June 9-11 (Day 130-132) - Mackay

After a fairly slow morning we headed out from Finch Hatton Showgrounds and back to Mackay. This time we were going to a caravan park. We'd been getting a few clunks from the front end of the Pajero so I had it booked in at Pedders to get a check-over, so we needed to be based somewhere central. Plus, this caravan park had a pool which is always a favourite with the kids!

June 7-8 (Day 128-129) - Ilbilbie to Finch Hatton via Mackay

Sunday 7th June

 

It was a wet and miserable night last night so we packed up after breakfast and headed straight off from Riverside Bush Camping, deciding to hold our meeting in the evening.

Our first stop along the way was Sarina. While Mim did the week's shopping, I filled up the caravan's water tanks and collected several forests' worth of brochures at the Information Centre from an enthusiastic staff member on duty that morning! Once again, however, the value of information centres came through, in that amidst the many options available to do in a given town, a knowledgeable information centre staffer can give you a few specific and timely recommendations about things which our family would enjoy doing. She directed us out to Finch Hatton, where the local showgrounds offers powered camping sites for $25/night. She also said while we were in the area that we must make sure we visited Finch Hatton Gorge, Eungella National Park (pronounced 'Young-gell-lah' g as in golf) and Broken River, where platypus are often seen.

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.

June 3 - 4 (Day 124-125) - Bundaberg to Benaraby

Wednesday 3 June - Bundaberg to Benaraby (Boyne River)

We enjoyed a fairly slow morning at our free camp as we needed to pass some time for the Bundaberg Barrel to open at 10am. We packed up our things and headed off and the first stop was a Bunnings for a few things. We needed a 15amp power cord so we could connect the output of the inverter to the van's official power inlet point so we could use all powerpoints from the inverter (when needed).

We then made it to the Bundaberg Barrel only to find that it was still shut and we had read the sign wrong. :( It had said that you could buy drinks online and pickup from 10am - 2pm or something like that. Anyway we hung around and discussed what we would do next and in that time a lady had come to the door and asked us if we were OK. We told her what we had thought and our reason for being there (which was also to buy some of their drinks), so she sold us a slab of soft drink bottles and we were on our way!

June 1-2 (Day 122-123) - Woodgate to Bundaberg

Today was our last day at Woodgate, so Matt and I went for a morning run along the foreshore while the others went for a beach walk.

Sprinting the last 100m!

Us boys finished off with a morning swim - the water was very calm, and while it was a cool morning the water was quite pleasant.

We got back, had breakfast and did our reading. We've been going through Joshua recently in the morning. The last few days have been looking at what is initially a fairly drab looking list of towns given to various tribes. While there are indeed plenty of names, a chapter breakup is a very helpful start in understanding it all a bit more, as it provides some structure around them all, so you can at least see which sections apply to who.

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... :)