Well after a great three weeks at Mission Beach we headed off on our way south.  With the weather slowly warming up we are going to head for Canberra by making our way slowly down the Queensland coast with a short stopover in Brisbane so Kaye can fly home for a week to look after Renae when she has her wisdom teeth removed.

Our first stopover was back in Townsville for two nights.  We caught up with Gayle and Dan who took us to a great Indian restaurant for a meal.  As we had already spent a week in Townsville previously we didn’t feel the need to spend much time there this time around.  One thing we did do while in Townsville was visit a great swimming pool that they have built by the river.  This is right along side the Ross River and covers an area equivalent to three Olympic swimming pools with an upper and lower lagoon.  There is also a 77mtr lap pool that I did look at but very quickly dismissed as not a good idea to try and attempt.  It was also free to enter which is quite special when you see how good the facility is.  Something a lot of places around the country could look at.

 

From Townsville it was off to Bowen.  Compared to the great coastline we had been seeing so far Bowen was quite different.  The coastline is quite rocky with small areas of beach.  We stayed at a caravan park at Horseshoe Bay and it was quite expensive compared to what we had been used to paying.  It was nice though but as the weather was quite humid we spent most of our time just swimming.

 

 

 

From Bowen it was short drive next down to Arlie Beach.  We had heard a bit about Arlie Beach as being a good place to look at the Whitsunday Islands from.  We stayed a little bit out of Arlie at the Flametree Forest CP which wasn’t a bad place at all.  Nice green grassy sites and fairly quiet which is what we like.  We did some short drives also around the area and looked at Dingo Beach -(didn’t see any dingoes), Cedar Creek Falls and Proserpine.  Cedar Creek Falls were the first falls we have seen that were dry.  After all the other great waterfalls we have seen so far in Queensland this was a real surprise for us to see.

We decided to arrange to book on a day tour cruise of the Whitsundays while here in Arlie Beach.  The big problem you are faced with is deciding which tour to take as there are lots to choose from.  We decided on a Reefstar Three Island Cruise which was excellent.  There was tea and coffee all day with snacks that you could have as well.  The lunch was plentiful and also very nice.  The licensed bar was also nice on the trip back home to allow you to relax and take in the days activities.  The boat was a large Cat and the weather on the day was perfect.  The islands we looked at were Hill Inlet Lookout/North Whitehaven Beach, Bali Hai Island where we did some great snorkelling, and Daydream Island.  Apparently a lot of the resorts off the coast are struggling with some of them not operating at all.  The resort on Daydream Island was starting to show its age and looks in need of a facelift to keep in up with the newer overseas destinations.  Whitehaven Beach was pretty special and the white sand is really fine grained sand.  One thing that we did notice was that there were not many palm trees on any of the islands.  A lot of them are virtually large rocky rises out of the ocean and covered in dense scrub.  The Whitsunday’s definitely are worth seeing and I can see why people come here and hire boats and cruise the Whitsunday’s for holidays.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We really enjoyed our short stay ay Arlie but sadly we had to keep moving so next it was off to Mackay.  We had a two stay arranged and stayed at the Andergrove CP which was a pretty good choice.  Big sites and nice grass and not to noisy.  While in Mackay we booked ourselves onto a Sugar Mill Tour.  As we had seen heaps of sugar being grown, harvested and railed we thought we should see what process it goes through at the end of the line.  The sugar mill in Mackay is about 130 years old and still looks it in some parts.  It was an interesting tour and they do work the old mill very hard keeping up with production requirements.

We did a short half day drive to some of the small coastal areas around Mackay and some of these were worth the drive while others looked like they were really struggling to survive.  A lot of these places have small enclosed swimming areas surrounded in plastic mesh so you can go swimming in summer with a reduced risk of getting attacked by stingers.  In general though most places in the north of Queensland all seem to be busy and doing pretty good considering the way the economy is.  They are lucky I guess to have quite large population areas around north Queensland that help to keep people in the areas and also tourists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A small place called Clairview was our next stop after Mackay.   Clairview is a very small coastal village that is mainly holiday shacks with a reasonable caravan park called the Barracrab.  After arriving we decided to stay in the non powered area.  The water here is only bore water and as we don’t really need power we decided to stay in the cheap ass section.  Also you could just pick anywhere to camp and we were right next to the beach which was really nice.  There is a licensed bar and they do a pretty good fish and chips as well.  This was just three days of not doing very much, doing some reading and going for long romantic walks along the beach.  While at Clairview they were having in excess of 8mtr tides and with the beach being so flat the water went out for a few kilometres at low tide.

 

 

 

After a very easy time at Clairview we were on the road again towards Rockhampton.  This is only going to be a short two day stay to restock the drinks fridge and probably get some food as well.  I always thought Rockhampton was on the coast and was surprised to be about 40 kilometres away when we arrived.  This is also another large regional centre that helps support Queensland in the country areas.

Rockhampton does have an excellent small zoo that is right next door to the botanical gardens.  The zoo is fee to enter and they are in the process of doing some refurbishment works that will further improve this small excellent facility.  During our earlier travels in Queensland we had seen photos of the Rose Crowned Fruit Dove but had not managed to see one in our walks around.  They have several in the huge walk through aviary at this zoo so it was good to see the in the flesh so to speak.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We hopefully will be back up this way next year and it would be nice to have a better look around.  The only problem is that there are so many other places to visit and not just in Queensland.  That’s all the fun at the moment, deciding just where to go next and in what direction…….