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.
Hotel View
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.