Another Day, another Beach, another fish..

..for supper. This time its Sooty Grunter – wonderful names they have over here – caught at a small cove along from Airlie Beach. Put up a fair struggle for their size, and big vicious spines on the outside, but not too bony inside and tasted very meaty and sweet. 4 local guys also came fishing down at the same beach, didn't catch anything while we were there, but said they preferred these to Barramundi, which is supposed to be THE fish to catch over here. And there are another 2 in the freezer….

Just as well as we’ve just been stuck with an $800 bill for 2 new batteries for the van. Need to catch a few more suppers or try the roadkill – from the truck grill to the BBQ grill.

Fishing, kookaburras and beaches

Flaggy Rock was our next stop (great name), where we encountered a cheeky little Kookaburra. He was lovely, apart from the ‘wake up call’ at 5am when he and his mates started laughing at full volume! You can tell by Mark’s blog post that he wasn't impressed by the early morning alarm call.

Australian Drought hits the Pacific Ocean

This is low tide at Camila beach where you can walk out for miles. It pays to know the tide times as it comes in pretty fast at 5m – 6m. Below is the same beach and where we fished a few times.

I'm also getting quite good at catching supper or lunch. I caught the top two black bream and Mark caught the (small) whiting.

Another day, another beach – this time it’s Seaforth, 45km out of Mackay.

And on to Airlie Beach, a lovely place but I think we’re a bit old for here as its backpacker central, as Mark has already said.

Captain Cook, Capricorn and Caves

North of Bundaberg is a place called the Town of 1770. This is where Captain Cook made his second landing on Australian soil (after Botany Bay) and is the birthplace of Queensland. I don’t think the place has changed much (apart from the hotel/café and a few buildings), and they've tried to keep it very low key.

Just south of Rockhampton we crossed into the Tropic of Capricorn – who turned up the humidity? It was the first night we've had the air-con running all night. Yeppoon had a few nice (and almost deserted) beaches and exploring the hilly coastline by bicycle was a step too far for me. I gave up, cycled back to the van and walked along the beach instead.

We visited The Caves (thanks Anita for the tip) on the way up to St Lawrence. They were truly stunning and have bookings for weddings right up to the end of 2014! They also stage Opera in the Cathedral Cave which has near perfect acoustics.

We also experienced something we hadn't seen for at least 3 weeks – rain! (the few spots in Brisbane don’t count) It lasted all of about 10 minutes but washed lots of dust off the ute and van!

We stayed a couple of nights at a ‘freebie’ site in St Lawrence (their recreational grounds) and had the most amazing sunset.

Too old and fat…

… to fit in at Airlie beach. This is the biggest backpacker centre we have found so far, and we’re definitely feeling a generation out on most of the others. Plus I don’t have enough tattoos or piercings…but to quote Wolowitz, at least I can still be buried in a Jewish cemetery. Oh, Wait…..

On the other hand, we did have a very nice Rib-eye steak last night and a bottle of red,  watched a movie and then climbed into the air-conditioned van and a proper 5’ bed, so maybe old age and savings does have its plus points

Temperature and humidity have been rising as we’ve been travelling north; its not too bad during the days when we are out and about, but it is now an absolute joy to put the aircon on at night. What amazes me is the amount of water that it is extracting – must be a couple of litres overnight, and that is with it kicking in about once an hour on the thermostat. by the time we hit Cairns in November we can probably irrigate the shrubbery

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree…

Cackling like a Hyena on nitrous oxide. At 5 o’clock in the AM. Noisy bastard..

And if that wasn’t enough to wake you up, he then decides to tap dance on the roof directly above my pillow.

We called him Kevin in the vague hope that something about the name might influence his behaviour – Mr Walters is definitely not a morning person. Didn’t take L

And if it’s not the kookies, all the other wildlife, campers, traffic and sunlight make it just about impossible to sleep past 6:00. Consequently by 9:00pm we’re falling asleep before the end of the movie. Trying to adapt but so far it isn’t really happening

Beer, beaches, ginger beer and RUM

On our last day in Brisbane we spent the afternoon at the Castlemaine XXXX brewery. It was a very interesting tour but the best bit was the tastings in the bar at the end :-) Needless to say, we spent a very nice afternoon. My favourite ales was a porter called Jack of Spades. We have a photo somewhere of me pouring a half pint - and very tasty it was too.

From there we headed north to Tin Can Bay. A bit disappointing as we were expecting it to be on the coast and it was on the estuary, overlooking Fraser Island so no view of the Pacific Ocean. We remedied this by spending the day at Rainbow Beach, about 30kms away. It was nice to chill out by the sea.

On to Burnett Heads, 15km outside Bundaberg and on the coast. Yesterday we cycled 20km to Bargara and back, past the Mon Repos Turtle Rookery. We're a little early as the turtles start coming ashore to lay their eggs in November, so we'll be back this way after Cairns and will look in on them then.

Bundaberg - home of brewed ginger beer and rum. What a wonderful combination! We did tours of both establishments - well, it would have been rude not to.

Tomorrow we head up to the tropics to Yippoon, just past Rockhampton.

Bundabergs are Go

We've made a good start on our plan to drink our way around the world, starting with the Castlemaine XXXX brewery in Brisbane, and the Bundaberg Rum Distillery and Ginger Beer Brewery in Bundaberg

as you can see both the beer and the bar staff at XXXX are a little stout

and the lack of hand pumps doesn't encourage pectoral growth

Further North Maria has found her spiritual home - 37 proof spiritual that is

Normally she measures hangovers in terms of how many cans of ginger beer she needs the next morning to rehydrate and settle her stomach, but now she has found that it can cause them as well - Rum and ginger beer over here is called a Dark & Stormy. Although given the weather as we are nearly in the tropics, a hot and shitty might be more appropriate....

Sugar cane and fireworks

From Grafton in NSW (and the start of the sugar cane fields), we followed the Pacific Highway up through Ballina (and fields of cotton!) and stayed the night at a sports ground in Mullumbimby.

 

The next day we crossed the border into Queensland and the Gold Coast. We spotted all the water parks and theme parks which we’ll do next time on our way back down J We stayed in Ipswich which is about an hour by train outside Brisbane and met up with an ex work colleague of mine (Anita Ryan) on the Friday evening. She recommended meeting at the Breakfast Creek Hotel which is the only place that still serves XXXX made in a wooden cask. They also do excellent steaks and it was good to catch up with Anita on her home ground.

 

She also told us that Saturday was the end of the week long Brisbane Festival. We followed her advice and headed for the city to explore. From the centre of Brisbane, we crossed Victoria Bridge to the South Bank. They’ve even got a wheel and it all looks very familiar! Families were already staking their claim early on to patches of grass, tables, communal BBQs and anywhere along the river so they could see the fireworks which would go off later. We walked all the way along to Kangaroo Point and crossed Storey Bridge, along the other side past Eagle St pier, through the Botanic Gardens, back across Goodwill Bridge and to find a spot on the South Bank. Apache and Blackhawk helicopters gave us a display of their manoeuvrability and Hornet F18s flew low along the river and made lots of noise J The Hornets also started off the fireworks display by dropping fireballs and hitting the afterburners. And what a fireworks display it was. A big ‘thank you’ goes out to the Brisbane taxpayers – the display was fantastic!

On Monday we took our bikes in on the train to see the rest of the city’s parks. From Milton, we cycled in along the river and down the South Bank again, across Goodwill Bridge and into the city, up through King Edwards Park (really, really steep!), along to Wickham Park, Roma Street Parklands, Victoria Park then onto Fortitude Valley and our train back to Ipswich.

Today we are going to do the XXXX tour J then head further north tomorrow.

 

Up, up, up and over...

…The Great Dividing Range. We made it! And not without a few scary moments. After the flat lands of the central NSW outback, we started to see the more scenic hilly regions of the state.

 

From Broken Hill, we followed the Barrier Highway through Cobar (home of the Big Beer Can), and made camp at a freebie site along the way. Just after 11.30pm, a road train decided to also stop at the same rest area. A few minutes later, the bleats of the lambs and calls of the ewes became rather loud! The next few days we travelled along the Oxley Highway through Coonabarabran past the Siding Springs Observatory and into the foothills, Gunnedah (home of the Koala), Tamworth (home of country music and the Big Golden Guitar), Moonbi (and the big Chicken – no idea why!) and onto the New England Highway to Armidale where the fun really began.

We’ve also come to the conclusion that the Aussie’s idea of where a big rig can get in and out of and our idea are two different things. This photo was taken at Little Styx River Campground, a site at the entrance to the New England Forest, 50km east of Armidale. This was reached via a 10km dirt road that made our previous roller coaster ride on the sealed road (New England Highway) seem like a walk in the park. After a couple of kilometres and a few hairy moments, Mark put the ute into 4WD mode and pulled the rig up what seemed like a vertical incline. The scenery was lovely and as the sun was setting, the mist came down the mountains and gave a very eerie feel to the entire area. It also got really, really cold! I’ve called this photo ‘Tigger rig in the mist’. We didn’t barbeque that night otherwise I could have called it ‘Grillers in the mist’ J

 

 

 

 

 

The journey the following day to Grafton took us up and over the Range. This was even scarier than the day before, with lots of winding roads and hairpin bends (mostly 35kph limits) and one 15kph bend that can only be described as a left hand turn as it was too tight to be called a bend! Add to that the logging trucks and it was definitely an experience but one I wouldn’t want to repeat in a hurry.

From Grafton the sugar cane fields started and we had our first sight of the Pacific Ocean – nice.

Brisbane RiverFire

We rolled into Brisbane a day earlier than expected on Friday, which turned out to be fortuitous as the Saturday was the culmination of the Brisbane festival with RiverFire, a firework, light and laser show along the river. We had a good walk around the city then staked a claim on a bit of wall on their south bank about 2 hours before it kicked off - there had been people camped there since the morning when we started walking, with full on picnic, chairs, BBQs and the whole family. The RAAF did a couple of fly-bys with 2 F18 Super-Hornets during the afternoon, lower and closer than we ever see at UK airshows, although that was the limit of the display, and the Army did similar with 2 Apache and Blackhawk choppers.

Fireworks then kicked off with the F18s doing a flyby flare drop and then going ballistic into the cloud cover on full afterburners. Which was nice.












not our pictures, but we were there.

Cycled around the city again on monday which was a  holiday here, doing the Castlemain XXXX brewery tour today then will start heading up the coast and paddling in the Pacific on our way up to Cairns tomorrow

Oh F#*k Hill

The problem with driving our rig is that is doesn't do 3 point turns. Its a bit like drinking a spitoon - once you start down a path you are committed to finishing. The camps book we are using to find free and cheap camp sites said there was a really nice riverside campsite 10km down a dirt road off the highway in the great dividing range, suitable for big rigs. What it didn't mention was that the dirt road went up and down by a kilometer. With nowhere to turn and no other way back, it was a case of man up, lock the 4WD hubs, stick it in low ratio and hope. Actually the Navara didn't complain - my main fear was if we lost traction on the loose surface halfway up, but it chugged up steadily in 2nd gear, but by the time we actually reached the camp, which was quite nice, my hands were shaking and things were clenched.