Meandering South

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.