Home                                                                                              UPDATE 9 OCTOBER

I spent a quiet relaxing time in Townsville. I got a real buzz out of the reaction of my cousins son when he had a drive of the clubbie. Caught up with some admin and generally veged out.

I then moved on south to Airley Beach where I spent a couple of days staying with a friend who used to live in Adelaide. I had a guided tour of the town and that night went to a pub in town to watch the NRL Grand Final. The north Queensland Cowboys were in it so locally it was like Adelaide when the Crows or Port Power are playing in the Grand final. They lost unfortunately.

The next day I visited a couple of the Whitsunday Resort Islands. Hamilton Island is way over the top with a number of high rise buildings and so on.

   Daydream Island seemed a bit older but was more sympathetic with the environment. It also had a very nice little chapel on one side of the island.

Went into town the next day to see if I could do some computer work but had no joy. Just off the main street is a man made lagoon that is very popular. I spent a bit of time there enjoying the sun. That evening we went into the Sailing Club for drinks and dinner. What a great place! Million dollar views outside and good facilities both inside and outside for the boaties.

All good things must come to an end and I was soon on my way south again. I got to Mackay

and when I pulled up to take the picture  above heard a bit of a rattle from the drivers side front mudguard. Sure enough the support had broken again. The same one that broke on my first long trip. I effected a temporary repair as I had done before and I'll take it to the same place to be welded.

The country side south of Airley Beach started out as sugar cane areas and then gradually developed into more open  driersavannah type country side. I spent the night at Clairview, a tiny little town between the highway and the sea. There was also a railway line as I discovered at 5.30 in the morning when a trainsounded its horn long enough and loud enough to wake every living thing within a 5 km radius. Shame it was one of those mornings when I could have slept in until about 7!

Once I got going I called in at the Capricornia caves just north of Rockhampton. These are dry caves that makes them different from the better known caves that are generally "wet" caves. (eg The Jenolan caves).

One cave is a natural auditaurium and has been set up as a chapel with seating for about 60. They celebrate some 20 weddings a year in there.

I stayed at Yepoon for the night, another beachside town where there is a lot of development going on and then went on to Hervey Bay via Rockhampton, Gladstone and Bundaberg. The countryside through here is fairly dry looking but there is plenty of ground cover and feed. It is totally different to the equivalent areas on the Western Australian side.

The weather at Hervey Bay was lousy. 40 - 50 knot winds, sand blowing everywhere and generally most uncomfortable. The strong northerly wind was sandblasting the car and trailer and trying as hard as possible to flatten the tent. It was so bad I had to move to a more protected area. No chance of Whale watching on the first day so I waited for a day  to see if things improved. They did, luckily, and next day I managed to get out on a boat and see some hump back whales.

I saw quite a few but they were not very active. I managed to get some great photos of the sea with black dots here and there.

                                                                                 This is about as good as I have got.

Once I had returned from the whale watching I moved on to the Sunshine Coast where I will stay for a few days and have a real holiday. Its been a fairly intense experience so far so a bit of R and R won't go astray