June 5-6 (Day 126-127) - Benaraby to Milman (north of Rockhampton) to Ilbilbie

Given we've finally gotten back onto the road after a month or so of not going far, we wanted to keep moving for a bit, so both these days were mainly driving up the coast. On our 2017 road trip we made it as far as Rockhampton before turning inland, so we wanted to get into new territory as soon as possible.

June 5

We had a pretty quiet day today. We packed up and drove into Rockhampton for a quick refuel then drove on to a free camp on the banks of the Fitzroy River. Got there about 4pm. It was a bit of a drive down to the river bank but we're getting adept at this now so it wasn't too hard, and meant we had a lovely spot to camp for the night! There's a video a bit further down.

The bridge in the background of the next photo is evidently the old road, which is still in quite good condition, but stops abruptly near the highway. However this provides good quality access into this little nook down by the Fitzroy River.

4WD'ing

This is a 4WD-only track, and was one of many times I was glad we had a 4WD on this trip. We saw plenty of great spots on our last two road trips just with our VY Commodore wagon and our road van. The Commodore's engine bay was designed for a V8 so with its V6 there's plenty of room, unlike under the Pajero's hood where everything is very tight. I am not at all into 4WD'ing for the sake of getting your vehicle covered in mud, scratched to death and into the most ridiculous spots that a mountain climber would hardly go. However despite having a soft spot for our Commodore, and the ease of working on it I'm really appreciating the Pajero's ability to get us to secluded spaces like this which would simply be off the agenda without a 4WD, and without which we'd have to camp in more accessible, but also more populous camp spots.




We put together this little montage of a few of our 4WD'ing experiences across these two days.

Mim was a bit cautious about crocodiles, given our proximity to the river,
but we saw no signs of them. I would like to say that means
they weren't there, but I can't be sure!

In the evening we watched Louisa Alcott's "Little Men", a DVD we'd picked up from an op shop in Bundaberg for about $2. It was a lovely story, although like all films based on books, the book was better!

June 6

In the morning we had breakfast, did our morning reading, and then had an easy drive up the side of the hill to get back to the road to get on our way.

This again was largely a day of driving. We stopped on the side of the road at Carmila.

Actually something which is notable, not just about today, but this whole part of the country, is simply the amount of sugar cane growing along the side of the road! Given I'm writing this on June 19 (trying to catch up as there are videos to organise too!), I will have more to say about sugar cane a bit later on. But suffice it to say for now, there was plenty down in Bundaberg, it was pretty well all the way up to Rockhampton and it simply continues up the Bruce Highway apparently all the way up to Cairns! It is quite remarkable, day after day, to see so much of the same crop dominating the road side.

Anyway we decided to recreate a photo we'd taken three years ago with the kids backing against some sugar cane, just to give you an idea of the size of it. Remember Bek's about 1.7m tall now, so this cane must have been at least 3m tall!

While we were having lunch, hardly surprisingly by some sugar cane, we cut a small amount down and had a crunch on it. Sugar cane has the texture of celery, and the flavour of mango and grass, along with a moderate sweetness. It was an odd flavour in fact, I guess we expected it to be just sweet with no other flavour. It wasn't a favourite of most people but it was nice enough.

Anyway we continued along our way and started looking towards where we might stay for the night.
We'd found a nice looking camp spot on WikiCamps which was right on the beach, so followed the directions to get out there. You can see it on the zoomed in map just here. It was a fairly long dirt road so we let down the tyres. There were a few shallow water crossings, but worringly (after Boyne River) we read the tide rose several metres between low and high tide, and we crossed at low tide! Anyway we got right out to this point but found it was really going to be a challenge! There were some quite deep muddy patches, the trees came down quite low and would have scratched all along the caravan and car. We had also seen a number of 4WD's along the track driven by, chaps who I'm sure are a delight to their mothers, but, whom I might generally classify as 'bogans'. This company didn't particularly endear us to the location. But the final nail in the coffin was the discovery of biting midges - the curse of Queensland! So we high-tailed it out of their, drove for the next few kilometres with the windows wide open while we slapped at the sharp bites appearing from these microscopic grey dots which must have jaws 100x stronger than anything else their size.

After some consideration we stopped at a paid campground creatively named 'Riverside Bush Camping'. This was a farmer's property which he allows people to stay at for $15/night. This is pretty reasonable, and it was a lovely spot in so far as it was certainly river-side, the river water was fresh, and there were no midges! Jude and Matt decided to have a swim - it was cold but still pretty nice apparently! I was still nursing the cut on my toe from Boyne River which still had to stay dry, so I sat out this swim (as did Mim and Bek).