Airlie Beach to Hervey Bay

Day 26 - Airlie Beach to Hervey Bay

Wednesday, 17 August 2011

There's not that much to write about today. We had basically always planned today as a travel day because Australia is a big place and one way or the other we had to come down the coast of Queensland. We could either come down gradually which would mean driving every day and moving on, or do a big chunk of it in one day which would mean we could stay one or two days in the same place and not travel every day. This is the option we went for. However, as I said yesterday, I hadn't quite appreciated how far it was so we spent all day traveling south down the Bruce Highway (A1). We had several short stops at Servos (service stations) to fuel up and buy iced coffee, a habit picked up from Jason, the man mountain. We played games in the car, sang Rolf songs, tested each other on what we could remember about our holiday so far and watched the Aussie scenery go by. We didn't see many interesting animals other than loads of dead ones by the road side. We stopped to check the pouches of a couple of Roos but quite honestly no one volunteered to touch them and so we soon gave up on that idea even though Jess had a little bag ready to put any Joeys we found in to. We saw quite a few Kookaburras on the telephone wires, and lots of cattle gathered round the water pumps which are driven by small wind-mills at the top of a tower, the water being pumped into round tanks at the bottom of the tower (as seen on Australia, the movie).

Wendy and I shared the driving and we kept to the speed limit (mainly).

Perhaps one of the most interesting things we saw was a Bailey Pageant Series 6 caravan, which caused great excitement because, as I expect you all know, they are manufactured in Bristol, which is a long way away, and we used to have one, although we now have a Pegasus (546).

We arrived into our booked site at 6pm and were shown to our family cabin, which was dreadful. The owner was in a bad mood as he was about to go out for dinner and we were holding him up. We asked to see a better cabin and were shown one grudgingly but this wasn't much better, so after all that we declined his cabins and moved on.

We had passed several camp sites and resort parks on the way and so it didn't take us long to find another one just down the street that was offering a deluxe family villa, three nights for the price of two, and cheaper than old Mr Grumpy's budget cabin down the road, so blaaaah (who said I was childish?) and we have checked in. It's very nice and clean, we have had tea (left overs from yesterdays barbie) and everyone is asleep as I write.

Tomorrow we are going to fix up whale watching. The lady in reception (I spent some time calling her Tracey until I got a bit closer and realised her name badge said "Trainee"; her name is Dawn) says the whales are "all over the place". I had a little joke and said I wondered if we'd see Scotland too, and then there was silence as the tumbleweed rolled across the scene.

Anyway it's time for me to get some shut eye too, will write again tomorrow.

I've just been out to check the milometer - 876km (just short of 550 miles). Not bad in a day, especially when you consider they don't have motorways up here, it's all single carriageway road).

	Our Mascot [Map]		Pageant Series 6 [Map]

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