After a comfortable over night cruise of 200 nautical miles or so, Sunday the 11th saw us anchoring off a beautiful tropical Island. It took quite a while to anchor the ship. Later the Captain told us there was a strong current as well as a little too much wind and swell, so the decision to stay and disembark took a little longer than usual. We were not all that surprised at the captain's remarks. From the ship's deck we could see that there was a definite rip running around the little island that somewhat protected Kitava. The anchor was 270 meters down!! Kitava is pretty much unchanged in thousands of years, and the island dwellers of the Triobriand Island group (Part of Milne Bay PNG) all move back and forwards across the islands in their ... read more

Our journey north from Brisbane is 3 to 400 Ks off shore from the Queensland coast through the coral sea. While we would love to boast of colourful coral reefs and atolls with swaying palms, and harmonic songs drifting across the ocean, we were too far out to sea for these Queensland spectacles. So, what do you do on a cruise ship for 2 days while traveling to the first port in Papua New Guinea, Alotau. I guess the first thing you are thinking is over eating followed by marathon taste testing of all things liquid. There is much more to do and enjoy than that each day. In the evening, our cabin steward placed on our bed a list of activities for the following day, and we keenly marked off various things we wanted to ... read more

Our Central Queensland trip now headed south west to Carnarvon Gorge via Emerald. The roads on this section were better than the development roads we drove to get to Moranbah. If you see a road marked as a development road, they have an interesting history to open an area for mining or agriculture. Often these were just a metal road, and then later a single lain of bitumen placed down the centre. As traffic increased, the seal was widened by adding wings each side of centre. Overtime, these outer edges seem to sink. Where a line marking had been neatly painted down the edge, time had moved the line to resemble a heart monitor printout. This section was flat-lined by comparison, that is, dead easy to drive over! We were about 20ks north of Emerald and ... read more

After a few weeks at home, we were excited to set out on our Central Queensland escape. This is to be a short trip compared with most we have take in our Motorhome - only a couple of weeks. Our first overnight stop was to be at Eumundi, a small town just off the Bruce Highway north from Brisbane. Eumundi is a relatively small town, probably finding its roots in the early days of rail transport and of course, this is great agricultural land. While in size, the coastal town of Noosa is now more famous, except for one thing, The Eumundi Markets. There is a small area set aside for Motorhomes to camp overnight just outside the markets precinct, and as it was Tuesday night we made sure we were up to Eumundi early to ... read more

The journey from Lightning Ridge to Tamworth was interesting as the landscape changed from the drought hit pains into irrigation areas with cotton fields at various stages of growth turning dusty red and grey into lush green fields. Typical of outback NSW, each planted field was huge. Between irrigated areas there were obviously mixed farms growing grain and fattening sheep or cattle. The closer we got to Tamworth, the better the country side looked, probably due to summer rains which the western parts had totally missed out on for the past two summers. Tamworth is quite a picturesque town sitting in a river valley. Plenty of lush green in this town. We stopped here overnight with the hope of having a sticky beak around the city. However, parking was almost non-existent for a motorhome in the ... read more