We left Cairns on Thursday morning after having being there for about 3 and half weeks. With us needing to be home in early October we wanted plenty of time to continue to take the longest way home we could do. We also wanted to drop into Hervey Bay to check on Brownie and family and to look at a bike shop in the Sunshine Coast.

So we headed up the Kuranda Range to say farewell to the rello’s who live outside Mareeba, unfortunately they weren’t home so we left a note and pressed on. The mornings travel was through Mareeba, Atherton, Ravenshoe (Queenslands Highest Town and we peaked at over 1100 metres above sea level) before we had lunch on the side of the south of Mt Garnet.

After turning left at the Lynd Junction (just a corner in the middle of nowhere), we camped that night was at a place called Fletchers Rest Area – right next to the Burdekin River which did not have a lot of water in it at all. This area is a well known stopping spot for caravaners, and covers a huge area both sides of the river and the highway, its so big caravan can be further than 300 metres apart. The main claim to fame for this part of the world is it history around 1942 during which time the boarding school in Charters Towers gave up it’s buildings and infrastructure for war effort, namely to give injured military respite and hospital care. During this the school students, teachers and support staff were relocated to the side of a river for a school year. They conducted all the normal school activities plus keep up with school sport during this time. More info can be found here http://www.ozatwar.com/locations/allsouls.htm

On Friday we walked around the rest area (5000 steps) before heading into Charters Towers for a coffee – all I can say is don’t buy it from the place next to the Information Centre in the main part of town! We had lunch at the Belyando Crossing rest area which at the side of the roadhouse, which is on the banks of the Belyando River. The picnic area is nice, the birds very friendly and the toilets cost $2 to get the keys.

We pressed on south and although the highway bypasses Clermont we went in to have a quick drive around – fuel at the roadhouse on the highway was $1.36 per litre, in Clermont it was $1.21. No prizes for guessing where we fuelled up! At Emerald we saw the nomads and their caravans literally staying in any of the parks and rest areas in town – we don’t know if there was something on in the town, but it was a bit weird seeing them camp like that. From Emerald we went left back towards the coast and stopped overnight at Blackwater.

This is now very much Queensland coal country, with piles of the stuff near the roads, in fact near Emerald there is a conveyer belt that runs along side the for quite a few k’s. The trains also run a lot out here to take the coal to the coast.

At Blackwater we stayed at the show grounds – nice facilities, not crowded and a fair distance from the main road and train line, the cost was $10 for the night. After a good nights sleep we sampled the McDonalds Coffee and hash browns before heading out. We followed the train lines and saw quite a few trains with 3 engines heading west, one at each end and one in the middle pulling coal carrying trucks. Jo counted a couple that went passed us and got to 90 carriages each time.

We continued east for a bit more and went through many small towns and villages with weird and wonderful names, I am sure that places such as Yamala, Rangal, Parnabal have some claim to fame, but the town of Dingo on this road is the home of the world championship Dingo Trap Throwing Competition, I can only imagine the preparation they must do for that one! The lunch stop was at Theodore before we camped for the night in a small national park near Eidsvold. The signs at the national park insisted we ring and book online for the stay at the park, and with the patchy phone service we tried, we really did….ironically, near by there is weir which you can camp next to for free.

You have to love these Queensland town names, the next main ones we went through was Mundubbera, Gayndah (apparently Queenslands oldest town), Biggenden and Childers amongst the many we went through.

By now it was Sunday and we booked into a caravan park in Hervey Bay for a couple of nights. That afternoon we caught up with Brownie and family for dinner and a chat. The next day Jo and I drove down to the Sunshine Coast via the Bruce Highway to check out a few things. The first was “Beefys Pies” at Gympie who make the only GF Pie that the Coeliac Society recognise. Its been a long time since I had a pie for mornos! We also took my old bike and went to a bike shop which had a few bikes that I was interested in – needless to say we back with a new bike, and they were shipping my old bike back to Canberra.

The drive back to Hervey Bay was very slow, and apart from stopping at he pie shop to pick up a couple of frozen ones for “later”, there were lots of road works stretching for many K’s. At one point, just where there were concrete barriers either side of the road for road works there was a crash between a couple of cars. We sat in the traffic jam for about 90 minutes before it was clear enough for us to continue, only to run into some nice Queensland storms complete with hail.

On Tuesday we left Hervey Bay after saying farewell to the Browns and headed west again with the van on the back. We travelled some of the back roads before heading towards Moonie when we had a few more storms – these one were severe enough to cut power into Brisbane and from our perspective had the works – wind, heavy rain, in some cases minor flooding on the road followed by clear skies. We kept going until the clear skies happened and found a gravel pit to stop on about 40k’s east of Moonie – the weber came out and another great meal (roast pork) was had.

On this trip we have had a mixture of short and long days in car, but mostly from Cairns they had been short hops and from the campsite to Boomi was no exception, it was another day of less than 3 hours driving to Boomi.

Boomi is a town we have been to a couple of times, but had never managed to have a dip in the artesian bore pools they have here. The artesian baths are open from 9 to 12 and 2 to 5 each day and costs $5 to spend the day in the pool complex. As we arrived at 11.57 we decided to stay for the afternoon in the complex and spend the night there. Boomi itself is a pleasant town, with a state school, a pub, a small general store/take away, a unmanned fuel station and the pool complex. With the exception of the pub and the school, everything is run by the BCC – Boomi Community Co-op with the proceeds going back in to the town it self. We lashed out and had dinner at the pub, the new back packer bar maid from Wales (sorry – no photos) was very new – she struggled to get a Lime and Soda in a schooner glass….The dinner was very much a traditional pub meal, so big you couldn’t jump over it and very reasonably priced, we couldn’t get through our meals so we took some home in a takeaway container!

We moved onto Lightning Ridge to stay there for a few nights – we were in at lunch time so a GF pie came out of the freezer! The park there was packed to the brim with the warm weather (32 degrees plus) keeping people quiet but the flies busy. From the ‘Ridge, it was a easy couple of days back to Canberra. We will check out the new place prior to settlement and think about what’s next….

Other notable notes:

• Caravan park prices ranged from $16 to $51 for a powered site for exactly the same things, power, pool and good facilities.
• Diesel prices were really weird proving I suppose what we all think. The most we paid was $1.55 at Windorah (which is on the main road to Birdsville from the east). 50 k’s further north it was $1.45. Cairns was $1.36 in most places with some being dearer. 30 minutes from Cairns was $1.21. Most of western Queensland was much the same as Cairns, with the coast being cheaper – around Gympie we paid $1.15. One of the surprises is that both Boomi and Lightning Ridge were $1.30.
• The Landcruiser is doing well now – settling down to low 16 litres per hundred K’s sitting just below a 100 towing the van with stuff on the roof rack, headwinds though knock the stuffing out of the fuel consumption. Remembering we picked it up in late Feb and didn’t drive it much, it now has 24000 K’s on the clock. The bells and chimes it has are annoying and inconsistent, one example – it took some time to work out that if you open the boot (with the car unlocked) with the keys out of range of the car, it was quiet and if you have your keys in your pocket as the boot raises it has a bell telling you all about it!
• The van after the early excitement, has performed flawlessly since that first week.

Well that’s it folks…thanks for following the story and enjoy the last of the photos below!

Til next time.

Cheers

J&J