Aug Sep 2018 Brodie’s next 15,000 klm
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On th e road again
Blog page at issuu.com/janandkeithtravels
Heading for Central Qld Having just downsized to a over 55 community village we needed new furniture ... you cant put old furniture in a new house well... not according to Jan The new furniture would not be ready for 7 weeks so it was time for another trip, we took a few days to unpack some boxes in the new house and finalise paper work before heading north. Toowoomba was to be our first stop, the journey took us through Casino, Kyogle and up the Mount Lindsay Highway into Queensland. It is a very popular route for motorcycle groups as it is very windy and little traffic or police. Unfortunately it was too much for one rider as we came upon an accident scene with what appeared to be a body bag been loaded into the rescue helicopter and a smashed bike. It didn’t seem to slow the other groups of bikes that passed us. Parts of the Mt Lindsay Highway is like a goat track with huge pot holes, when we finally got to Federation Park, our stop for the night, we noticed we had lost one of the fridge ventilation grills, a visit to Mitre 10, a bit of fly wire and the hole was insect proof until we can get a replacement. Federation Park is just outside Toowoomba with clean toilets and well looked after grounds including an arbor with all Australia Prime Ministers. In fact our 3rd Prime Minister, held the position may not have even been a British subject as he was born in Chile .. wouldn't that have made headlines if it happened today
Federation Park
The next morning saw the obligatory breakfast at Macca’s and then the plan was to visit the Army Aviation Museum at Oakey. It’s website said it was open Wednesday thru Sunday. It being Sunday we headed out there only to find it doesn’t open Sundays .. it seems Wed thru Sun isn’t inclusive .. maybe another time. Pressing on and still with the free or low cost camping in mind we decided on the Wallumbilla Showground as our next stop. It was a 10 dollar donation with very clean amenities .what a great community effort. Unfortunately the toilets were a considerable distance from the vans (according to Jan) but after being told if she used the our toilet she would have to empty it she decided she needed the exercise. All in all it was very nice sight although the temperature did drop to 1 degree outside but the diesel heater did its job.
After leaving the showground we found there was a Maccas in Roma and a really big tree. After satisfying both stomach and sightseeing we headed towards Springsure with a few stops on the way.
Virgin Rock at Springsure was our free the rock formation looking like the Mad
The car park was already full but we fo and enjoyed an happy hour with some
At night time the rock features were illu backdrop to the evening.
e camp for the night, so named by donna..
ound nice spot closer to the road of the other campers.
uminated to give a beautiful
We had booked 3 nights at Clermont, so once the site was set up we loaded the bikes with gold finding stuff and rode the 10 klm to the nearest public fossiking area. These areas “GPA” allow the public to fossick for gold or gems as long as they have a fossicking licence. .. it doesn’t mean you will find gold!! We were assured that people were finding gold, but after a few hours of wandering around and digging up junk our attention span dwindled and we headed back to the caravan park. We had an interesting chat with another camper, who suggested that a couple of hours was well short of the months other people spent to find a match head size nugget of gold. Well we want to be luckier than that!
CLERMONT GO
Over the next couple of days we tried several areas but with no luck. I tried divining rods and even though I could find Jan’s thick gold ring (obviously one I hadn’t given her) and some old bullets we still weren’t successful. After being given some advice to carry gold in my devining hand the rods stopped working all together so I really don’t if they are any good for gold or not.
OLDFIELDS
Charters After many hours over a few days looking for gold at Claremont, we moved on to Charters Towers. Charters Towers was once the Kalgoorlie of Queensland, hosting Qld largest gold rush towards the end of the 19th century. In fact in its heyday it was Qld’s 2nd largest city complete with beautiful old buildings and old style mansions scattered around the city. We did a tour of the Venus Battery, the most complete of the gold crushing plants still left in Qld, wasn’t all that photogenic but the story and the processes were extremely interesting. We found a free camp (McCrossan Park) about 20 k from the city, nice site, heaps of vans and reasonable amenities ... still someone stole all the water for there van so there was none left to flush the toilets
Towers
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Fletchers Creek 40k from Charters Towers After spending the day in Charters Towers we thought this free camp being 40 odd ks out of town would be fairly quiet ... Well!! there were 3 areas and about 150 vans and one toilet a few hundred metres and a creek away from us, fortunately we have our own. I know it's a free camp with the only rules being common courtesy, but some goose decided to use his chainsaw for over an hour at 8pm .. now thats a lot of wood cutting especially in the dark, and then we had 10 young people in 3 vehicles setup metres from us and then start all their vehicles at 6 in the morning and left them running for nearly an hour ..talk about warming your motor ..idiots.
After leaving the Charters Tower area the next stop was the Undarra Lava Tubes National Park, we had visited the tubes about 25 years ago and assumed they hadn’t changed much and instead did the Kalkani crater walk. The volcano must have been quite small as the crater was still complete and about 500 metre in diameter and the crater walk was a bit over 1.5 klms ... I know you could do the pi x d calculation but I only guessed the diameter.
Kalkani Crater
Undarra Volcanic Park
Ringers Re
After leaving the Undarra area our next stop was Mareeba, we decided to stay at “Ringers Rest” as we heard the tourist balloons sometimes land near the vans and as you can see we weren’t disappointed, the place was pretty basic but 8 balloons with two landing within 100 metres it was certainly worth the 10 dollar overnight price. Admittedly we had to get up at 6am but even after watching the balloons pack up we still had time for Maccas before heading towards Cairns. Our first stop heading down the range was the tourist township of Kuranda, thousand of tourists flock here every day by train and cable car but it didn’t hold our attention for long as it was just shops selling the usual tourist junk.
est Mareeba
Barron Fall
ls Kuranda
Cai We tried to book Palm Cove, a little way out of Cairns and on the beach, but it was booked out so we settled for 7 nights in the Cairns Holiday Park, about 5ks from CBD. The ďŹ rst day we went for a walk into town , read the signs telling us not to swim, walked home and jumped on the bikes. Cairns has a nice bike track that loops around the Foreshore up through the Botanical Gardens and back along the railway line, a very pleasant ride that we did quite a few times including wandering around the Botanical Gardens during our stay.
irns
Yorkies What a hidden jewel this beach was , no problem parking, the beach almost to ourselves and the last croc sighted here (according to locals) was 20 years ago. We spent the morning swimming, sunbaking and metal detecting. Jan managed to ďŹ nd a 20 cent coin Wow!! the excitement was almost too much behold, especially after all the bottle tops and drink cans. We drove up to Port Douglas, but I really don’t get its rep, with its resorts and overpriced shops and no easy parking, there are so many other pretty places .
s Knob
The Great Barrier Reef
We picked Compass Cruises for our reef trip, I must admit it was the cheapest (by nearly $100 each!!) but except for an older and slower boat we got a similar experience to the more expensive tours ... say what you will but we are $200 better off. After about 90 min boat trip , we arrived at th outer reef for our first snorkel adventure. We both decided on buoyancy jackets so we could concentrate on viewing the reef. Jan didn’t stay in the water as long as me but I had the camera so I had to get the shots.
Hartleys Wi You couldn’t visit Far North Qld without seeing two of the most dangerous inhabitants, the salt water crocodile and the Cassowary. Being wild animals they tend not to appear on demand so the wildlife park entertained us all day with lots of crocs, snakes and a couple of Cassowaries. The park had a river ride, feeding shows and an attack show’ I even got to eat some deep fried crocodile ... tasted like chicken(maybe it was chicken, after all buffalos don’t have wings.
Wildlife Park
Mossman Mossman Gorge was a must see and a few hours were spent exploring it. There was a really nice swimming hole, full of tourists, and of course the iconic Rex river suspension bridge. There was a 2.4klm loop walk and when Jan ďŹ nally ran out of excuses we wandered around it in around an hour. The path consisted of dirt, rocks and roots, we spent so much time watching our footing we didn’t pay much attention to our surroundings but most of what we did notice was green trees and bushes. The creeks running through the boulders were well worth seeing.
n Gorge
The park was the dream of Jose Paronella, arriving in Australia in the 1930's with the dream of building a castle for his betrothed back in Spain. Hard work, incredible business skills and 10 years saw him returning to Spain only to ďŹ nd his betrothed had married someone else. He returned to Aust with a new wife, his betrothed’s sister, and completed his dream .... a beautiful recreation park that people ocked to.
Paronella Park
The park had the ďŹ rst private hydro electric plant decades before the area around the park had electricity. There were movies shown, ice cream was available, things that were only available to city folk and not in such beautiful surroundings. Unfortunately over the years cyclones and oods ravaged the park, but the present owners are trying to stop further ruin so it continue to pay homage to Jose dream. Google Paronella Park it's a great story!
We left the park fairly early and headed for the Innisfail Maccas for breakfast. The little cane haulage trains were quite a novelty and to actually watch one trundle down the main street of South Johnstone was quite exciting. We read on the net of a beach where cassowaries quite often wandered and this meant a 50k detour off highway to the coast .... a lovely beach, no cassowaries but Jan decided to use the metal detector
and was rewarded with digging up 9 Corona beer bottle tops over the hour we spent there, she took that as an omen and has now made Corona her beer of choice! After having a pleasant few hours on the beach we decided to try and get a beach stay that night. King Reef Resort at Kurrimine Beach filled the bill. After booking in, the caravan park being right on the beach it was time for metal detecting and a swim.. The tide was out so there was plenty of beach for Jan to find nothing and an awful long way to find water deep enough to swim in. So after finding a few coke cans and the exposed reef preventing swimming ( they hadn’t seen any crocs for a while.) we had a quiet night with the promise of a high tide in the morning. We awoke to high winds, I’m sure the motorhome causes them, thus no swimming but a quick drone photo and we were on our way.
Townsville After leaving the beaches it was time to try a city ... Townsville. We decided to stay at the Adventist Convention Center, it was considerasbly cheaper and nicely positioned with a great bike track and a Maccas within walking distance .. what more could you ask for.
The Park
With the park in a no fly zone and military helicopters regularly passing overhead there are drone photos but it is a huge grassy area with fairly old but clean amenities .. we would stay there again.
The Park
After a nice bike ride we headed in the motorhome to check out the city, as expected it was fairly busy and close to the CBD you had to pay for parking. The Strand was a road that travelled the northern side of the foreshore mainly consisting of restaurants, coffee shops and other tourist attracting yuppy shops. We couldn’t get a parking
View from Jezzine Barracks
space so drove upto the Jezzine Barracks and spent sometime at the Army museum. We spent a couple of nights at Townsville but decided it was just too busy so we headed south. We checked out a few beaches on our way south and finally decided to stay at Bowen
Bow
We spent a night at a Queens Beach park, a nice beachside park. Jan spent a a drink can was the only find, the sand was a lot dirtier than some of the pristin north. The film “Australia” redesigned parts of Bowen to represent Darwin, this pier w bombs first started dropping with the attack on Darwin.
Although we were there on a weekend Bowen seemed a nice quiet country tow
wen
a bit of time detecting but ne beaches of the far
was the one there the
wn.
Shute Harbour
Once again looking for bargains we booked into Tallowwood Caravan Park, about 15 ks from Airlie Beach but half the price of those closer in. This was a real bush park, evidently it had spent 20 years as a nudist resort before becoming a bit more mainstream, It was very secluded and built on the side of a hill, lots of steps and unisex amenities ... fortunately everyone kept their clothes on as most of us were grey nomads and defiantly need clothes to keep all our bits in the right places.
Airlie beach is a jumping off place for the reef so lots of tourist shops, so after chilling out for a couple of days we on the road again ..... pulled into a Sarina caravan park and the drought broke! so no photos and we spent the night wondering whether we would get bogged on the wet grass....we didn’t! Headed off for Rockhampton first thing and out of the rain.
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Taylorwood Park
Rockhampton We arrived in Rockhampton and Jan spotted some furniture shops, I think that will bring to 5002 as the total we have looked at for that special dinning table .... its got to be out there somewhere! Rockhampton has a lovely free camp at the edge of Kershaw Gardens. Kershaw Gardens is a beautiful big park with wandering paths, forest areas, kids water fountains and even a waterfall. We spent a couple of hours enjoying it. On the otherside of the free camp was a huge shopping centre so everything at your door step. In fact we spent the afternoon at the movies ... must be a grey nomad thing. The next day we drove into the city, found a parking spot by the river and wandered the main street. Like a lot of cites the shopping strip consisted of boutique type shops as most of the nationals were ensconced in big satellite shopping centres, so it was not as vibrant as you might have expected but from the look of some of the beautiful old buildings it must been a grand old town in its day.
Post OďŹƒce
Kershaw Gardens
We had booked a theatre restaurant in Yeppoon for the Friday night, unfortunately they rang me and said they were booked out and could change our booking to Sunday night including a free powered site..BONUS! This left us with a couple of days to fill in so we booked into an unpowered site at the NRMA Capricorn Holiday Village ... a nice grassy site and immaculate facilities for just $18 a night so we took two. Twenty five years had passed since our last visit and although the town had grown it certainly wasn’t busy. Back then we had stayed at this super dooper state of the art Japanese resort, alas when we drove past it had been closed for quite a few years and was just a derelict ghost resort. I saw all these signs for Byland and without checking we decided to visit, thinking it was an other beach hamlet .... 35ks later we were in the middle of the bush miles from the coast, outside the Byland General store and that was it. A great staging spot, evidently, for bush walkers and nature lovers doesn’t quite describe us. When we got back to our park it was off to the beach .. the tide was out and while Jan used the metal detector I walked out to see about 400 metres looking for water deep enough to swim in..
Mullimbah We spent a couple of nights at Mullimbah beach, we usually awake early so we had a look at Emu Point and the “Singing Ship” and the surrounding beach areas even found a mobile fish and chip van ... the chips were pretty good. Heading back to park for a rest and we were met by this sight.... rest forgotten with the sailing occupying the afternoon.
h Beach
One of the advantages of the big tides, so much sand is uncovered at low tide it is ideal for sand yachts. There were about 8 of them and it looked heaps of fun. Perhaps it will be a new sport for me.. Of course they need wind which makes the beach a bit uncomfortable, but the way the motorhome attracts wind it could be a lot of fun out on the salt pans of the outback.
The last night in Yeppoon we stayed at Footlights Theatre site, they provide a free camp site to patrons. We had a great time at the show enjoying the comedy and the three course meal.
We couldn’t leave Rockhampton without a visit to the free zoo ... yep free! It was part of the Botanical Gardens and had a collection of mainly Australian animals with the chimps making the centerpiece. We spent a very peaceful few hours with Jan (although she denies it) got clucky over a 4 month old chimp and spent at least an hour watching its antics ... judging the rest of the crowd it must be a woman thing.
After hearing so much about Seventeen Seventy we decided it warranted a second visit, we had been there about 20 years ago and very little had changed although Agnes Waters had grown in leaps and bounds. The caravan park was right on the beach and a very friendly group of people around us. It would be ideal for a laid back holiday.
Looking inland from the park, Seventeen Seventy is one of the few places where you view both sunset and sunrise over the ocean.
Seventeen Seventy
This boat was sunk by heavy rain and the hull is now so full of sand that it is uneconomical to salvage .. just makes for a interesting site 100 metres oshore from the park.
Rainbow Beach
Rainbow Beach was the last stay on our trip, its main claim to fame was the coloured sands in the huge sand clis and a huge sand blow, The Carlo Blow, where paragliders were the main feature. We rode our bikes up to the edge of the blow, one of the steepest hills we had ridden up, and then walked the 500 metre to the sandblow. We did think of walking to the edge but already warn out getting up the hill and that most of the paragliders had gone we gave it a miss.
The last part of the trip is a bit sparse as I didn get a chance to complete it till several weeks a we return and with the moving into a new hous found my memory was lacking in detail.
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