Sunday morning 23rd
September we are all packed and say our goodbyes to Gay then head over to Pete’s
to pick the sea calf up and say goodbye.
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| Tin Can Bay in the car |
We head out of
Mooloolaba at about 1000 hours and start once again heading north, this time by
road in our house on wheels. It was an
easy drive from the Sunshine Coast, especially as the school holidays have just
started, we thought we may get stuck in a heap of traffic but it was not to
bad. We first went to Tin Can Bay, which
was also one of the places we had anchored at in Mingo. We are looking out onto the water to where we
were anchored and it’s a clear warm sunny day with the shine of the sun
simmering on the water, it really looks lovely and calm out there. Can we rewind back to July.
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| Rainbow Beach |
We have a walk around the beach and then back
into the car towards Rainbow beach. It
seemed a fairly long drive to the beach and we park up to have a look at the
look out and out to sea south towards Double Island Point and the light house
we had once climbed and also motored passed and north to Fraser. A while later we stood on the beach and
looked over to the known treturous bar of Inskip Point that we crossed on 27th
July, it looked so calm today. We walked
over to the other side of the beach to where we had also anchored up for the
night at Pelican Bay. All looks so
different seeing it from land.
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| Rainbow Beach |
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| Pelican Bay where we had anchored |
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| Unfortunate cars that have been caught in the tides on Rainbow Beach |
We had a stroll around Rainbow Beach town and into the famous petrol station that holds a number of photos from the unfortunate cars that did not make it along the beach, other by being stuck in the sand and the tide coming in or drivers not giving enough distance for the tide and the car being swept away.
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| Cars swept away |
Then the 125 odd kilometres
drive towards Maryborough and we arrive about 1600 hours. We drive around the city and find a Laundromat
to do some washing then into a little park and find a side road down to the
water on the Mary River where we see a nice spot to park for our first night.
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| Joys of living on the road |
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| Mary River camp spot |
We set up the
chairs and pull the folding table out and then sit and have a drink watching
the boats along the river. Then an easy
dinner of corn on the cob tonight as we have eaten junk all day and
didn’t feel like much for tea.
We decide to try
our hands at fishing in the river and once again a bit of a disaster whilst
walking down a boat ramp. It was dark by
the time we put the lines in and as we walk down the ramp not being able to see
much, Andrew first of all slips down in the mud and doing so gets the line
totally tangled in the mangroves, whilst Christie looses a sinker somewhere
under water. That was a short-lived
fishing expedition.
We always seem to
sleep well in the back of the Ute. Its
very comfortable in our foam queen bed under the mossy nets that we have built
into the tray back under the canopy. We usually have the sides
of the canopy down at night but the back up to have some fresh air coming in and
the breeze is lovely to fall asleep under.
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| Our comfy back of the ute bed. |
We are awoken at
0530 hours by a rubbish truck pulling up in front of us. A bit of a surprise awakening and we are a
little startled as we look out to see what’s going on.
The places we camp
on our road trips are usually off the beaten track. On our three-week road trip over Christmas
2011 we only paid for one night in a caravan park, all the rest we found places
in the bush and we are hoping to find some of these types of spots this time
too. We prefer to be out of caravan
parks and in the real wilderness.
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| The Palace Backpackers |
We have a cup of
tea and some toast cooked by hand on the two-burner BBQ before heading towards Childers,
which is only a short drive of under an hour.
At Childers we have a walk around and go and have a look at the Palace
backpackers that is now unfortunately famous for a fire that was deliberately
lit in 2000 and sadly killed 15 sleeping travellers. There is a really lovely memorial in what
used to be the upstairs level of the hostel.
This has obviously now been renovated and tells the stories of the lives
of the people that were killed. It is
very moving and worth a visit.
We then have a
short walk around town and funnily enough bump into a friend Paul along the
way. It’s a small world sometimes and
you never know where or when you may bump into someone you know. We have a quick chat and he was telling us
about a trip he and friend Steve just had over to Lady Musgrave Island and
Flinders reef fishing for a few days.
Seems like they caught some good fish and had a great trip. We say bye to Paul and head out of Childers
towards Woodgate, which we heard was a lovely beach area. We spent the 40 minute drive towards the
beach and when we arrived we both realized it was 40 minutes of our lives that
we did not need to waste seeing Woodgate.
Oh well another place to tick off our list if nothing else.
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| Childers Peanut Van |
Back towards
Childers now and we have managed to get friend Steve on the phone and will be
meeting him outside the Peanut van on the outskirts of Childers as he is
driving back to Brisbane with his dad and towing their boat. We catch up for a couple of hours and
exchange our at sea stories before time to get back on the road.
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| Moore Park Beach |
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| Moore Park Beach camp spot |
Now heading
towards Bundaberg and we have a drive and then walk around the city
centre. These towns still seem very
dated with all the old buildings and not very large. Its good to see them but a little small for
us we decide. So we don’t stay too long
in Bundy and head another 140 kilometres on the road to another beach area and
find a spot at Moore Park Beach. The
wind seems to have picked up a lot and even though we are not on the boat, the
clouds above look very grey and we think we are in for a wet, windy night so do
want to find an area a little protected.
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| Moore Park camping |
We pull up into a car
park that is right on the beach and go for a walk, the waves in the ocean are
picking up and seem quite choppy so we are glad to be on land. We walk along a grass track area and notice a
number of what seem like quite large holiday houses that back onto national park
land and then onto the beach. Would be a
great place to own with such a large back area, even though it belongs to
national park. At least you would know
nothing could be built to block your views.
We find a grassy
area just by the beach at the end of the national park and set up camp for the
night. We have the tarps out and pegs
firmly in the ground, as it is very windy.
We are towing the tinny this drive up so we have that to the back of us,
meaning we can tie the canopy of the tray back to this and the tarps out to the
side and over the canopy.
We walk down onto
the beach with wine and beer in hand and enjoy the cool winds in our hair, then
back to the car to get some dinner ready.
As we are cooking it starts to spitter with rain, which gets slightly
harder, so we end up packing everything up and eating our spaghetti bolognaise
in our bedroom of the Ute. The rain is
constant but not too heavy for about 45 minutes and we lie in bed watching the
lighting light up the sky above us and out to sea. Its great watching a thunderstorm out to sea,
the lightening is so clear and lights up so much in the distance.
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| Wildlife along the drive. |
We fall asleep as
the rain seems to stop and at about 0200 hours we are awoken to a steady stream
of a waterfall coming from the roof of
the car. Shit its absolutely pouring outside
and we now have water all over the sleeping bags, the mattress and us. What do you do when you are in the middle of
nowhere, you have the front of the car jam packed with bags and TV etc., so you
cant go and sit in there. We sit up with
beach towels pushed up against the roof to try and soak up the water. Then notice that it is also coming in at the
sides of the canopy towards the back. Oh
what joys. We do seem to find something
going wrong on each trip we do, but then I guess now if nothing went wrong it
would make for a dull trip…
Finally after
about an hour the rain stops and we lay back down on a wet bed and do manage to
fall back to sleep until first light where we get up and repack the back and
head off again to our next destination.
We drive towards
Miriam vale for a couple of hours and stop to have a coffee and a look
around. A very small town of only a
handful of shops, which also include the usual pub that every town seems to
have.
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| Pine Tree fields |
The scenery on
this trip has so far been mainly fields of either macadamia nut trees, Pine Trees or sugar
cane. Can be a bit boring when you pass
yet another sugar cane field.
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| Macadamia nut tree fields |
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| Rockhampton |
After our break at
Miriam Vale we follow the Bruce Highway into Rockhampton. Had a look around Rocky and a quick visit to
the information centre to see if there was anything of interest to see whilst
here. We are early for turtle egg laying
session, which starts in December. You
can visit the beaches at this time and watch the turtles lay the eggs on the beaches
in holes that the females have dug. You
can then come back a few months later and watch the baby turtles hatch and make
their dash to sea. Apparently only 1 in
a thousand survive the journey from being hatched to entering the ocean as they
are either eaten by birds on their way towards the water or by sharks and other
fish waiting for them.
There are
apparently also some caves just out of Rocky that are quite spectacular. We go for a drive to have a look at these and
unfortunate find out that they are closed.
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| The Caves |
Its 25.9.2012, we
then head down a little dirt track that is around the caves and about 35 km out
of Rocky and find a spot amongst the bushes in a place also called The
Caves. There is an old rock hut here and
it does seem a bit creepy but we don’t think anything off it as its still day
light. We set up for the night here and
have a couple of drinks and something small to eat and go for a little walk
along the dirt track. Its pitch black
now with only a couple of stars in the sky and we can see a light in the far
distance from a house and the low bark of a dog. There is no one around and it’s so eerily
quiet apart from the howling of the wind amongst the trees. It’s a very creepy feeling being out here
just the two of us and both our imaginations start to play games.
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| The Caves, by our campspot for the night |
We do even discuss
maybe moving to another spot for the night, but decide that by the time we pack
everything up and manage to find another area, that area could be just as bad,
we also don’t really want to be driving in the dark.
So we sit in the
bushes and listen to the trees swaying in the wind and hope that we are not
going to be the next people who are going to be cast in the new “Wolf Creek”
movie (a scary backpackers thriller).
Can you believe we actually slept with the hammer and spray can beside
us that night?
We woke the
following morning after a restless night and were glad that nothing had
happened and we were all safe and sound.
Oh the imagination can be scary at times, we laugh about it now.
It had also rained
again during the night so the mattress was yet again wet, what a joyful night.
We were quite
happy to be driving out of The Caves this morning and head again along the
Bruce Highway and see to the east of us a few houses and nice looking beach
down below. We do a uturn and head down
the side road into a town called Clairview, which is about 230 kilometres north
of Rockhampton and 120 kilometres south of Mackay.
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| Andrew at Clairview |
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| Chris on beach at Claireview |
Clairview is a
lovely little seaside area, so we went for a walk along the beach and cooled
our feet off in the ocean before sitting on the beach for lunch under the warm
sun. As we head to drive out we find
another little side street that ends up leading us onto the sandy beach, we
decide to drive the 4wd onto the beach and because we have the trailer on the
back which is heavily laden with our stuff, we get stuck in the sand. There is not a person in sight and we are
stuck with the 4wd and trailer and tinny in quite thick sand.
We unhook the trailer and tinny and Andrew
drives the 4wd out quite easily with out the extra weight, then he manoeuvres
the car around to a position to pull the trailer out. A good 40 minutes later and we are back on
our way all smiles.
After our break we
then head towards Mackay, which was a good hour, and a bit drive. A look around Mackay and then to find
somewhere to stay tonight. Along the way
we stop every hour and a half or so for a drink break and to stretch our
legs. We park up in a side street off
the highway and as we get out of the car notice that with the bumpy roads we
have been on, it has moved the boat which has fallen onto the mud guard of the trailer which has
been pushed onto the tyre. Luckily we
did stop as it must have happened only recently, could have been a lot worse. Andrew did a bit of temporary fix it work on
the trailer, and we are ready to head off again.
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| Andrew fixing up trailer |
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| Mud guard fallen on the tyre |
We drive another
98 kilometres before we once again head off the beaten track and see a few dirt
tracks into sugar cane fields. We drive
into a couple and they end up along side a train line. We wonder if the train line is in use and
decide we wont stay near it just in case.
We finally drive into one cane field and find a great spot out of the
field but hidden away in the bushes enough not to be seen and a good distance
away from the train line. As we are
unpacking the Ute we see a long 20 or so carriage train driving by.
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| Drying matr |
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| Our site for the night by a cane field |
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| Andrew relaxing by our Canefield camp spot |
We like this spot
and set up our table and chairs and pull the mattress out of the Ute and put it
up on the back of the tinny to dry, its still pretty wet and even though the
top seems to dry out the middle of it is still soaked. So we lay it out for a good few hours and are
pleased that by the time we go to bed it is completely dry.
Lets hope that it does not rain again
tonight. We don’t have anything on us to
fix the leak in the roof and its OK when you are driving along but when the car
is still for the night the water settles and pours through.
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