Australia #18 - Airlie Beach and a few overnight stops on the way North - Queensland

We leave the not so sunny Sunshine Coast heading north, knowing we are facing the longest daily drives of our Australian roadtrip, and that the weather every day continues to be almost tiresome, very hot and humid, and often raining, with temperatures that easily reach 32 Celsius.

Typical driving - not much traffic, rain, sun. The land is generally more open than the rainforest we expected.

Even though it's Saturday, and despite the weather, we have a pleasant drive through hilly country, lots of sugar cane plantations and a few macadamia orchards. In Tiaro brightonbonnie fancies a flat white at Bush 'N' Bay, and we also share scone, whipped cream and jam; we buy two pies, one mushroom and mince, the other bacon and mince, for dinner. Next door at the Hippie Garage we find bracelets for our grand-daughters and some funky clothes for us, and leaving town a roadside stand provides avos and pines (Australian English for avacadoes and pineapples).

Lunch and shopping in Tiaro.

Another Jayco box in Bundaberg, with typical tropical vegetation.

Our first overnight in Bundaberg is so hot and the aircon isn’t fully effective that we head straight for the pool. Later I'm able to watch qualifying for the Australian F1 Grand Prix in Melbourne, and thank brightonbonnie for offering to let me go to see it live, but it would have meant re-scheduling our entire trip, which took 2 years to plan, so just wasn't doable. But a nice thought all the same! In the early evening it starts raining really hard, and we even hear thunder!
 

Rated #1 on TripAdvisor!

The next day we have another interesting drive through unexpected terrain, very hilly, almost mountainous, with broad plains, and lots of cattle ranches especially as we get closer to Rockhampton, the Beef Capital of Australia! brightonbonnie also sees fields with lots of sheep, but I ask why they are so big and have no hair – because they’re Charolais cattle, my dear! There are also lots of floodways, and even an electronic sign as we left Bundaberg which will indicate which roads on the way north are open should there be heavy rains! After about 2 hours we stop for flat whites and a shared chicken curry pie at the Mount Larcom Café, rated on TripAdvisor #1 of 1 restaurants, and very good indeed!

A very wide beach at Mulambin, on the Capricorn Coast east of Rockhampton.

Further north we see numerous very long trains, all with tip cars carrying coal southbound and coming back empty northbound. We end our day with another wonderful and completely unexpected drive from Yeppoon to Mulambin along the Capricorn Coast, amazing beaches and views out to several islands, all backed by low mountains. We do a minimal unpack so we can get away early tomorrow, then head down to the beach, a shallow incline so with the tide out the beach is very broad. Back at the cabin the Australian Grand Prix has started and I watch the first race of the season, Mercedes-Benz in 2016/2017 still the class of the field.

Pleasant country, unless your GPS lets you down...

The next day we are up at 6 so we can get away early for what is supposed to be a 6 hour drive. But... I hate to say this, I made another planning mistake, and as an old tank soldier I should have known better. As we pass through the outskirts of Rockhampton I know we only have half a tank of petrol, but my new Garmin GPS, purchased in Manly, is showing numerous stations on the way north so I don't fill up. When I get to a quarter tank the first station the GPS shows us is abandoned, closed for some time by the look of it. Then we have a succession of 'truck stops', listed under the 'petrol station' category, that are just lay-bys where drivers can pull over to rest! And the Bruce Highway has been rebuilt at some point to bypass all the towns, so there is nothing ahead of us in this really under-populated area that looks like it might have a petrol station. Down to 1/8th of a tank we decide to leave the Bruce Highway and head for the town of St. Lawrence, about 6 kilometers to the east, which shows more promise. But on the first pass there’s no petrol station where the GPS indicates, just a general store with a propane refill sign! On the second pass, coming back to get info, I park right at the store entrance and as I'm opening the SUV door notice the single petrol pump!

The petrol station in St. Lawrence!

While I fill the tank with as much petrol as I can stuff into it brightonbonnie orders 2 flat whites and inquires about washrooms – across the road, past the library, at the railway platform! About 5 trains a week, southbound from Cairns at 10:20 pm and northbound from Brisbane at 2:03 am! Not bad for a town of 120!

And the railway station!

Heading back to the highway our GPS takes us down a gravel one-track road that’s being worked on, which in parts is a dam across the river and has a few floodways with running water – the deepest is about 1 foot and we cross it easily – so between this and our search for petrol we have what we will always refer to as 'our real Aussie Outback Adventure'! But I should have known better - in my old business we always started the day with a full tank!

We're surprised that some caravan parks have lots of animals about - at Airlie Beach, some ducks - before the fight!
 
The following day we have another long drive. They are obviously very conscious on these long stretches of highway about driver fatigue, and combat it with humour: there are large billboards with anti-fatigue trivia questions, e.g 'What is the state flower?', but also ones on the theme ‘Are we there yet?’, which provoke a laugh and get the adrenaline going, which is the intent. At Airlie Beach we discover we’ve been upgraded to a two-room villa, probably our best cabin thus far. We even have a visit from a very large family of ducks, who clean each other and nap on our small patch of grass. Later two more ducks arrive, different colouring, white and black, and then a large turkey, who is very territorial and likes to chase the ducks.

Near the start of our walk in Airlie Beach. The boom is there to provide safe swimming...

... because of these!

The very nice pathway along the water in Airlie Beach, just before it got far too hot for brightonbonnie and I!

Airlie Beach is a two-night stop so we can relax a bit and catch up with laundry. Late morning we head into town for a walk, but soon realize it is far too hot to go all the way to a restaurant and return, so head back to the car, completing a 3 kilometer round-trip that ends in rain, so are very damp with both sweat and rain by the time we sit down for lunch! I have Thai Fish Cakes which turn out to be a bit spicy but better than any crab cakes I've had in North America, and fish-challenged brightonbonnie has an apple and walnut salad.

A relaxing day in Airlie Beach, despite the heat, with a skywriting biplane overhead...

... and a very large pool back at the park to cool off in!

One last view of long but interesting drives over several days, a sugar cane plantation.

Tomorrow, we head for Cairns, sadly our last stop on our Australian roadtrip.

PS - if you've enjoyed this post please check out the previous 17 posts in this series, and the 3 before that as we started our 90-day roadtrip in Tahiti! Just one more to go in Oz, then we move on to New Zealand for a month-long roadtrip there!

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!steemitworldmap -20.270290 lat 148.715640 long Airlie Beach Queensland Australia d3scr