Bruce Almighty - the roadtrip!

---

So we finished up in Cairns after a successful week - Daisy had her job and start date in Brisbane confirmed; we had our car sorted out; the floods on the roads had cleared, and we were ready to drive over 1700kms in around two weeks, following the mammoth Bruce Highway that spans the top of the country to the bottom. The weather was really improving and the further south we headed the less it would rain, especially when we got south of the Tropic of Capricorn.

Driving through Queensland is very memorable, as most of the time the Bruce Highway resembles nothing more than a UK country/A-road, which winds and through miles and miles of sugarcane fields and forests, and for miles the colour green is all that you can see. First major stop was in Townville, the second largest city in Qld (behind Brisbane), and although we didn’t spend long here, we spend enough time to enjoy lounging in the lagoon and on the beach! The reason for not spending too long was we wanted to get to Airlie Beach - the launching point for the Whitsunday Islands (regarded as one of the most beautiful places in Australia), so we booked a single day cruise round the islands, stopping off for snorkeling and swimming, plus plenty of time on the beach. You could quite easily spend days on a yacht sailing round the islands, but as the weather wasn’t great (still wet season!) we opted for the single day, which was a good choice. The morning was beautiful, which hopefully the pictures can justify, and the snorkeling at Hook Island was brilliant. We continued round to one of the most famous of the islands, Whitehaven Beach, with its miles of white sand, but in typical fashion just as we docked it began to rain, and didn’t stop, so what should have been white sand and turquoise water was in fact black sky and grey clouds!

From the Whitsundays we continued to head south through Mackay and Rockhampton, before spending another day on an island, this time at Great Keppel Island, where we got lucky as it was the most beautiful day weather wise, and was a quiet and amazing island where we found our own personal beach in the sun and spent the day exploring the reef, following stingrays and fish, and eating fresh pizza by the beach!

The last major stop on the route for us was one we knew the name of very well - Bundaberg - as it shares the name with its two most famous products, Bundaberg Rum and Bundaberg ginger beer. We had time to visit both factories (and of course sample plenty of produce).

We finished our week with a quick surf lesson on Noosa beach, where Adam even won the "surf off" and the surfer of the day out of the whole surf school! But we both managed to stand up during the lesson and catch some waves, it was a great feeling and hopefully we can get some more lessons before the end of our stay.

We arrived in Brisbane in good time ready to start what we had been dreading for six months.........work!

---

Photos

Whitsundays
Crazy lizard with a bent tail!