13 September Agnes Waters

13 September
Agnes Waters

Plans are made to be broken – so they say. It also seems that itineraries are made to be changed.

We had planned to stop overnight at Clairview (halfway between Mackay and Rockhampton.) However, when we set up camp, we changed our mind. Who could blame us – look at the view from our kitchen window?

Clairview - view from kitchen window

So we stopped an extra night and for the first time this holiday spent a day doing absolutely nothing! Every other time we had planned a quiet day we had to spend it looking for Battery World or getting things from Bunnings etc. It was a luxury to spend the day reading, playing board games and sitting on the beach watching the water. Bliss.

Darryl loves his baby Weber

Merril experimented and tried baking a cake in the bread machine – and it worked out brilliantly. That will need to be remembered for next holidays. We had previously baked some in the Weber Baby Q – but the bread machine was more successful – no burnt bottom!

A cake cooked in the breadmaker. Yum!

The plan was then to drive to Agnes Waters / 1770 and spend two nights there, and then two nights at Woodgate (near Bundaberg) to arrive home in Brisbane on Friday.

Agnes Waters beach

We now think we will probably just drive straight through to Brisbane tomorrow and arrive home a few days early. That will give us time to clean the van etc. and still have time to relax before Merril returns to work next Monday. We will save exploring south of Mackay for another holiday. Something to look forward to in the future.

We have camped at a bush camp (The Reef Caravan Park) near Agnes Water. A lovely spacious campsite with very few other campers here. It is only a few minutes drive from the beach. Highly recommend it if you ever come camping up here.

Campsite at "The Reef", Agnes waters

So this will be our last blog entry for our North Queensland holidays.

It has been a great holiday. We have seen lots of different scenery and many hundreds of photos have been taken. Looking forward to catching up with you all on our return.

As a last thought ... earlier on in the holiday we saw this Avan! They had mounted the avan onto the back of a truck!

Who says an Avan can't go off-road?

9 September Airlie Beach

9 September
Airlie Beach

Last time we came to Airlie Beach, Sharon was 6 months old. (Just a couple of years ago!) We were camping in a tent with a baby who wanted to crawl everywhere - and it was pouring rain. Putting up and down a tent with a crawling baby was no fun. That was the last time we camped for about 20 years.

As we really didn't get to appreciate this area last time, we were looking forward to seeing Shute Harbour / Airlie Beach in it's glory this visit. We had lovely fine weather - although a bit overcast - as we drove from Townsville. As soon as we arrived in Airlie Beach it poured! And it continued raining all night. The weather forecast said 70% chance of rain for the next couple of days. Sigh. It looked like it would have to be visit 3 before we could see Airlie Beach properly.

Unbelievably, as today progressed, the sun came out and the sky turned blue! It has been a perfect day. Sunny and hot. (Last night the locals were wearing sweatshirts!)

Pigeon Island off Canonvale

Darryl spent this morning reminiscing around Cannonvale where his family used to come on holidays when they lived in Mackay. It is a lovely quiet area not quite as developed / touristy as Airlie Beach. Then we drove around and enjoyed the magnificent views across the ocean to the islands etc. It really is a picturesque area.

Shute Habour

We have only one week left before we need to be back in Brisbane, so we will be heading south tomorrow, stopping overnight at a little town called Clairview, and then driving on to Rockhamptom / Emu Park the following day.

6 September Magnetic Island

6 September

Magnetic Island

Visiting Magnetic Island is one of the things that was on Darryl’s must do list.  In the four plus years that he lived in Townsville as a teenager, he never went over to Magnetic Island, so it was something that he really wanted to do this trip.

We awoke to an overcast and breezy day, consequently, the trip across to Magnetic Island was quite rough. Fortunately it is only a 20 minute ferry ride so we didn’t get too sea-sick.

Magnetic Island is a lovely quiet island of which a large proportion is national park. We hired a little car to get around the island and did a few walks (quite steep in parts). One walk was to The Forts which were ruins from WWII which were on the top of one of the highest points on the island. How they managed to carry the guns and ammunition up this steep slope is incredible. The information signs along the way indicated that a round of ammunition was 45kg which were carried up by hand and they had a large building there to store all that ammunition. We struggled walking up just carrying a small backpack and our water bottle. The views from the Fort were breath-taking. 180’ across the ocean towards Townsville.

View from The Fort walk

WWII ruins at The Fort on Magnetic Island

We were surprised how quiet the island was. Some of the bays were like ghost towns. Hardly anyone to be seen. There were some special events on the week-end (including beer can raft races) which meant that it was crowded then, so we were able to enjoy the peace and quiet today!

Geoffrey Bay walk

Rock wallabies at Geoffrey Bay

We will have a quiet day tomorrow and then head south towards Airlie Beach the following day.

5 September Townsville

5 September
Townsville

We arrived at Townsville yesterday. We have booked into a lovely caravan park which is about 10 minutes out of Townsville. The sites are really large and spacious and the park is very quiet. It is aimed at over 50s … so we feel like the kids here … with the average age of everyone else being 70+. They do have a lovely heated swimming pool so after setting up camp we went for a swim / spa. The advantage of being the youngest campers on site is that we could go for a swim around 6pm when it was dinner time for everyone else so we had the pool to ourselves.

Today we headed into town for the reminiscing tour. Darryl spent a few of his teenage years in Townsville so we went and saw the house where they lived, the school, Boys Brigade church etc. He enjoyed remembering some of the fun times.

House at Cavendish Street, Pimlico  (where Darryl spent some of his teenage years)

We continued the reminiscing by visiting the street where Merril’s mother grew up.

We then went to the Reef HQ Great Barrier Reef Aquarium. It was an excellent display of beautiful colourful reef fish and coral – including some crocodiles and turtles. We felt like we finally saw some of the Great Barrier Reef! The glass bottom boat on Green Island was good but the aquarium was a great opportunity to see the coral and fish in all there splendour! Hey Isaiah - we even saw Nemo and Dory!

Nemo hiding in the coral

This crocodile did not like having his photo taken!

We also drove around The Strand and other general tourist drives. They have really made the most of the foreshore at the Strand by preserving old buildings combined with pleasant streetscaping – including lots of green spaces which is a bit like a larger version of Brisbane Southbank.

Tomorrow we are off to Magnetic Island. We have heard reports that it could be getting windy – so hopefully the boat trip won’t be too rough.

2 September Millaa Millaa

2 September
Millaa Millaa

This is our last day at Millaa Millaa and we seemed to pack a lot into just one day. We visited 4 (or was it 5??) waterfalls. As always, each waterfall was very dramatic and very beautiful. Most of the waterfalls today were close to the car park and so only required a short walk so not such an energetic day.

Millaa Millaa Falls

Mungalli Rapids

We managed to also visit the Mungalli Dairy and enjoyed a Devonshire tea with homemade scones, homemade raspberry jam and lovely real clotted cream! Yum.

Then drove to Tarzaki Lakes and watched some platypus swimming. It was hard for Darryl to get a good photo of them but it was exciting spotting them in the lake.

And as well we managed to squeeze in a game of Lost Cities! What a full day!

Tomorrow we head off to Townsville.

2 September Millaa Millaa

2 September
Millaa Millaa

We have stopped at a lovely little caravan park at Millaa Millaa on the Atherton Tablelands. It is so quiet and our campsite is surrounded by trees and backs onto the rainforest / creek.  The cicadas are singing very loudly and it is lovely to hear the frogs croaking and the whip birds and other birds singing. There is also apparently a local tree kangaroo but we haven’t seen it. We are going to find it very difficult to adjust to staying in the busy caravan parks when we go back to the coast.

We have returned to the Atherton Tablelands because on our way north, the caravan park we had stayed in was full and we couldn’t stay as long as we wanted to. There are lots of waterfalls in this area which Darryl couldn’t miss – so today and tomorrow are waterfall days.

Today we visited four waterfalls. Given that each waterfall needs approx. 1 – 2 hours for photography – it was a full day (and lots of crocheting done by Merril).

We saw the Josephine Falls - magnificent falls. Even though it is the dry season it is incredible the amount of water at all the falls. There was a bit of a walk to the Josephine Falls but it was bitumen surface all the way. Made the walk much easier and it meant that no leeches were to be seen on the path. (Thumbs up from Merril.) These waterfalls appear to be very popular with the younger travellers as there is a large swimming hole with boulders to slide down at the base of the falls.

Josephine Falls

Next stop was the Babinda Boulders. This area consisted of enormous boulders (hence its name) in the creek with a water fall cascading over them. Quite phenomenal how there were these boulders in just one area.

The last two waterfalls required an “old fashioned” bush walk to get to. These were not as popular – indeed we were the only ones there, and the bush path was quite narrow and obviously not as well trodden. It was a lovely walk, although quite steep and slippery in parts. A very wet area and all the rocks edging the path were moss covered. Very pretty.  (No – Merril didn’t see any leeches – but had sprayed herself from head to toe with Aeroguard to make sure that the leeches and ticks stayed away!) The waterfalls were also very spectacular – although much smaller than the Josephine Falls.

Wallacha Falls

While driving we came across a couple of roadside stalls and bought a superb red papaya (we thought of you Mum when we enjoyed it for tea) for only $1!  Might have to call into that stall again on our way out.

We have extended our stay here at Millaa Millaa for an additional night so that we can see some additional falls in the area tomorrow.  We have just read about the local dairy which has a café that sounds nice – so we might just have to visit there tomorrow around morning tea time.

30 August Chillagoe Caves

30 August
Chillagoe Caves

Chillago is a couple of hours drive west of Mareeba. It is a little tiny town which is well known for the dinosaur skeleton which was discovered in 1999 and mining. But it also has some incredible caves. We joined a tour for two of these caves which we thoroughly enjoyed. The stalactite and stalagmite formations in the limestone caves is breathtaking. The last cave we went through had some very small openings which we had to crawl through. Lucky we hadn’t put on too much weight otherwise we might have got well and truly stuck!

Crawling through the caves

Inside Chillago Caves

Tomorrow we will drive to the beaches north of Cairns and have a look around there and then the next day will be heading south – probably to Milaa Milaa. (Apparently there are some waterfalls which we didn't see on our way up!)