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!