type that is now hard to find in N. America with the possible exception of Fry’s in the US.

I went in to buy a small buzzer to fit in the MGB as a warning that I have left the lights on, and a suction holder for the cell phone, to use in the car (more on that shortly). I walked out with buzzer and a “GoPro” type camera! After leaving the aquarium I really thought I needed to be prepared for our snorkeling trip on the Great Barrier reef. Originally I planned on buying a throw away, waterproof film camera. Why buy one of those when for only 10 times the price you can buy a digital one!!!! When I got back to the car Lyn reminded me of my original objective, the phone holder!

I didn’t have the official Garmin Oz maps in the car GPS, instead I had downloaded some open source maps. The maps are fine as you drive along, but are sorely lacking when you put in a destination address. 90% of the addresses input result in no address found message, even though the GPS has auto completed the address when it has been partially input. This got to be highly frustrating, so one day I said “OK Google navigate to 75 The Strand”, Google politely replied “OK, I’ve found that” and proceeded to guide me there. So far Google has only let us down once, sort of, we navigated to a town not an address and we were taken to the town limit sign rather than the town centre. The speech recognition is fantastic. Bye bye Garmin!

Next stop was a belated lunch, which unfortunately was in a shopping centre. After lunch, the credit card was in for a further beating. Lyn had lost her watch in the accident, so that was replaced. A handbag and dress found their way onto the shopping list as did 1.5Kg of CDM (that’s just a start for the CDM!). We also found a few presents to take back as well.

Over the last 24 hours I’ve been busy doing paperwork for the insurance companies. I was surprised how cheap some of the medical costs were, particularly for a private hospital, e.g. 3 CAT scans for a total of ~$1000 and admission, assessment, diagnosis and a 4 hour stay for for observation ~$400. It appears that my retirement insurance package should cover it all at 100%. Our only real outlay was ~ $400 for repairs to the scooter, the credit card doesn’t cover vehicles with less than 4 wheels. No problem it will be taken out of Lyn’s pocket money!

I am running out of titles. Up at the usual time, after breakfast we headed off to the ferry terminal to take the boat across to Magnetic Island. There are numerous walks on the island, including one to a series of WWII forts which also goes through Koala country.

The trip across was interesting with plenty of wind and waves to throw the boat around… perfect!!

At the Magnetic Island terminal we caught a bus to the scooter rental store. All formalities complete we headed off on our high power 50cc scooters. Our first stop was the local beach.

From the beach we headed up towards the forts, I was leading and we had a couple of twisty turny hills which would be great in the MGB! I checked my mirror and Lyn had disappeared. I turned and went back along the road, and there in the leaves on the side of the road were a couple of guys and Lyn! It seems that either she or the bike did not want to take the same corner as the road did. It seems when she went off the road she departed the bike and slid through piles of soft leaves until being stopped by a large rock.

Anyway she seemed OK other than being a bit shaken up and a couple of small grazes. Of course she had to choose a spot right in front of the local open air tavern to come off the bike, so she had a good audience. One of the guys with her was an off duty paramedic so he took charge, we got her back across the road into a seat and gave her some iced water. The paramedic asked her a few questions, and it became obvious there was an issue. She had no recollection of anything for some time previous to the crash including where we were (Oz). This was a little worrying at this stage. An ambulance arrived, and a few minutes later in a blaze of lights and sirens the fire truck arrived. Queensland law requires the fire services to attend road traffic accidents.

There was no hospital on the island, so I followed the ambulance to the local clinic. Here the Dr gave her a thorough check up and was pretty sure there was no physical damage and that there was no indication of a pre accident medical event that could have caused the crash.He wasn’t too happy with the golf ball size lump on her forehead, which we think may have been caused by movement of the crash helmet when she hit the rock. He wanted to send her back to the mainland for a CT scan to make sure all was well.

Well we couldn’t just jump on the boat and go to the hospital, an ambulance crew had to come over from Townsville, complete with mobile gurney to take her back. By the time they arrived, 95% of memory had returned,Lyn was feeling much better and the swelling had subsided. As the sea was still quite rough it was decided to use a wheel chair to and from the ferry and use a normal seat on board as lying on the gurney could be a little risky with the boat moving about.  

At Townsville we went to the hospital and Lyn was assessed again, then sent for a CT scan of head, chest and neck. Head for bleeding, neck for broken and chest for any squished up organs (Doctors words not mine). Anyway all was well when the results came back.

The Dr. offered her an overnight stay, but no one really thought it was needed as her progress was great, so we headed back to the hotel. As we hadn’t eaten for 12 hours it was carryout pizza and CDM (chocolate) for the evening meal

Lyn is now fast asleep after the adrenaline rush wore off, but apart from a little soreness from the bumps and bruises all looks good.

Hopefully she won’t be too sore tomorrow. The emergency services here were fantastic, very caring, friendly, professional and nicely sarcastic at the same time!! I may change my  mind when we get the bill!!

P.S. Lyn knows I have posted the pictures of her and has no problem with that … just saying!!!

Body clock back to correct timing! This morning we headed out of the motel to the local landmark, The Big Mango! As expected there are many mangrove orchards around the area.

As an added bonus there was a geocache in the area, this time we managed to find it.

We then headed towards the town centre and stopped off at the local airfield where they had a diorama featuring the RAAF Catalina PBY-5A seaplane. Unfortunately there were no full size aircraft there. As we left the airfield we passed a large salt reclamation plant. As there is so little rain here, salt water in ponds evaporates at a greater rate than the rainfall. There are a number of ponds where salt water is pumped to and left to evaporate, the resulting salt is then skimmed off and left in large heaps for up to a year to allow what little rain there is to purify the salt further.

Our next stop was a lookout point known as Flagstaff Lookout, there was an information centre and indoor viewing area, but it got damaged by a cyclone (southern hemisphere version of a hurricane) last year and has yet to be repaired. Below are some views from the lookout.

On our way down from the lookout we stopped at Kings Bay, but decided against walking on the beach as it was getting a little too hot!

From there we headed into town which has a number of murals on its buildings.

As well as the numerous murals there were a couple of interesting looking buildings in town

We also spotted this MGB

From Bowen we headed up the coast towards Ayr for our lunch stop (note no snacks this morning). After my traditional pie for lunch we continued north to Townsville, our first large city for a few days, it has a population of 178,000 which is 50,000 more than Darwin.

We’ll be staying here for 3 nights so decided to splurge out a bit on accommodation. We have a combination condo apartment / motel room / hotel room on the 3rd floor. Not sure how to describe it, but it great and has all the amenities we need.

We had a rain shower move in from the ocean which gave us a rainbow, and an Ocean kayak-er a good reason to head to shore!

Now it’s time for a beer, I chose it for the name, no idea what it will taste like!

Our body clocks are losing reliability, we were 10 minutes late getting up, luckily not a big deal as we had nothing planned before 10AM. After breakfast we hung around in the somewhat neglected room catching up with minor things like bank accounts, credit card payments and most importantly making sure our snow removal service got their payment in time.

At the appointed hour we headed down to the marina to pick up our boat for the Whitsunday Islands. We encountered a small issue in that there were more cars than available parking spaces, luckily there was another car park we could use in an adjoining resort.

We checked in at the marina and as “grey nomads” we received a care package. Grey nomads are the equivalent of N. American Snowbirds i.e. old fogeys like us who tend to follow the warmth. We got a cloth tote bag and two oversize cookies! On board the boat was free tea and coffee, what more could we want. Looking out the window we saw some nice looking boats which I joked were the type we were going on.

As it turned out our boat was at the end of the dock, behind all the pillars, but similar to the one in the foreground.

A few pictures of the trip and the islands.

Just to make sure we behaved they sent two police officers along.

The boat was heading towards Hamilton Island where there is a six star resort and lots of rich people with houses and boats! For some odd reason, the local airport is located on the island and not the mainland.

It appears as though no private cars are allowed on the island, although there are mini tour buses and taxis. The islanders rely on golf carts

On the way across one of the crew said he’d come and give the four of us grey nomads who were aboard a personal commentary on what we were seeing. Unfortunately, ships business prevented him from doing so. On the way back, to make up for this we were all invited to the wheelhouse and had a great time talking to the captain, who also happens to be the owner of a 1963 Morris Minor! We were allowed to stay up there until after we docked. The only thing missing from the wheelhouse was the wheel. The ship could be controlled from a small lever built into the armrest of the captains chair. A couple of times previously, when we were docking I mentioned to Lyn how easy it was to maneuver these boats with their bow and side thrusters, and how difficult it would be without them. Well this boat had no such thrusters, all the maneuvering was done using differential thrust on the two engines. VERY impressive.

The boat above was a larger version of ours with twin V-10 engines giving 1500 HP and a cruising speed of 28 knots.

All in all we found the trip we wanted, and a friendly crew as well. Of course the question that hasn’t been answered is where did the islands get their name?

The Whitsunday Islands, more commonly known as ‘The Whitsundays’ is an island chain off the east coast of Queensland, Australia.

The Whitsunday Islands gained their notoriety and name in the late 1700s when Captain James Cook first sailed through the island chain on board Endeavour, a British Royal Navy Research vessel. Making his way up the coast after sailing around New Zealand he was charting the coastline and ‘discovering’ Australia for the rest of the world. After entering a large island chain, he came upon a unimpeded passage to the North, his direction of choice. While sailing through the then unnamed passage Captain Cook (who was Lieutenant at the time) proclaimed it ‘Whitsunday Passage,’ which it is still known as today. At the time, Captain Cook believed it to be Whit Sunday, a christian holiday that takes place 7 weeks after Easter. What the Captain didn’t know was that it was actually Whit Monday on the day they sailed through since the Endeavour had passed the international date line at the 180th meridian of longitude. And so the Whitsundays were discovered on a Whit Monday!

Once ashore we headed up a cliff road to look down over Airlie Beach.

In our quest not to cram too much into each day we decided to stop overnight in Bowen, about an hour up the road rather than drive up to Townsville about 3 hours away.

On the way we diverted off The Bruce to visit Cedar Creek falls, unfortunately someone had turned off the falls.

We resisted the urge to stay at the Bowen Arrow motel (think about it!) and headed for the Ocean View Motel instead.

We headed into Bowen for dinner but found little that appealed (Pizza Hut, MacDonald’s, Dominoes and a few other fast food joints) then Lyn spotted a hotel, so we tried that. We had a good meal sitting in an outside courtyard.

Woke up on time again, although last night was quite noisy with all the wild life around. We didn’t see any more wild life overnight, but there were some new “deposits” on the front lawn to show that there was some activity! Lyn saw some movement as we were having breakfast, she had spotted a kangaroo this time, its size was much larger than the wallabies of last night.

After breakfast we took a walk down the road in search of a geocache, yet again it defeated us, although I was a little leery of delving too far into the bush out here! As we were packing up Lyn spotted a bright yellow breasted humming beard hovering in front of an outdoor mirror admiring itself.

Today’s trip was to a gorge in Eungella National Park to see some waterfalls. We arrived at the park after fording a couple of creeks.

We then went to the Cafe for some refreshment. Lyn had a mango smoothie which was excellent, and I assume made from the locally frown mangoes. Sitting above us was a brush tail possum.

Suitably refreshed we headed off to the falls. In the parking lot we spotted Australia’s national bird the kookaburra.

We started up the trail and were soon surrounded by lush vegetation of the rain forest.

 

We reached the falls and the pool somewhat more breathless than when we started, the water looked inviting but we hadn’t brought our “swimmers”, others had and were jumping off the rocks.

Apart from the dragon fly there were some stunning iridescent blue butterflies fluttering around, but they wouldn’t settle long enough to be photographed. 

Once we made it back to the car (today was a cooler 35C / 95F day, but the humidity had risen) we headed off for our first zip lining experience. We found the entrance, but no signs of life. We walked around a bit and saw some lines coming through the forest, there didn’t seem to be much clearway between the line and the foliage and my first thought was, this is going to hurt. After a few minutes we decided that this was probably an old attraction that had closed down, so we made our way back to the car. Just as we arrived a woman called out to us, apparently she was the owner/operator and chief dogsbody’s wife. Evidently Tom (assumed husband) had a headache and was not operating the ride today. After what we had seen I wasn’t about to offer him any aspirin.

Next order of business was fuel for the car and fuel with us. Fuel stations can be a long distance apart here and I am trying to ensure the tank is kept above half full, by this stage is was a little below half. Fuel here is expensive, around $1.60 Aus / liter ($1.50 Cdn or  $4.30US / gal).

With stomachs and fuel tank satisfied we headed off to Airlie Beach. On the way we finally found a “cane train” operating on the narrow gauge railway. It had one engine at the front and two power cars at the back.

Airlie Beach is a haven foryoung backpackers, but we wanted to go and see it and also book a local cruise from here. Trying to find a cruise that doesn’t charge an arm and a leg to take you out to an island, dump you there for a few hours so that you can play ball, walk along the beach or drink yourself silly was a hard task, but one that Lyn was victorious in. More tomorrow. In the meantime I was trying to find accommodation for the night. We settled for an Ocean View apartment with balcony.

The internal body clock didn’t let us down again today. After a spartan breakfast we packed up the car and headed north. In some respects the distances between places of interest deceived us. 240km at home can often be covered in just over 2 hours, here it is more like 3-3.5 hours given the lower speed limits in places and the 2 lane roads. On the other hand, the scenery is totally different. For us at least, it is a case of it’s not all about the destination, but the journey to get there as well.

Today’s trip was up to Halliday Bay to an Airbnb, in the hope of seeing kangaroos and wallabies. So far all the wild life we have seen in their natural environment are 5 wallabies and 2 snakes, unfortunately all road kill. Hopefully that will change.

About forty five minutes into the journey we noticed a few things had subtly changed. The surprising lush greens had given way to the more parched brown of the hotter climates, signs of civilisation were few and far between. About 80% of the creeks and rivers we crossed were bone dry. Despite the dryness of the land there was no shortage of cattle grazing; Rockhampton prides itself on being the beef centre of Australia.

About another hour and a half north the brown gave way to lush greenness again, there were a number of mountains not too far away and I suspect that they have an influence on the local climate.

Grazing cattle gave way to sugar cane fields, and these fields ruled the landscape for the next couple of hours. Cane harvesting takes place between May and December, and there must be multiple crops as we saw fully grown cane over 8ft tall, small plants about 1ft tall and just about everything in between. The cane industry is so large here they even have there own narrow gauge railway system running through all the fields to collect the harvest. We saw a couple of distilleries that magically transform the cane into rum.

After about five hours, including breaks, we reached our destination. The Airbnb is a nicely furnished cabin about 2 minutes walk from the Pacific and a nice beach. On arrival we were greeted by a wallaby hopping down the road, our first live sighting! Once we had settled in we took a walk along the beach in the hope of seeing more wallabies and some kangaroos but none were to be seen. According to the locals and the tourist books the are best seen at sunrise and sunset. We are hoping for a sunset sighting, otherwise we’ll have to dig out the alarm clock!

After the walk we needed to cool down, so a swim was in order. We headed back to the beach properly attired and hit the water, making sure to remain within the netted off area to keep the nasty beasties away.

As the sun started to set we headed out for a walk to the beach in search of wallabies and kangaroos. We were not disappointed! Almost immediately we spotted a wallaby crossing the road in front of us, followed by more sightings in the field and bushes. We are assuming by their size, about 1 metre, that what we saw were wallabies and not kangaroos.

All in all another “sweet” day.

OK, maybe not quite. We went out to the local restaurant for a meal, closed on Mondays. No problem, off to the General store, they do take-food or we could by something to cook, whoops they close at 7PM and it was 7:24 when we got there. Umm, maybe 2 breakfasts today? Back at the Airbnb we found a frozen meal in the freezer… we’ll try that!

The usual wake-up time and we provided out own breakfast today! It seems most motels provide a kettle, microwave, fridge and toaster which means we can do our own thing and remove the temptation of larger, greasier more “interesting” breakfasts.

Today was planned to be one of our busiest to date. We headed off to a local heritage village. It was a little more modern than expected, based on life around 1875-1915. Again, a picture is worth a thousand words.

A family home:

The school room had some math questions on the board that would challenge any modern kid, e.g. add 3 yds  2 ft 6 in and 1 yd 1 ft 11 in

Outside were a couple more classrooms, and a game chalked on the floor that I hadn’t seen before.

On to the engine shop where there was an assortment of engines to power generators, shearing equipment and a host of other mechanical beasties.

Being a workshop there were a few cartoons around, one caught my eye.

Next to the workshop was the fire hall

There were also some ponies wandering around.

For a Sunday morning the place was deserted, we saw less than 10 visitors. Hopefully that is not typical as it would be a shame to see the place close down. We got a good work out walking around in the 35C heat (it would climb to 40C/104F later in the day!).

Next stop for the day was the Capricorn Caves. We arrived a few minutes after the scheduled tour start time and thought we may have to wait around for the next tour in an hours time. Luckily the tour hadn’t started so off we went. Again, a small crowd of only 7 people.

These caves were different to any others that we had been to in that they were dry. With Queensland’s dry climate, the only time the caves get wet is after the December rains. Again, here come the pictures.

The trees on the surface have roots that go down hundreds of metres through the cave system to find water.

The Caves also have a chapel which is used for weddings, it is also used for an event called Opera in the Caves. While we were sitting here the guide turned off all the lights, there was absolutely no light leaking in …. very eerie.

The caves are  home to some animal life:

Unfortunately we missed yesterdays guest, a large python! Also the caves are home to many thousands of bats. In fact the floor of the caves are solidified bat “poo”! We saw a colony of bats covering 10 Sq. metres of the roof, the “poo” underneath them was NOT solid. Each square metre of the colony will house 1800 bats, they huddle together for warmth. Talking of warmth, the cave was a pleasant 22C! The python was in the cave to replenish his/her food supply, they love bats.

We exited the caves via a very swingy suspension bridge

Our next stop was Mount Archer, a climb of about 1500ft to an elevated walkway and view points. Again, there was just about nobody there. 

Unfortunately it was quite hazy, so the views over Rockhampton didn’t turn out too well

I mentioned yesterday that fires are quite common in wooded areas. Below are some pictures showing the results of these fires, and also the plants ability to recover.

By now we were feeling the effects of the heat, so we decided to head back to the hotel via the tropic of Capricorn. Yesterday I said this was our first time in the tropics, I was wrong. A quick look at an atlas shows most of Cuba and the Caribbean Islands lie in the tropics.

The last picture suffered from sun glare. Tomorrow is another longish haul up the coast to our first Airbnb and hopefully some kangaroos and wallabies on the beach.

It seems that regardless of the time we go to bed, we still get up at our usual time. This morning it was a DIY breakfast courtesy of the motel. The night before, you choose your breakfast items e.g. cereal, juice, bread, jam etc. and they deliver it to your room later that evening. In the morning prepare breakfast using the toaster, microwave etc. and off you go. After breakfast we took a short walk to find a geocache and get some exercise. Not only did we find the geocache, we saw a whale and a family of dingos.

The photos above were taken outside the cultural centre close to where the geo-cache was.  Alas that is probably the closest we will get to seeing any whales this trip.

Today’s journey was just positioning trip with nothing specific to view en-route. Initially we cut a corner and avoided the main highway (appropriately called the Bruce Highway) for a number of miles. This led us through an area of sugar cane farms and homesteads that were very different to the areas we had seen so far. We eventually joined the Bruce Highway and continued on it for the remainder of our 380km trip.

We stopped at Childers for coffee, and being a week end we were entitled to a fresh cream pastry to go with it! (if you have read the NZ blog, you may see the start of a pattern which very quickly turned into the legalising of cream cakes every day!). After coffee I headed off to find a local geo-cache while Lyn gave one of the local dollar stores a visit. I quickly found the cache and went back to join Lyn in the store. I noticed some leather belts on sale for around $3.50 Cdn, we had been looking for a cheap source of belts to strap a wicker picnic hamper on the rear luggage rack of the MGB, these would be perfect. Talking of old British cars:

We saw this old Austin on the street, reminds me little of an A35 at the front.

As we continued along the Bruce we would see clouds of smoke hanging over the country side, we were not sure if they were from controlled burns or wild fires. There were certainly signs of previous fires in the trees along the side of the road. In Canada we have Fire Risk signs along the road ranging from No Risk to Extreme Risk, here the have an additional category beyond Extreme, it is Catastrophic!

Next stop was Miriam Vale for lunch, then further north along the Bruce into mountain views.

We reached our destination for the next two nights, Rockhampton, at around 1530. Although it wasn’t an overly long journey relative to our winter trips where we’ll do up to 1000 kms in a day, I still felt a little whacked at the end. This could be due to old age, driving in the Southern Hemisphere, driving on the left side of the road or all three. In fact I can add a 4th excuse for the last 10 kms. As we came into Rockhampton we crossed over the Tropic of Capricorn and were officially in the Tropics! I think that is another first for us.

Tomorrow will be visits to some caves and a heritage village.

Woke up at our normal time, way later than our hosts! I thought my cold was going to turn into a full blown cough like I had in S. Africa a year ago, but after a couple of bouts of coughing around 1AM I managed to fall asleep. When I woke up the cough was a minor annoyance, so I am keeping fingers crossed it’s going away!

We headed out mid morning towards Noosa, where there was yet another surfing beach. The temperature was already above 30C, but we have finally managed to gain control of the A/C in the car. The first couple of days we couldn’t get it to cool down too well. Talking of the car, it felt different to other cars when we first picked it up. It was very smooth under acceleration, finally I realised that there were no gear shifts. The transmission is CVT or Continuously Variable Transmission, which has an infinite number of gear ratios but no gears!!

Anyway, back to Noosa.

There were many 4×4’s around fitted out with snorkels and other off roading gear. The one below is an older Toyota

After a stop for coffee where we found out first filtered coffee, complete with unlimited refills, we headed out for Rainbow Beach, where as the name suggests, there should be sands of different colours. I think the advertising agency applied a little too much poetic licence in their descriptions.

After a lunch stop, I am getting quite partial to the flaky pastry meat pies they have here, we headed off to Hervey bay to organise some whale watching.

The land round here is quite hilly and extremely forested, below is a picture “from the passenger seat”, while this shows a straight stretch of road, there have been plenty of hilly twisty sections that would have been great in the MGB.

It’s certainly relaxing driving over here, the road surfaces are really smooth as there is no frost. The drivers are laid back, if the posted limit is 100, most will cruise along around 90, I don’t think I have seen any speeding yet!

Once we arrived at Hervey bay, we went about booking a whale watching tour. Well it seems like the whales finished their migration yesterday, and the tours have stopped running for the season. The tour guides indicate migration runs into the first week of November, I guess the whales didn’t get the memo. Some day, some place we’ll finally get to see them.