Category: Australia 2018 (Page 2 of 4)

We awoke to breakfast with the wallabies again, without a Cassowary this time, which was great because we got to see the joey!

Breakfast with Wallabies

Baby Wallabie!

Today we had booked a water taxi to take us over to Dunk Island, which used to have a luxury resort on it until cyclone Yasi redecorated it in 2011 and destroyed most of the buildings.  Plenty are still standing in disrepair and there is a beautiful hiking path to an old World War 2 lookout, so we decided to make a day of it.

We got to the water taxi and went across in about 10 minutes, and would have the whole day on the island, so we set off.

Manja had been here 4 years before and back then there was a nice little bar/cafe shack there. Unfortunately that had since stopped being run, with only a few remains of the space there. I imagine it must have been beautiful though!

Benches, where once there was tables

Very similar angle, 4 years earlier (photo from Manjas collection)

some plumbing and the remnants of the bar

Serious plumbing effort!

A high class hotel, after a hurricane stayed for a bit

Still plenty of fix-ups to do!

We decided to walk all the way up to the tip of the island, while there was low tide because it would be submerged when the tide changed later.

Happy Manja is happy

Along the way was a few coconut trees starting to sprout from coconuts. Looked pretty cool!

Beached coconut… Growing nuts at the beach… Spirit of the island… Too many possible captions!

Then we head off to the inland trip. The beginning of the path was nicely re-built by the parks and wildlife service and was available for campers. When we got to the resort front, we could see what remained from a stretch of beach we walked along. Then we passed a luxury mansion with a big “private property sign”.  Crazy, so much destruction and some rich dude just re-builds a mansion….

We kept walking for a bit and got to “family beach” which was pretty and completely empty save some crabs.

This shot cost us a serious sunburn. But how could does this dude look?

As we continued the walk, we spotted a few more critters too.

Stingray, having a sunbath

Shark, having a sunbath

Tree, having a sunbath

Manja having a sunbath

Another coconut tree in the making

From here, we headed over to Muggy Muggy beach, where we saw some black crabs:

View to the left

View to the right

View to the beach

View in the rocks

View of Simons little collection of shells

Not that much later we started to hike up the hill in the rainforest. After a few minutes we saw a frog climbing the wall!

rrrrrrrribit

We had underestimated the humidity a bit and our water supply was dwindling, so we rationed ourselves and set a steady pace to the top.  It took a while, but we got there eventually, and it was a pretty spectacular view.

After some recuperation we slowly made our way back down.

When we reached the beach it was already getting toward the time of the water-taxi pickup, and we headed to the location where it would be. Depending on the tide they would anchor on one or the other side.  About 15 minutes before a bunch of tourists carrying snorkelling gear were dropped off on the beach, confusing everyone who thought that the boat was there to pick us up. Eventually the water taxi arrived, tried to anchor, changed its mind and anchored at the other spot. The ride back was nice. While it was really nice on the beach, we did get ourselves a good shade of sunburn waiting all that time.

Water Taxi is dropping anchor

Back on the mainland we headed back to the Airbnb, re-hydrated and cooled our sunburn in the pool. Toward dinner time we were getting seriously hungry, having hiked in the humidity a good portion of the day. Yesterday we had seen a small burger joint place next to the pizza place joint, so we decided to check it out. It was called  The Shrub Co which was a-okay, but not quite as good as yesterdays dinner.  Tough competition though 😉

Walking to Burgers at Dusk

Arriving at Burgers at Dusk

EATING BURGERS

… with chips.

Full of food we walked along the beach watching the sunset and full-moon rise, before heading back to the Airbnb.

We woke in time for breakfast, which also included a bunch of wallabies coming onto the lawn near the breakfast table to savage. We were lucky enough to even have a cassowary drop by! Breakfast itself was lovely, shared with other guests and our Bed and Breakfast hosts. We exchanged tips on what to see along the coast and then had to rush off. Yesterday we managed to still secure tickets to see a working chocolate farm, including a chocolate tasting.

Breakfast Wallaby

Breakfast Cassowary

Breakfast View

Breakfast… Wait, no, just our car

We arrived at Charleys chocolate a few minutes early for the tour. Initially it seemed pretty poorly organised, but as soon as it got going it was a riveting ride. I don’t mind telling you that this tour was the third best thing of this trip, directly after holding turtle eggs and diving the great barrier reef. It was entertaining and informative. Did you know that chocolate can only grow in super specific conditions? Did you know it used to be used as a currency? Did you know that adding milk to it was a relatively new invention? Did you know you could make chocolate tea from the husks of the bean? Well now you know some of the things I remembered from the tour. If you are ever in the area, clean your trip around making it to one of their tours, our timing was dumb luck – they are not open for tours every day and do book out.

Chocolate fruit – Not ripe

Chocolate Fruit – ripe

Chocolate flower

Chocolate grower

Chocolate plant

Chocolate fruit with unprocessed beans

Chocolate Bean

Chocolate Truffle

Chocolate Truffle

Chocolate Truffle

Chocolate Truffle

Chocolate Truffle

Chocolate tap, this is the good stuf being made!

Lunch was included, so we headed off with a box of chocolate and a full stomach. Not being sure what to do next, we decided to face our fears and go swimming at a watering hole called Alligators nest. No kidding. A SWIMMING hole called ALLIGATORS NEST…

River Crossing

Alligators nest… Swimming hole.

Swimming Hole

Well, it turns out that its named after a local scout group, and generally a great place…  Although they do have warning signs about these buggers and no information on how to avoid them….

None the less we went for a bit of a splash about and even explored “upriver” for a bit.

On the way back we decided to have a little fun as the path took us across a tiny river.  With enough speed it looked a bit more impressive though 😁

We really wanted to have a nice dinner, so decided to head to the local town. We settle on pizza and we found the best pizza we ever had. We both ate way too much, but it was really REALLY good. The place is called Peppervine, and Manja and I agree this was the best food in our entire trip! (Though the pizza near armies was pretty good too!)

We walked off the pizza along the beach, which turned out to be Dawsons Creek (!), before driving back to our accommodation for some rest.

We woke up way earlier than we normally would, around 7 am.  We got ready for the day, and given we had a few hours before we had to head off we decided to walk down to the local national park – Cape Pallarenda Conservation Park – which also had a bunch of old Army defence posts. It was really interesting to walk through it, even though the individual buildings had very little or no signage at all. As we left the park, we walked through what turned out to be an original quarantine station museum, which I found fascinating and Manja would have found fascinating if we’d had breakfast before.

Simon inspecting a bunker

View from the bunker

Old school quarantine airlock

Old school coffin

Goodbye Australia. Looks like it would have been a good show?

So we moved back to our Airbnb and set off to breakfast…  well, brunch at this point.  We had decided on another google recommendation and visited the Odyssey on the strand cafe.  Breakfast was good and we walked along the beach for a bit, even sticking our feet in the water around the stinger nets.

Eventually it was time to set off though. Our next stop was a place called Wongaling on the Cassowary Coast. We were reminded that it really is carrowary country as we drove down a long road through the rainforest with plenty of “Caution Cassowary” signs.

I mean it’s unlikely that they would just wander the road….  I said as I had to slam on the breaks because a FAMILY of them crossed the road in front of us. It was so unexpected that Manja only just managed to capture them on video as I raced to catch up to them.

About 20 minutes later, which I drove MUCH more carefully, we arrived at our accommodation.  It’s a lovely bed and breakfast run by an old couple who clearly love their property and the surrounding area.  We got totally bombarded with recommendations on what we should see in the area.

The road

For the evening we decided to book into a little Thai restaurant they recommended, walking over there along the local beach.  Amongst other things we saw this lovely crab making a heart-shaped pattern on the beach:

Dinner was fine, but not special. To walk off the food, we walked along the local beach for a bit and found the remains of what must habe been a magnificent creature. We are guessing Rainbow Lobster.  From what we could tell it was dead on arrival at the beach, but a local dog had a good old go at it too.

Dinner

Cat watching us eat

Amazing Lobster!

Such a shame

So pretty

After trekking back it was already time for us to drop into bed.

One bed for dropping into as booked.

Hey look, we found some more pictures from yesterday!

Snack time

Lots of snacks

Yummy and pretty

View at snack time

Island

Rainbow as clouds came in!

Fishy!

Pretty Lady watching the sun disappear

Dusk

These squid jumped on board at dusk, trying to get away from predators

Sun is starting to set

Close to sunset

Sunset

Setting Sun

Pineapple snack

Okay, so now onto the next day….

Today was to be our last day on the boat, but the captain wanted to arrange one more snorkel for us after another delicious tropical breakfast. This time we were in an area where he was allowed to feed the fish to bring them to the surface. All the guests gathered in an area and as soon as he threw the fish food into the ocean we were swarmed. It was a really magical experience – our GoPro footage just could not do it justice! Right at the end you can even see a fish saying hi to one of the snorkelers!

After an hour or so in the water we reluctantly got back on the boat to dry off as we sailed back to Airlie Beach. The whole experience really was magical, I cannot recommend it enough.  As you can see, we even sailed some – this is the deck-hand raising the sails

A final wave goodbye

No Stepping on Shadows!

Snack for the cruise home

Bed is stripped, ready for our exit

The winds took us back to the port

Back at Airlie we dropped off two of our co-guests into town, because, as we found out, they were not yet old enough to hire a car and drive themselves and were doing the whole trip by bus – the boat trip had been a gift from their parents, and they had saved for over a year to pay for the remainder of this trip.  If they had been traveling the same direction we would have given them a lift – as it was we recommended the turtle sanctuary 😀

We had a few hours more of driving to do today, so we stopped by Bowen for a smoothie just because it was on the way. Turns out they only had milkshakes, but close enough. To stretch our legs a bit we decided to quickly head up to the lookout and…  well, look out.

The Beach

More beach

Pretty beach

Pretty flowers… With hidden Bird!

Exploring

The bridge to the lookout

The look out

look out!

And we were back on the road.  At some point we were driving through some roadworks, which had left unsealed roads when a semi trailer came the other way.  Sure enough a pebble flew up and smashed into our windscreen….  After that we noticed a crack. Had that been there before!?!  Damn.  Ah well, there would be nothing we could do about it right now, other than to watch it and make sure it doesn’t get worse.

A few more hours of driving and we arrived at our accommodation at Cape Pallarenda in the early evening feeling pretty tired, but both REALLY looked forward to fully functioning showers.

When we go back we decided to  head to town to try a well-reviewed pizza place.  Turns out it was a good recommendation – the pizza was pretty nice!

It was only around 9pm when we got back, but we dropped into bed exhausted none the less.

We awoke to the sound of breakfast being prepared and met the rest of the guests on deck. Today would be a snorkelling day, we would hit a couple of different spots to enjoy the sea.  The first spot was a 10 minute sail away and we had almost the whole bay to ourselves.  It really was an awesome experience, although Manja said it was way more colourful 4 years ago. The captain explained that there was a massive hurricane last year, which damaged large sections of the reef and stripped many of the islands off trees. None the less it was a really awesome experience – I don’t actually know if I snorkelled properly before – if I did it was many, many years ago.

We did take our go-pros along, and recorded waaaaay too much footage 😂

We surfaced for lunch and spent some time on the decks as we sailed to the next spot for another spot of snorkelling.  Here we also brought out the canoe, which Manja and I decided to take for a bit of a paddle about…  Well, I paddled and Manja took videos mostly 😉

When we got back we relaxed on the boat for a bit, and saw these huge fishes just swimming off the back platform!

I was thinking of finding a place to record the sunset from, when the captain suggested we could just motor-boat to the shore and setup there.  So we did, and then headed back to the boat for dinner – Steak, cooked to our liking.

Well, to be honest it was slightly under-cooked, but it was still delicious. As we finished dinner, we went and collected the go pros. I would have love to leave them there longer, but the captain and Manja were right: It would be hard to find them after dark and leaving them there overnight wasn’t a great idea.

So we collected them and on the way back saw some big fish circling the boat.  Not big shark size, but definitely big enough: probably about a meter long.  The captain told us that they were completely harmless, and chased other fish which gathered around the boat. We spent the next hour or so spot-lighting and trying to capture them on our various go-pros and cameras.

Eventually we settled in for a comfortable evening on the deck, chatting away the evening with the other guests on board.

We awoke to the sun rising over the boat and the clinking of breakfast being prepared for us. It was another beautiful day in paradise and we started with a tropical fruit platter and cereal as we discussed what the day would hold for us.

The map of the lady with the plan

Today we would sail (the “yacht” was really a sailing catamaran) for a bit to get to the Whitsunday Islands – specifically Whitehaven beach, the beach postcards were made for. After a few hours on the beach, we would head on over to Hill Inlet lookout, the other famous postcard place on the reef.

So we set off and sailed for about 2 hours, before the captain took us to the beach via the little Dinghy on the back of the boat. I was amazed to see how many helicopters and planes were around.  A lot of people just flew there for an hour and flew back….  Meanwhile we had a nice 2-3 hours walking up the never-ending beach and back again, noticing some great things along the way. One was a Japanese film crew filming three dudes swimming to Whitehaven Beach as part of some comedy sketch. They were there for all of 30 minutes – but during that time the air was filled with drones and the beach was covered in camera crews….
After that we saw a crab in a shell, though he didn’t want to walk for us and two sand-flies making love.  Careful, some of the images below might be a bit graphic.

We are sailing…

Helicopter on beach

This is our boat!

Japanese film people

Whitsunday Beach

Hello Baby, let’s make sandflies

Crab in a shell

When we got back some of our crew-mates had seen a small fish in the water – I managed to catch the little bugger on my go-pro swimming between our legs 😁

Splish-splash 😀

We spent a bit of time splashing about before we were picked up by the boat for lunch.

We felt like we had only just eaten, but lunch looked delicious so we had “some” more food while we sailed on. The trip was prepared for 8 people and we only had 6, but the company had standardised rations so….  There was a LOT of food to be had!

So

much

Food

It wasn’t long before we got to our next stop – Hills inlet. We decided to head up to the lookout first and spotted this cute Monitor watching the people go by.

Monitor is Monitoring

At the lookout we took a few photos of hill inlet.  We didn’t need to take too many as we would come back for sunrise so we headed down to the beach pretty quickly.

Back at the base of the path to the lookout, we turned off to hit the beach.  It really is a super pretty place!

Bettys beach

Entry to Bettys beach

Because of the way the currents flowed between high and low tide, a small lake had formed on the beach, where we spotted a few mini-sharks.  Eventually I caught one on camera under the water while Manja filmed from above – they are really well hidden under the water!

Casting a long shadow

The beach at Hills inlet

Just sharking around

One-a-Fish

Two-a-Fish

Shark!

Shark

Shark

The “Mouth” to this temporary lake had a really strong current, which pulled a few stingrays into the lake.  I managed to get into the middle of it and capture a few floating on by.

Simon watching Rays

One a Ray

Two a Ray

Three a ray

Human!

We headed back to the boat to have dinner prepared, unfortunately the captain had bad news.  The Generator had an issue, so we wouldn’t be able to charge the batteries as intended.  This also meant we had to remain in an area of reception, and needed to run the engines for a while, and we would motor back to anchor in the same spot we were at last night.  All this meant that we would not be able to return for the sunrise 🙁

We were all a little disappointed, but the awesome dinner really did make up for it a bit.  Besides, the captain promised he would take us to some amazing snorkelling instead.  Tired from the hard day at sea, we dropped into bed not much after dark.

We woke up early to the sound of a rainforest.  This afternoon we would set out on a boat, but before this we decided to take a bit of a stroll along Airlie coastline along the Bicentennial Walkway.  But First! Breakfast.

We looked up some reviews and decided on the Fat Frog Cafe, both because of the name and because it had great reviews 🙂

Breakfast tea

Breakfast View

Breakfast Yum

As we got out of the car, we already spotted some birds…  A bunch of cockatoos enjoying a school fence.
As we started our walk, we also saw a bunch of birds doing what I can only describe as Aereal acrobatics.  We must have spent 20 minutes watching them!

These birds were on the fence

Squaaawk

Action shot of cool swooping birdie

We continued on, and the sun really came out in full. Along the Airlie Yacht club we saw a turtle in the water, but we didn’t quite manage to capture it on camera. We also realised that polarised lenses are WAY better for spotting turtles and decided to find Manja some as well, supplementing her stylish ray-bans. But first we had to complete our stroll. Did I mention it was getting HOT? Oh, and the walkway is 4km, much of it in the direct sun…  Whoops!

One of my highlights might have been this sign. Serious business.

It really is a great little walking track with heaps of scenery.  We also spotted some more birds 🙂

Not a Pigeon

Really not a pigeon

Also not a pigeon

Parrot

Walking bird with angry eye

The view from the walkway

When we made it into the shade at Airlie we decided on a cool smoothie before trekking back. After our smoothie, it was really clear that Manja needed a bit more of a break, so I left her at the lagoon in easy reach of air-conditioned shops while I picked up the car. I should point out she really wanted to come along, but I bribed her to stay by telling her to get herself a nice hat and sunglasses for our boat trip. There just wouldn’t be enough time otherwise 😉

I power-walked back, making what I felt was good time with minimal sunburn. It was all fine until I got into the oven… errr… I mean car. I started the thing, turned on the AC and sat under a tree for 5 minutes recovering. When it had cooled down a bit I drove to town to pick up Manja, who had done a mini shopping trip for some sensible essentials for our trip – think nausea meds and mosquito spray – as well as selecting postcards, sunglasses and a hat. All set we drove back to the yacht club which we had walked past twice and which we would take off from today. We had a bit of time to kill, so we had some brunch at the piers cafe.

Waiting Simon was waiting

A few minutes before meeting time we settled in at the meeting point and attempted to guess who would be our boating partners, hoping to all the gods that it wouldn’t be any of the people carrying box-wine and 24-pack beers. It was quite amusing to see the party boats come and go – apparently they have a no cardboard rule so everyone had to take out their wine-skins from the boxes, making it a touch awkward for people who had more than one 😂

Eventually it became clear that our boat was the last one remaining and sure enough just as we were all looking about thinking “have they just forgotten us?!?” a young lady came by to pick us up and take us to the boat. We got there and were greeted by champagne and fruit, and given a quick tour of our quarters. It was spacious, for a boat 🙂

Fruit, Strawberries and champagne

Simon, Strawberry and Champagne

Spacious, for a sailboat

Room with a view!

We got to know the rest of the travellers a bit and heard about what we would be doing for the next few days and nights, before setting off.

Sailing Simon

About an hour later we already got to the first stop, where we relaxed a bit and had the opportunity to go for a swim before dinner. Me being me, I spent the time getting a time-lapse of the sunset instead. A bit harder from a moving boat!

As we were hanging around we even spotted a turtle in the distance! Much excitement ensued and I raced to get the camera from below deck. Manja managed to get these great shots

Hello

Goodbye

Soon after, dinner was ready, and it really was fantastic. Salmon fillets with vegetables, while the sun set around us. We chatted for a while with the other guests before dropping to sleep a bit after dark.

Salmon Dinner

Sunset view from the cabin

Sunset view Sans Cabin

Boat in the sunset

Closeup of boat in sunset

Water in sunset

We made ourselves a nice breakfast and packed our gear ready to take another longer drive, this time to Airlie Beach where we would spend a night before heading out onto the reef.

Half the day passed quickly and we found ourselves checking in for the boat around noon.  Somehow tired, we walked along the promenade for a bit before deciding to head over to the Airbnb a bit earlier.

As we took off, the car next to us made some really unhealthy sounds.  Poor buggers, I though, and continued on.  At the next traffic light I got a bit suspicious though, when another car next to me sounded weird.  By the third traffic light I pulled over and took a look.  I couldn’t see anything but the front left tyre was DEFINITELY making weird sounds.  We parked ourselves just outside of Airlie and called Hertz, who promptly arranged for another car to be ready for us at Hertz in Airlie beach.  Just one issue, I really didn’t want to drive far.  So we googled where we had to go….  And it turned out to be almost across the street.  Somehow the car just seemed to know where to die!

We arrived and they swapped the car, no issues, no fuss and an upgrade to an SUV because that’s what they had.  Gotta say, love the customer service!

The car we had was a small car, so driving the SUV seemed like a Tank for a bit, but it suited me well because our next airbnb was in the nearby hills….  Where the roads were somewhat steep.  We stopped by a supermarket because, for the first time on this trip, we had a kitchen and wanted to make dinner ourselves.  This turned out to be a really good idea, because the view from the Airbnb was just stunning.  Rainforest, Airlie, Ocean.  And a swing-seat out front to enjoy it from.

We awoke to the scurrying of dog-claws on the wood upstairs, but these were really quickly replaced with the nice sounds of flocks of birds outside.  We jumped out of bed and made a lovely home-cooked breakfast while discussing our plans.

Cape Hillsborough is famous for kangaroos on its beaches, so dusk was definitely a time to go to the beach. Well, dawn as well, but that didn’t agree with our holiday spirit 😉

We spotted our morning wake-up committee on the roof, grabbed a drink and headed off.

Good SQUAAAAAK Morning SQUAAAAK

Starting the day right!

Today we decided to hike through the national park and along the beaches.  On our drive there, we arrived at a fork in the road. One was a “Sandy Path”, “Better” for four-wheel-drives. Given that it was just “better” I thought I would give it a go.

200m later, I turned around and parked at the main carpark. It’s a nice day for walking anyway!

Before we headed off, we saw these useful signs about the local wildlife.

About 20 minutes later we hit the top of the lookout.  It really did have a fantastic view!

On the way down we got some more opportunities to do photo-shooting with the amazingly coloured wildlife.

If it weren’t for the legs this spider would look like a teddy bear, right?

When we got back to the base of the trail, we arrived at a really interesting beach. Not only was the scenery really pretty, but the waves had some sort of reflective sand in them causing it to look like gold was washing up on the beach. We tried our best to get a photo, but it was almost impossible to capture! The whole beach was also decorated by sand-crabs building their holes and flicking round balls of sand out of them.

Beautiful scenery

Golden Shores!

Golden Shores!

Golden Shores!

Golden Shores!

The artistic work of Mr Beach McCrab and family

Serious bird is serious

We also walked across to wedge island. We hadn’t really planned this, but the tides played along fantastically – we could walk along the beach for 10 minutes and across the causeway, rather than taking the 2.5 hour inland path 😀

After a short walk around the island (it is small) we headed on back for lunch. Manja had found the Old station tea house in some brochures. Its basically an old train station from a long abandoned railway, which now houses a cafe and function center. It was super quirky, and we both loved it. It also had some great old fashioned advice for Gentlemen and Ladies from a 1950’s reader digest:

For the Boys

For the Girls

We decided on having some lunch before having a walk around.

Lunch – Lasagne and Pie

The Station

The Station

Durian?

Shield Spider was a bit defensive

Flower Trees

Passage of Gums

Tea Pot!

Flower up close

Flowers up a Tree

One of the cool little things in the gardens was this little old car!

Classic Color

Easy access boot

Pre-loved interior

Ready for a road trip!

After strolling around we spontaneously decided to stick around for some scones and tea.

Oh, and this little guy joined us for tea!

We headed back to our Airbnb and decided to cool off in the pool and whirlpool.  The weather really was perfect for it. Find the photo-bomber in the last photo before watching the video 😉

View from the pool 1

View from the pool 2

Find the photo bomber!

Once we had cooled off, we considered having an early evening, but then decided on a walk along the beach promenade instead. It was mostly rocky (hence the pool) but we saw these incredible mangrove trees which seem to grow in salt water.  Nature is pretty amazing!  We also found a treasure-trove of shells, which we carefully curated and selected a few special ones to take along. We also found some odd looking rocks, which we later researched.  Turns out they are “Sand Dollars”.
Continuing our war against plastic, we carried a bag load of rubbish from the area as well, and (hopefully) rescued some coral stuck in what remained of the lip around a plastic bucket.

Tough tree with fantastic roots

Tough trees and some dude

Plastic-rubbish coral

Shells

Sand-Dollar

Shells

Coral! (We left it!)

Even more.

When we got back it was already getting toward dusk.  You could tell because there was little kangaroos all over the road. So we wandered down to the kangaroo beach.  Unfortunately some idiot was there with his dog and family.  There’s only about 100 signs telling people that dogs are not permitted on the beach. Regardless, unfortunately for us it meant that there wasn’t a single Roo to be found on the beach that evening :/

We still enjoyed the sunset and spotted a few birds and bats in the area.  When we walked back we also saw plenty of Roos along the roadside and in the scrubs.  They really are everywhere here, including in the front yard!

Seriously, postcard sunset

The stinger net to allow people to swim

Lifeguards on duty

Other Patrons

Neighbours doing gardening

Dinner tonight consisted of microwaved food and we spent the rest of the evening writing blogs, sorting out photos and recovering from a day walking in the sun.

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.