Qld 09 - Week 1

Day 1 - Brisbane -> Boyne River

Off bright (if not early) across the Gateway Bridge heading North along what is laughingly called 'Highway 1'. We wanted to get away from the South East before we started exploring as we can revisit this area easily in the future from home.

Overnight stop at the Boyne River Rest Area. For those not familiar with these 'Rest Areas', they are council or state government provided areas, generally adjacent to the highway that allow travellers to rest. Most are free and have toilets and picnic tables. During school holidays there are some with Driver Reviver stalls handing out free tea and coffee. There's also a restriction on the length of time you can stay in them. Normally 48 hours is the maximum.

The Boyne River area is large enough for about 30 or more vehicles and has nice shady trees and a view over the river. It also has a large concrete bridge adjacent to our parking spot that had semi-trailers and B-Doubles crossing it all night. The expansion/joining strips in the concrete created a less-than-soothing rhythm as the trucks went across it at 100kph+ all night!

Lesson #1: Stop early and get a quiet parking spot for the night, well away from the highway!

We found that if we dropped the pop-top roof, it got a bit quieter (but not much).

Day 2 - Boyne River -> Eungella National Park

We turned West from Mackay and the coast, and proceeded up the Pioneer Valley. At the end of the Pioneer Valley is the village of Finch Hatton, surrounded by ranges and the Eungella National Park. We climbed the steep road to Eungella and then, after a chat with the ranger, drove down a narrow dirt track to a secluded spot called The Diggings.

Yes, the slope is as steep as it looks, but we were trying out our 'semi-off-road' caravan so we just HAD to take it off the bitumen!

The ranger had said that it was quiet and we wouldn't be disturbed. He was correct - we saw 1 car in 2 days (and we think they were lost as it was a regular small 2 door sedan).

The surroundings were lovely, with a creek running right by the van and lots of birds in the rain forest. As it was about 3000' up and in a valley, we noticed a slight chill the first evening that turned into a very cold night (4°C). As this trip was to be mostly in the tropics, we had not brought much in the way of blankets, so ended up dropping the roof to keep some of the warmth in (the van walls are insulated, but the pop-top section sides are only vinyl).

Lesson #2:- It can get cold, even in the tropics!

It was beautifully peaceful there and we spent time reading, walking and just waiting for the platypus to make an appearance.

Day 3 - Eungella National Park

Much the same as Day 2. Just relaxing. The platypuses made an appearance just on dark, so no photos - sorry. We hope the other pictures make up for the lack of a platypus. :-)

The creek downstream of the pool and just below the caravan. It made a delightful gurgling noise as it ran over the rocks. Ideal to fall asleep to.

Sundowners time. Well, we said it got cold, so we had to have a fire. The shorts and thongs kind of give the game away a bit, though. :-)

Day 4 - Eungella National Park -> Mackay

We came down off the mountain and drove back to Mackay and civilisation. I had lived in Mackay for 5 years in the early '70s but had never been back. The changes were remarkable. Where there had been sugar cane fields a block from my house, there was now either shopping centres or suburban houses. Down at the harbour there were apartments and a marina!

An area of swamp known as The Gooseponds is now a lake with trees and cycle paths.

Day 5 - Mackay -> Shute Harbour

After a night with power and mains hot water (Ahhh, luxury!) at a caravan park, we set off North again, this time to Airlie Beach / Shute Harbour - the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands.

The Whitsunday Islands are a beautiful group of tropical islands just off the coast of Central Qld. The jumping off point is either Airlie Beach or Shute Harbour (if you aren't jet-setting straight into Hamilton Island). We checked into a caravan park located just behind Shute Harbour airstrip - something we were unaware of at the time. It was very inviting with lots of tropical trees and palms (and shade). At dusk while chatting to a German family in a campervan next to our van, we were disturbed by a small visitor.

This was a female ring-tailed possum - one of a number who live in the trees around the park and come out at night looking for a meal of fruit and insects and anything else they can get from the humans in the park. It rejected our initial offer of a strawberry but must have come back later as the strawberry had gone by 9pm. Our foreign visitors were fascinated as all the wildlife they'd seen so far was dead kangaroos by the sides of the highway. After watching it for a while and remarking that it looked both cute and VERY well fed, we were surprised to see a small head protrude from between her front legs - she had a baby in her pouch! Regrettably this didn't last long and the photographer had put his camera away by then so you'll just have to imagine it. :-)

Day 6 - Shute Harbour -> Toomulla Beach

The day began at 6am with the sound of a Pratt & Whitney alarm clock. As mentioned above, we had chosen a caravan park right next to the airport that services the islands with amphibious float planes, mainly DH Beavers and Cessna Caravans. It's the home of Air Whitsunday and they have one of their original Lake Skimmers on a stand at the airport gates. I remember it well from my time in Mackay Tower.

We took a drive around Shute Harbour before we headed off north again. This is the port where most of the tourist boats depart from. They cruise out to the resort islands as well as to the outer limits of the Great Barrier Reef.

This is the entrance to the Harbour.

This is looking out to sea with some of the closer islands. Not a bad view to wake up to, is it?

The rest of the day was taken up by covering more kilometres until we got north of Townsville to another rest area called Toomulla Beach. We had initially tried to stop at another beach, but found that the small camping area was packed with vans and motor-homes parked really close to each other. As this was not our scene, we moved on another 30 kms and found this spot situated just back from the beach and about 2 kms from the highway. Note we are already taking heed of Lesson #1! (Stop early and away from the highway noise)

These are Ibises (ibi??) on the path leading to the beach.

This is a general view of the rest area - we're in the background under the trees. We have to keep telling ourselves that this is FREE!

We ended the day with a stroll on the beach. Sue, as usual, was looking for shells.

Day 7 - Toomulla Beach -> Babinda

Off early and still heading north. Not a big day, but we wanted to end today's trip within easy reach of Cairns. By now we were well into the Nth Qld sugar cane growing area and were surrounded by cane up to 2 metres tall. The harvesting was in full swing (May - Dec) so we had to be on the lookout for cane trains and trucks carrying harvested cane to the various sugar mills. The cane trains run on narrow gauge tracks (2' gauge) to haul cane from the farmers' fields to the mill. In places where the rails don't reach the farm, the rail cars are pushed onto the backs of trucks and loaded straight from the harvesters.

This is a cane hauler about to take on a load of cut cane from the harvester.

Everyone in North Qld is cheerful, even engine drivers!

This is the Tully Mill, one of the bigger mills in the region. You can see all the cane trucks waiting to be processed.

Tully gets the highest average rainfall in Australia (4.4m or nearly 14½ ft per year). To celebrate this, they have erected the Golden Gumboot.

The height of the Golden Gumboot is the same as the maximum annual rainfall they have ever had.

In 1950, their annual rainfall was 7.9m or 25ft 11inches.

There is a long-standing rivalry between the towns of Tully, Babinda and Innisfail as to which is the wettest. According to legend it became a two-horse race when Innisfail’s recorded rainfall dropped markedly when the rain gauge was moved from next to the public toilets.

We stopped for the night at Babinda at another delightful rest area on the banks of the local creek.

Our van was parked about 100 yds along on the left. There must be a law about having so much pleasant scenery right outside your caravan window.

Tomorrow, Cairns!

Continue to Week Number 2 -> Qld 09 - Week 2