May 30-31 (Day 120-121) - Fraser Island

First up, apologies for the tardiness of this entry! As you will see it's a long one, and the video below took several evenings to get right as we had so much footage and it was a real challenge to try to compress it all into what still ended up as a 20 minute video. But the job's done (it now being June 13!), so please read on and enjoy!

So much happened on these two days that it's probably best to just watch this video of the highlights of our two days! However if you want the words, read on below the break!

First up, what is Fraser Island like?

I'd heard of people talking about "goin 'a' Fraser" for years, often rolled off the tongue as a badge of honour by Queenslanders with a obligatory Australian drawl and a casual flick of the head as though gesticulating in its direction. But like most southerners I had no idea what it was actually like. When one has never done something, one's default impression is necessarily formed by whatever experiences one has had which one believes should be similar. So my ideas of what Fraser Island might be like were, in the absence of any other data, formed fairly simplistically by my past island experience - i.e. Granite Island (Victor Harbor, SA), Kangaroo Island (also SA) and Bribie Island in Qld (must be comparable - after all it's an island in Qld right?). Surely an island is an island?

Well let me tell you - Fraser Island is something completely different to any of these!
 

Day 119 (May 29) - Shopping trip to Bundaberg, planning for Fraser Island

Pretty straightforward day. We needed to do some food shopping so decided to go up to Bundaberg rather than down to Childers. It was a bit further to go but we thought it'd be nice variety, especially as we didn't know how long we'd be in Woodgate.

Along the way we stopped at Alloway Farm Market and bought some local produce, including finger limes which were very interesting! If you've not had them before, they look like dates but you cut them open and inside they have loads of little red balls in their own little capsule, like small passionfruit seeds, and inside each of these is some strong lemon / lime flavoured juice. We squeezed them onto some fish we had a few days later and they were delicious!

Now... Fraser Island, you ask... :)

Day 112-118 (May 22-28) - Wamuran to Woodgate

Our last weekend at Wamuran was fairly uneventful according to the kids, eventful (!!), and most of it was dominated by me doing things on the car. We had tentatively intended to move on Thursday or Friday last week but while some things weren't done yet, I figured it'd be easier to get the jobs done here where I had lighting, a shed and decent facilities than at a caravan park!

Day 107-111 (May 17-21) - Wamuran, D'Aguilar National Park, Glasshouse Mountains

Most of the past few days have been pretty uneventful. On Sunday we all livestreamed into Wilston's meeting where we considered Luke 17, in particular looking at our readiness for Christ's return, using the examples of Noah and Lot.

Monday was a quiet school and work day, plus some motorbike riding in the afternoon.

D'Aguilar National Park drive map.
Green = Easy; Yellow = Moderate; Purple = Difficult

Tuesday we went for a drive to D'Aguilar National Park with the intention of going for a walk together. When we looked at the map (see right), we found there were some tracks to drive along so we decided to go for a bit of a drive first to get an idea of whereabouts we might like to walk. Ha well that was the plan...!

Day 97 - 106 (May 7-16) - Woodgate, Wamuran

Sorry it's been a while since our last update! We left Woodgate on May 7 to drive back down towards Brisbane and stay with Luke and Tammy whom we'd visited on the way up a few weeks ago. There were lots of reasons why, but here's some of them!

First and foremost, obviously it was a lovely invitation! We knew them from years ago and hadn't caught up for a long time, and they have kids around the same age as ours. On the flipside it was a long drive back down to where we'd just come from. But a couple of other factors conspired that it really ended up being simpler to drive back.

Day 93 - 96 (May 3-6) - Woodgate

We had quite a nice quiet Sunday today.

I woke with quite a headache, so spent most of the morning in bed.

Mim and the kids first went and visited the home of 'Barb', a 93 year old lady who is a permanent resident in the caravan park we're in and has her site set up as a 'fantasy garden'. There are all sorts of statues of fairies, frogs, birds and other creatures, and she's got a nice presentation she does to visitors. Normally she schedules times for people to come in as the park is normally quite full with kids. She also busies herself cooking scones and taking meals to the 'oldies' she looks after (!!).

Day 85 - 92 (April 25-May 2) - Woodgate

Hi again everyone!

Our time here at Woodgate has continued pretty well in the vein of the last post, but with a few variations. Here are the highlights.

Most mornings we've continued to go for a swim, and every few mornings we've got for a run first. It's been a lovely way to start the day. The waves have gotten better during this past week, and the kids have had plenty of opportunity to go body boarding! Mim and I have had plenty of time to float, relax and get some sun. Some days we've been for 2-3 swims, depending on the weather, and as it's only about 100m from our van to the beach it's been an easy break to take.

The COVID-19 lockdown has meant the area is very different from how it probably normally is, and this is probably the case everywhere. The whole district has been very quiet. The Esplanade has few cars, the beach which stretches a few kilometres in each direction has been pretty well deserted, with maybe only a couple of people in sight at most. The convenience store at the front of the caravan park, and a small cafe 20m away, have both remained open but obviously with minimal trade, so we've been there to support them a few times. They made a delicious fish and chips for us one night about a week ago, offering Barramundi, Flathead, Cod and Whiting - we tried them all and the Flathead or the Barra were probably our favourite but they were all good. On another occasion we stopped there for lunch and had some delicious wraps and milkshakes. They aren't the cheapest - the wraps were $10-$18 - but they were full of fillings and very tasty!