Monday 26th September – today is the birthday of young Charlie Brown who lives in Tewkesbury. We hope you had a great birthday, Charlie. With this blog we have reached the milestone of 200 blogs – for those who have read every one – good on you!! Thanks very much for staying with us on our journey around Aus. We are still remarkably enthusiastic, mainly because we are always coming across more and more fantastic places to write about. Today it is the turn of Ilfracombe (again) and Barcaldine. We were in no rush today as, even with a planned stop and picnic lunch at Ilfracombe, Barcaldine is no more than 110 kilometers from Longreach so we knew we would arrive in good time. In fact, we had contemplated going on to Blackall today, another 110 ... read more

Tuesday 20th September - our attempts at a very early start didn’t quite work out and many people left before us. We didn’t get away until 8:30am – actually not bad for us but 8 o’clock would have been better. We had over 250 kilometers to travel and we wanted to arrive in Hughenden early enough to see a bit of the town. It has a connection with “dinosaurs” and a more recent history of sheep and cattle farming. We made pretty good progress and stopped at The Burra Lookout for our morning break. Progress continued to be good and we made Hughenden just after noon. We were familiar with the caravan park having stayed there before and booked a “drive through” site for just one night. That meant we didn’t have to unhitch but we ... read more

As if to confirm we had made the right decision to move on, Saturday 17th September greeted us very early with the noise of kiddies cycling and shouting. Clearly their parents have no respect for the comfort of others (you can’t blame the kids) as they were let loose before 6:30am and seemingly with no supervision at all. Multiply that three or four times and you may realise why we thought it a good idea to “head for the hills” today. Traditionally, this school holiday period means a seaside holiday and with the weather forecast promising perfect seaside conditions it is not surprising that places like Rollingstone cater so obviously for young families. It influenced our thoughts about destinations today and we were convinced that an inland location would be more suited to us for a ... read more

Ingham is just 130 kilometers from Mission Beach so, as is often the case lately, we arrived in the town by mid-morning on Tuesday 13th September. We remembered that we had stopped there for a cuppa on the way up country and found the same picnic area this morning for our tea break. We still hadn’t decided which caravan park we would head for. We knew of one on the coast at Lucinda but we thought we would probably prefer to stay in town and to visit Lucinda as a little excursion. So we headed for Palm Tree Tourist Park and checked in for two nights - what a contrast to Mission Beach! True we were some way from the beach but, at just $29 dollars per night, with excellent sites and facilities, we realised that ... read more

RING OF BRIGHT WATER – We wouldn’t normally choose a well known title as the heading for one of our blogs but this one has a particular significance. Read on: Friday 9th September – today was the day of our very early start – a 7:30 pick up from the caravan park. We weren’t alone as another couple, Dale and Alison, had also arranged for a day on one of the Frankland Islands. The day out would eventually last until about 6:00pm but for now we were being ferried by the boss of the company, no less, to a rendezvous point near the centre of Cairns where we were met by a small coach. On board already were about 10 people, mainly Japanese, and soon after another couple arrived. So with the coach now fully laden ... read more