Airlie Beach was great. Friends we met on a cruise in 2018 live there and made us feel very welcome. On their large suburban block at Cannonvale, a “suburb” of Airlie Beach, they have a nice house which they rent out permanently, a large shed for their vehicles and a huge open shed for their 5th wheeler, with room for our van as well. With that arrangement they and their dog can be in Airlie Beach anytime they want or travel anytime they want. It’s a good life.

We did lots of sightseeing, eating, drinking and talking. Vanessa cooked wonderful meals and snacks (she must have thought we needed fattening) and Jim helped with a few caravan maintenance jobs.

About 80 km north, Bowen sits on a prominent headland that juts out into the smooth waters of the Whitsunday Islands. Although only 11,000 people live in Bowen the town covers quite a large area because of rocky outcrops, mangrove swamps and several remaining cane, fruit and vegetable farms.

There is one beach about 4 km long and four much smaller beaches. Apparently crocodiles, although present in swamps, creeks and inlets, are not a problems on open beaches so we swam yesterday at one of the prettiest beaches we’ve seen, Horseshoe Bay. It’s only a couple of hundred metres wide, with clean sand, clear water, and large rocks at both ends of the bay that are home to quite a few corals and fish. With air temperature of 24 degrees and water temp of 23 degrees, it was an opportunity not to be missed – so snorkelling on a couple of days was good fun.

Tomorrow it’s time to head off again; not sure where but looking forward to it.

We are pleased to hear that Victorians now have reduced Covid-19 restrictions than when we posted out previous update but now New South Wales is in trouble. Obviously we need to keep pushing on with the vaccination program – we had our first one before leaving home and are due for the follow-up in July.

As always we hope everyone keeps healthy and safe.

Ted and Jo

Can’t believe that it’s almost 2 weeks since our last update. Where does the time go? We are now at Cape Hillsborough, about 60 km north of Mackay and, looking back on it, we have been quite relaxed for that time.

We stayed at Hervey Bay for 3 nights, doing not much but laundry, shopping and having lunch out. One restaurant, Water’s Edge, was very nice, with a range of very interesting seafood options. We didn’t know how big Hervey Bay was but there are 23 caravan parks in and near the city so it’s quite large.

On the way to Mackay we spent a couple of nights at Fardooley’s Bush Camp, on the top of a hill about 20 km north of Rockhampton. Only a small camp, it used to be a dairy farm then beef cattle farm before it became solely a camp ground about 8 years ago. It’s basic, with about 18 camp sites, water, toilets and showers and no power but the view is good and the owners are very friendly. All guests are invited to the owners’ bar for happy hour each afternoon where we were served free hot dogs and drinks were available for a reasonable price. Good fun. We stayed for 2 nights, with fog and light rain for most of the day that we were there.

Next stop was 350 km away at Blacks Beach, Mackay. It appears to be the only caravan park in Mackay near the beach. We scored one of only 6 caravan sites with absolute beach frontage.

It’s a nice park, with quite large sites and happy hour overlooking the beach was relaxing, although not as warm as we had expected. It seems that most of Queensland is experiencing a cold spell, 23 deg here.

Our main reason for visiting Mackay was to see some friends who we met on the Gibb River Rd 2 years ago. We really enjoyed spending time with Kate and Ben and their 3 boys, aged 6, 4 and 2. It was good to see them every day for 4 days.

From Mackay we travelled for an hour to Cape Hillsborough caravan park, on the beach in the National,park of the same name. We can’t see the ocean from any of the sites but it’s only about 50m away and we can hear the small waves. The tide goes out a long way on the very shallow beach. Highlights here are the kangaroos in the park, wandering around amongst people, vans and tents and also on the at dawn (6am). Kookaburras are very cheeky looking for food from campers. Bush walks are another highlight, some easy and some quite steep, all through dense rainforest.

This morning we’ll leave for Airlie Beach to visit more friends.

We are both well and thinking of everyone in Covid-19 stricken Victoria. It is really pleasing to hear that restrictions are being eased tomorrow and school goes back in a few days. Everyone, keep healthy and safe until we see you again.

Ted and Jo