We took off early, grabbing some breakfast at a local cafe. Today would be another day of driving, so we selected a well-rated healthy option (in google we trust).

Yummy and Healthy
Yummy and… Well, yummy!

Feeling charged up, we took off. After about an hour of driving we pulled into some random little town to stretch our legs and saw this fire-engine-red little shrub standing at the side of the road.

Scarlet, the tree
Manja doing the photo thing
The result of pretty people taking pretty photos

Back on the road

Back on the road, we drove for a while before stoping for a break at a random beach called Clairview Beach… Which turned out to be REALLY warm, probably because it was flat for about 200m into the water. It was a really unusual experience, I never went into ocean water at a temperature quite as high. Ocean water at the temperature of a warm bath-tub. We didn’t go too far in, because there was a big “Sharks sighted” sign!

We continued on driving to  Sarina, where a few colourful signs encouraged us to check out the Sarina Sugar Shed.  We had high hopes, seeing that it was billed as a “Top tourist attraction”, but unfortunately it was an attraction in the way that Venus fly traps “attract” flies. The center itself was unspectacular and the tour was really not worth it at all. Ah well, it can’t always rain gold! We always seem to tell everyone about awesome things we see, here is one to avoid!

An old sugar cane harvester!
At least there was fairy floss included!

Sugared up, we drove until we got to Mackay, where we had to find ourselves a place for dinner as the upcoming accommodation would not have any restaurants in easy reach. Because we were still a bit early, we strolled along the promenade for a bit and Simon found some tree sausages.  No idea what they actually were, but he was somehow amused by the plants, which really look like salami.

Look what I found!
I haven’t eaten
Wonder if it tastes like salami?

Turns out they tasted like wood, so Manja insisted on dinner at a restaurant instead of tree salami.  (No I didn’t REALLY eat them!).

Asian Dinner at…
Tropical Phoenix Garden in Mackay

Dinner was delicious and we headed on to our Airbnb with full stomachs.  By the time we arrived it was quite dark and the creatures of the night were out all over the roads! We went for a short stroll before turning in for the night, and managed to capture one on film.