Our Travel Blog

Sitting in Beijing now after a 12 hour flight from Sydney, managed to sleep for a good portion of it. My spare parts for the MGB that I bought in Sydney caused a bit of an issue in the Beijing security check and held the line up for quite a while. When neither of you speak a common language its hard to explain that a bag of brass parts is a repair kit for a British sports car carburetor! Any way we survived that and are now in the lounge for six hours waiting for a 13+ hour flight to Montreal, at least a shower helped freshen me up a bit.

So, thoughts on Australia: We are really glad we did the trip, at the end of it we had no complaints at all, with the possible exception of the lack of filtered (Canadian style) coffee. Aussies are really big on their steam frothy machine style coffee (Thanks for the tip Ted, our coffee supply ran out on the penultimate morning!). Driving was a breeze, Australian drivers never seem to be in a rush to get any where, speed limits are obeyed meticulously, they stop at red traffic lights and there are no attempts to run amber lights.

Life is a little more expensive here than Canada, but it is affordable. Tipping is not a way of life, neither is it expected. Australian service industries pay their staff a decent wage, so subsidies are not needed. Why can’t N. America adopt that policy. The nearest the industry gets to tipping is an increase in prices on holidays and Sundays to allow them to pay the staff extra for working those days.

Taxes are built into the advertised price, if a sweater is advertised for $30 then that is what you pay, not $30 + GST +PST. Again N.America take note. One additional cost we did come across was the addition of 1% on many credit card sales to cover expenses imposed by the Credit Card companies. This was mostly charged by the small Mom and Pop type stores, not the big stores.

Talking of big stores, there is NO Walmart. This means towns still have main streets with a variety of thriving stores. 

Cell phone plans are cheaper in Australia, but beware of the coverage. As we found out Vodafone works fine in the large cities and along the major highways, but is useless in the back country. Telstra has far better coverage, but at a cost. 

Just back from a walk around the Beijing Terminal, walked about 2500 steps from the plane, through security to the lounge and another 5200 walking once around the terminal!

Back to Oz, there was plenty to see and do, and we did almost all that we had planned with a couple of exceptions. The weather didn’t co-operate for our trip  to the blue mountains, we got fogged out. The whales didn’t read the tourist book schedule and stopped their migration early and finally an uncooperative boulder leapt out into the middle of the road, striking Lyn on the head and knocking her off her scooter. Other than that the only other issue we had at times was the heat/humidity.

We purposely avoided cities because we don’t like them, we’d much rather see rural life and scenery, there plenty of that to see. We have learned from previous trips not to go, go, go to the last day as we return home kn&($ered, hence the slow trip south from Cooktown.

A return trip is not out of the question, finances, health and time permitting.

Future travel is uncertain at the moment, there will be the usual snowbird trip to Alabama in January with the possibility of a road trip to Utah, Montana etc in the fall. 2020 was planned to have a South America cruise around whatever Cape it is down there, with a side trip into Peru. That may now get sidelined as Lyn’s aunt will be celebrating her 90th in March that year, so a trip to S. Africa may happen for another family reunion. Perhaps we’ll be reckless and do both!

Hopefully toy enjoyed the blog, the next one should be in the fall of 2019.

You can all breathe a huge sigh of relief, today was our last full day of traveling, and possibly the last blog entry, apart from a wrap up one I’ll publish on the way home (internet permitting).

Tomorrow we are planning a visit to an aviation museum, then it’s off to Lyn’s cousins for a couple of nights. Hopefully we will also meet another cousin from S. Africa who  has been visiting her children in China and Australia, as well as a cousin who may be flying up from Tasmania.

This morning we headed our after breakfast to a boardwalk that was on the “hummock”. The hummock seemed to be the nearest thing resembling a hill, for miles around. As well as providing a view and some exercise, there was also a cache waiting for us!

At the lookout there is a Memorial to Squadron Leader Bert Hinkler, the first person to fly solo from  England to Australia in 1928, taking 15½ days!

We found some (yet to be identified) red flowers on the tack.

Although the photo below doesn’t show it too well, the soil in the areas was very red in colour.

We took to the back-roads to avoid the Bruce and to see more of the Australian (populated) countryside. I have to apologise to Australia as the bakeries were open today, evidently things are a little more progressive in the larger towns. Certainly couldn’t let the opportunity of possibly the last cream cake slip away (again!).

Driving was through some nice twisty, hilly countryside with cane sugar and mangoes as the main crops. We stopped for more geocahes and got 4 out of 5. Lunch was fairly easy to find for a Sunday, although I did have to trade my standard meat pie for a kebab!

We continued on to the hotel through a couple of heavy rain showers which brought the temperature down to 22 for a while, but then it climbed back to 25. One nice thing about the rain, it filled the air with the scent of eucalyptus. 

We arrived at the hotel just after 4PM. As I said above, depending on the degree of socialising that takes place over the next couple of nights there may or may not be a blog.

Another great nights sleep after a good meal at the motel last night. The one disadvantage of staying at a motel with a restaurant is that they don’t supply a toaster or cutlery or plates, they want you to buy their stuff!! Therefore we forewent the the toast this morning and had bread and jam. At least the bread has substance to it compared with the aerated stuff we get at home.

We continued eastbound after breakfast through miles of even more nothingness than previous days, for miles it was just scrub land with no crops or grazing. Even geocaches were not to be found. We tried one geocache and all I got was quite a shock as when I moved a piece of bark on a tree this thing dove out.

We think it was a huntsman spider, evidently it’s not particularly venomous, but an ice pack and medical assistance is recommended if you do get bit.

There were plenty of kangaroos and wallabies, unfortunately they were all horizontal and not moving😢. We did have some success in the cream cake department; reasoning that Australia closes down on Sundays itwas best to ensure we got a cake today.

We had a late lunch, that’s when we found out that the shutters go down at 2PM on a Saturday, we finally found some found at a petrol station on the Bruce. Talking of petrol, prices inland and up north peaked between $1.65-$1.70 / litre, they are now back to ~$1.40.

After lunch we headed off to the town of 1770 (that’s right it’s numbers not letters for the town name), so called because Cpt. Cooke discovered the place in 1770. We got about 10k along the road and saw a lot of smoke ahead, another brush fire. This one was different in that the smoke was drifting across the road reducing visibility. There were a couple of cars stopped on the road and a firefighter was explaining that they were dealing with an accident just passed the fire, once that was sorted they would work  on the fire so there would be an unknown delay if we wanted to go that route. We opted to skip 1770 and route direct to our destination.

Our re-planned route took us down the Bruce to Gin Gin (we didn’t stop to sample any drinks) where we headed off towards the coast. We finally made the motel around 4PM.

The motel is one block from the coast so we took a walk along the beach to get in some much needed exercise, and a couple of geocaches.

Tomorrow we continue southbound, and tomorrow night will be our last motel night.

Today was another longish trip, but the direction changed from Southbound to Eastbound as we head away from the inland route back to the coastal route of the Bruce. 

After breakfast we headed out through a mix of country side yet again, there were less mountains but plenty of gently rolling hills and table lands. Yet again we were unable to find a bakery, or any other establishment for our morning coffee. In reality that was probably a good thing, in the last few week we had been getting a reasonable amount of exercise. With all the driving and the heat and humidity the exercising has dropped of whereas the cream cake intake was on the rise for a while.

Luckily we met the herd of cows a few days ago and learned the secret of getting by them…… just drive! We met another herd on the road today, this time there was no cow person in sight and no other vehicles to follow. If it wasn’t for the meeting with the cows previously I’d probably still be sitting there waiting for therm to move. Pulling forward at 5-10kph seemed to get them moving, there was a strong temptation to use the horn to see what effect that would have, but I was worried about the amount of paperwork that might create when the car was returned.

We also passed through coal mining country again, marked by large slag heaps.

We a number of fields where we couldn’t identify the crop, but we now think it was cotton.

Although we didn’t get a picture Lyn managed to spot a kangaroo off to the side of the road, I would have pulled over but, for one of the few occasions on this drive, there was vehicle right behind me.

A little further on Lyn spotted another creature off the side of the road, this time I was able to stop. After a little research once we reached the hotel it was Identified as an Australian Bustard, Australia’s largest flying bird.

We managed to find 3 geocaches today, which helped to break up the trip. and give us a little exercise. We are also back in the land of Vodaphone so my original SIM card works, as does voice and texts.

Tomorrow we should be seeing the Ocean again.

These blogs may be getting boring to read, but we are not getting bored traveling around. Much of the scenery could be described as “blah”, but to us it is all new. It’s just hard to put into words what we have seen.

After breakfast we left our 3 bedroom bungalow after making the discovery that something had gobbled up most of our data, I suspect it was one of those (insert expletive here) Microsoft updates running in the background. That has now been foiled!

The roads were pretty straight, both horizontally and vertically although we did come across a hold up on the way south.

A properly equipped cowboy cowgirl, no ATV’s here. A bit further back we did see a cowboy herding on a motocross bike!

Not knowing what the local custom was for cars encountering cows we slowed to a stop. The guy behind waited about 30 seconds before overtaking us and forcing his way through the herd. The large tractor with double trailer gave us about 10 seconds before laying on the air horn. When in Rome etc. so we pushed our way through, the cattle seemed to accept this.

Continuing south we picked up a geocache and then hit the teeming metropolis of Capella.

There was a large war memorial in town, complete with a nearby geocache.

Despite everything, there was a coffee shop / bakery there, so all was not bad.

Another thing we hadn’t noticed before was the bottle tree. The wide trunk develops after 5 years or so and is used to store water.

We got excited a few miles out of town when there was a sign for a Scenic Lookout. This was going to be interesting as the land around us was as flat as a pancake!

After we recovered from the breathtaking view from the lookout, we headed into the town of Emerald for lunch. This was one of the best towns we had been in for a long time. There was a good variety of stores, a fabric store for Lyn, an electronics store for me and a hobby store for both of us.

After a late lunch we went in search of another geocache and then headed down to our motel in Springsure, passing a sapphire mine on the way. We then hit (not literally) the highlight of the days journey. We had to brake to avoid hitting a kangaroo crossing the road. This was the first time we had seen a kangaroo in what we call its natural environment.

Springsure was another small town similar to most that we have seen on this trip, the town and motels are pretty full of miners for some reason. This is the first motel I have stayed in that has a notice in the room asking “all guests to kindly shower and change their clothes before going to the bar or restaurant” we could be in for a classy night.

Last night we headed out to the local bowls club for dinner. We’ve noticed in a few towns that the bowls clubs have public restaurants. This one had the added bonus that, with presentation of our room key, we got members rates! We had a good meal, for once it wasn’t too large so we managed a desert between us.

After breakfast we headed out to another hot and soon to be humid day. The temperature was in the mid 30’s (C) mid 90’s (F). Again we had nothing planned for the day other than reaching our destination. We went through a few different types of scenery from twisty mountainous roads to rolling hills and then flat lands. Very shortly after we left the coast behind us we lost cell connection and therefore Google was of no use. This also limited our geocaching activities, we still managed to find one cache though.

As we progressed south westwards we came into coal mining country, there were numerous mines all over the country side. We never saw a wheel house, but there were plenty of slag heaps so I guess it was open cast mines.

We also saw many “Road Trains”, which are normal trucks (lorries) pulling 3 semi trailers giving an overall length of around 125ft.

We had to forgo our morning coffee due to lack of civilisation, and even lunch required a 22 km diversion off the main road. We reached Clermont, our destination, late in the afternoon; not an easy task when Google Maps refuse to work and  the Garmin GPS refuses to accept the address. Luckily we found a map posted in a park which had the street we were looking for on it.

We found our bungalow, and moved in. It took all 3 air conditioners about an hour to cool the place down. During the cooling off period we headed into town to find a suitable place for dinner tonight…. there wasn’t one. We headed to the local grocery store to buy some food to cook. We also decided, purely in the interests of getting the blog published, that we needed to get another SIM card with a different carrier that had service in the town. I went with Vodaphone when we first arrived as it seemed like the best deal, unfortunately its coverage drops off in remoter areas. Telstra do provide service in those areas so we bought a data card to use. Panic over!

The town seemed very utilitarian, the basics were there in the form of a number of hotels (all full) and some bars, a grocery store, post office and a couple of other places. It seems to be a stopping place for truckers rather than tourists. The one splash of colour that it did have was some murals painted on old rail cars.

Tomorrow is yet another day with no particular goal, we’re just continuing South to Lyn’s cousins north of Brisbane, where we should be by Monday

Last night we stayed in one of the hotels we were in on the nortbound leg of the journey, this wasn’t intentional we had just forgotten we had been there, until we checked in! It was a good place with a nice view of the beach. Dinner last night was on the wharf at Bowen, there was a fishmongers who also cooked up the fish and chips and wrapped them up in paper for us. Luckily there was a seating area out the back of the property looking out over the fishing piers. The fish was good and fresh.

Today we had no plan other than to reach the town of Mackay. We took a look around Bowen and its lookouts and beaches, and even found a geocache!

We next drove around to Murray Beach, Horseshoe Bay was behind the headland in the photo below

After Murray Beach we headed out of Bowen, and south on the Bruce. We stopped a couple of times for Geocaches but no photos on this leg as they had been taken on the previous trip.

We stopped for a late lunch when we reached Mackay, there were no eateries available before that. As the food was in a large shopping mall we took a look around there as well (now we have become real tourists). From here we headed out to Mackay Lookout.

All in all a leisurely day, probably some drivers were cursing me as we cruised down the Bruce at  85 kmh (speed limit was 100), but there were plenty of overtaking lanes and no one seemed in too much of a hurry anyway. 

My opinion of Australian cowboys has dropped…. we saw a herd of cattle being moved from one area to another, great we’ll see the cowboys in action. We did….. one cowboy on an ATV and his faithful dog sitting on the handlebars chasing the cows!!!

The Bruce Highway has many, many signs warning drivers about driving fatigued. There are signs for kids with “Are we there yet Daddy” a few hundred metres further on, in the interests of equality “Are we there yet Mummy” and a few other phrases. There are also some trivial pursuit questions on road signs, with the answers a kilometre or so further on. Great idea.

One thing I forgot to mention way back while we were in Sydney was one of their ambulances, it was a Smart Car. Not too sure how that worked!

The last few days have been cooler, around 22-27C, but we are now back into the low 30’s.

Tomorrow we head inland for a few days, it took a couple of hours but I manged to get hotels booked for the next three nights. They were in very short supply, in one case we got the last accommodation in one of the areas, a 3 bedroom bungalow for about $115 CAD. A little bigger than we needed but it will do!

New titles are hard to come by! After a makeshift breakfast, the hotel provided a toaster but no plates or cutlery, we headed out on one of the longer legs of the return journey at around 375kms. Nothing near our 800-900kms / day heading to the trailer, but it seems long here!

We had nothing planned for the day, I had suggested stopping off at Townsville and taking the ferry to Magnetic Island and renting scooters, but that idea was soundly rejected for some reason. Instead we visited the Billabong Animal Sanctuary just south of Townsville.

Again mostly pictures, and I won’t aplolgise for the disproportionate number of Koala shots, they’re too cute not to include. Some of the photos are not overly clear due to shooting through one or sometimes two mesh fences.

I felt a bit guilty when I saw these guys. We had seen a couple of dead ones along the road, not knowing what they were we searched the web for Australian boars and pigs! For some reason I always imagined wombats to be cute and cuddly…. wrong on both counts.

We have been looking for these flightless birds, the Southern Cassowary, for the last couple of weeks, they are severely endangered but are native to the area we have been traveling through. Unfortunately we never saw them in the wild.

The bump on the head in the image below grows as the bird matures, it is believed to enhance their very low frequency communication reception.

These two guys couldn’t get any closer together…. they tried though

The Red Legged Pademelon is the smallest of the Kangaroo family, duck in foreground to show size.

The guy below wasn’t happy, he had lost his mum and was wandering around crying! Check out the size of the feet.

That’s it, time for food.

We scouted out the restaurants yesterday afternoon for last nights meal, there weren’t any. Luckily the local Spar store was open so we picked up some salads and some sausages fro the BBQ. The distance from the chalet to the town was 7.2 km, the distance from the town to the chalet was 25 km, don’t ask…. strange things happen south of the equator.

We had a few light showers in the evening, unfortunately the cloud cover spoiled any stargazing that we could have done in very dark conditions.

This morning we woke up to  a grey, drizzly day with some heavier showers. Breakfast had been left in the fridge by our hosts, and there was one sausage left over from last night, so it was time to try a brekkie on the barbie.

Quite enjoyable! We ate breakfast on the covered deck of the chalet and were rewarded by a visit from an Australian King Parrot to the birdhouse.

There was also a swamp hen wandering around the garden.

I also managed to capture this bee hovering in the flower.

Below is our chalet, together with the parking instructions.

After we cleared up after breakfast and packed, we walked over to the workshop where out hosts have a pewter jewelry outlet, unfortunately they weren’t working there to day so we just saw the finished product.

Lyn managed to get a route plotted out for us that should guarantee us accommodation! We headed out towards the coast and the Bruce Highway through some mountainous roads that climbed up to around 3500 ft. Most of this part of the journey was through mist, drizzle and the occasional heavy rain.

While waiting at some road construction Lyn spotted a couple Masked Lapwings in a field, with the telephoto lens she spotted a third bird, a chick.

We also managed to find a geocache on our travels, they are few and far between here!

We then took a scenic loop off the main road to go down to Mission Beach, we had been in the town before on the outward journey, this time we went to the beach. For a Sunday it was pretty deserted. One unusual thing about this beach, if you walked just above where the waves were reaching you would sink down 6-12″ in the sand, normally I’d expect this to be fairly firm.

After lunch, which was not too easy to find as Australia has not yet embraced Sunday shopping, we continued south to Ingham, our stop for the night. We were greet by a 3″ “thing” by the door, which then flew to the car. Amanda, what is it??

Tomorrow is going to be much of the same, but travelling about twice the distance.