Cairns to Brisbane June 2019 (Motor Home)

We have been considering, for some time, purchasing a motor home rather than using the caravan.

Motor homes have several major advantages, but the main disadvantage that we see is that once setup at a location you were stuck there and while we have spoken to several people about this, we still haven't seen a good solution.

Our agrument is that we like to base the caravan and then travel in a 100km radius to explore many of the sights and also go along 4WD tracks. The only solution to doing this with a motor home is to tow a small 4WD behind you - rather defeating the purpose of using the motor home avoid towing.

As we were getting the 7am flight to Brisbane this was a very early start, around 3.30am. The drive down to Newcastle was good, although I'm always aware of wildlife at that time of night. The flight took-off and arrived on time and we had an hour to get breakfast before the flight to Cairns. Again a good flight if you ignore the screaming kid sitting next to me.

On arrival we picked up a taxi to the "LetsGo" depot to pick up a Jayco Conquest motor home (26 feet long). Steve at the depot was keen to chat to us as he walked us around the vehicle. Being a Jayco, a lot of the systems were similar to our caravan.

Heading out of Cairns we stopped at a supermarket to pick up food for the first few days and then we drove the 35km to stop at Fishery Falls, staying at the nice little caravan park there. We didn't have any problems sleeping!

Friday 14 June 2019

Before heading south we walked up to the falls. Rather nice. The drive today was the 300+km to Townsville.

We dropped for an early lunch at Cardwell. Hinchinbrook Island is just off the coast here. This will be a spot to stop and explore on our next trip up north.

We arrived at Rowes Bay Holiday Park about 2.30pm. We realised that we needed some things from the supermarket, so rode our bikes there via the bike/walking track along the water front. Something different!

Connecting up the water I found that the tap end was the wrong diameter. Now, if we were in our own van I had several that would fit, but could not get one at the supermarket.

Saturday 15 June 2019

First thing in the morning I rode the bike to the hardware store and got the adapter for the water. Thankfully I found a track and some residental streets that made riding easy. Although my backside had forgotten about riding bikes!

After that we had a quiet morning before taking a walk along the beach in the afternoon.

Sunday 16 June 2019

Decided to walk into town for lunch and stopped at the Fish Inn at the Rockpool and then walked the 3km back to the van via the old army site.

Monday 17 June 2019

Packed up and left around 9.30am. Another long drive to Airlie Beach, but we stopped off at Bowen for food shopping and lunch. Stopped at a lovely picnic ground at the beach.

Bowen's another place we would like to stop and explore next time.

Filled up with fuel on arrival at Airlie. Once we had settled in we took a walk around to the marina.

Wednesday 19 June 2019

We packed up and headed south again, stopping at Mackay for an early lunch.

We continued through to Brandybottle Park at Clairview for the night. This is a very small private park on a property , with only a handful of sites, but the owners are super friendly and we all joined in on happy hour. They have their own par 3 golf course there, but unfortunately we didn't get to play it.

Thursday 20 June 2019

Todays drive was down to Rockhampton staying at Gracemere CP a few kilometres to the south west. Nice park. Had a long chat with a couple of Victorian couples heading north for the winter. One to Mission Beach and the other to Bowen.

Friday 21 June 2019

Todays destination was Town of 1770 near Agnes Water. This was one of our favourite spots in this region and loved our week there on the 2016 trip. Again we stayed at the Captain Cook HP.

On that 2016 trip we had missed Gladstone, so this time we diverted, stopping for lunch at Barneys Beach.

Saturday 22 June 2019

We rode the bikes down to the marina cafe for morning coffee.

Booked on the trip out to Lady Musgrave Reef, but the trip was later cancelled due to lack of numbers.

In the afternoon we rode the bikes to Agnes Water and back.

Monday 24 June 2019

Drove down to Childers, stopping at Bundaberg Marina for morning tea.

We had planned to stop at Ironridge Park because of the rave reviews on Wikicamps, but it was full, so we stayed at Childers Tourist Park which is several kilomtres out of town. Very nice rural park, with drive through sites.

Tuesday 25 June 2019

The next leg saw us at Tin Can Bay. We had visited there before but had not stopped. This time we booked into Tin Can Bay CP. Lots of Victorian visitors staying at this really nice CP with brand new facilities.

Later in the afternoon we rode bikes into town to get some supplies.

There was a change in the weather coming and the rain started that evening.

Friday 28 June 2019

We booked out of the hotel and walked along Southbank and took a look to the maritime museum. Very enjoyable. Had lunch at one of the cafes on Southbank and then caught the train to Springfield Lakes to meet up and stay with our niece and her family. We were met at the train station, so no long lugging of cases!