Relentlessly northward

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I must have been dreaming when I did the last blog, or perhaps I was pre-occupied with the brawl in Rockhampton. What-ever the reason, I cannot believe that I did not mention a little excursion I did from Tewantin, back to a place just out of Maroochydore. As a lot of you would know, I have just finished building my clubman (Lotus 7 clone) car, and I have tried to visit other clubbie owners that I know and do not involve major detours from our totally unplanned route. The clubbie owner in this instance has a car with similar mechanicals to mine, and I was keen to make a comparison between his car and mine. I have to point out that he has had his car for over 7 years and has put 70,000 kms on it – both on the road and track. Hopefully you will understand what I mean when I say he wears this car rather than drives it. I had cheekily asked to be taken for a little demo drive, and he kindly obliged – with a little jaunt that took nearly 2 hrs! And the roads were just made for enthusiastic clubbie driving! What an experience – some-what lost on Margaret; it was as close to orgasmic as I have been in years.

Ok, back to the travel blog. Back through Yeppoon and Rockhampton and inland towards Lake Elphinstone. But before we got there we did an overnight at a place called The Lotus Creek Tourist Park. Not surprisingly it is on the banks of Lotus Creek, and the little bridge across the creek was under repair. There are a lot of river/creek crossings out this way and many of them are single lane i.e one side has a give way sign. If you get to the sign and there is nothing coming the other way, you can proceed, otherwise incur the wrath of the party with the right of way. Geoff wandered down to have a look at the work being undertaken and was truly surprised to find that the deck of the bridge was made from plywood panels. OK, each panel was about 225 mm thick, 1800 mm wide and 3000 mm long, but it was definitely plywood. That became all the more impressive when noted that cattle truck with 2 x 40’ trailers used the road regularly. Gross weight of those would be in the order of 70 tonnes with an individual axle weight of about 10 tonnes – that’s a lot to be carried on plywood.

Lake Elphinstone was a short hop of about 130 kms from Lotus Creek, but a hop too far for the day before. It is very popular with the grey nomad community, and it is easy to see why. It is approx. 140 kms west by south west from Mackay. We were there before lunch and had plenty of time to look for a good spot along the >800 mts of shoreline/camping area. Now I have to say that there is occasionally a small conflict over positioning the van, where one party (and she will remain nameless) wants lots of shade, and the other (he will also remain nameless) wants lots of sun on the solar panels. Unfortunately, he did not get his estimate of the transit of the sun correct and agreed to set up in a spot that had almost total shade ALL day long. (ha ha). Not a real disaster at the time, but it did compromise us later. It was a lovely place to just sit back at and enjoy the surroundings, and through the odd exchange with other campers we found out that some had been there for at least 5 weeks. Not sure about that, but I suppose if you have a boat and know where the fish are... and of course if they are not there today, well there is always tomorrow. It was free and there were brand new ablution facilities with both hot and cold taps. The only problem was that the hot taps did not work and one had to have a cold shower which suited Marg just fine.

All good things must come to an end and our next stop was another National Park just north of Mackay. However... before arriving at Lake Elphinstone a patron at a service station where we were filling up queried the angle of one of the wheels on the caravan. After checking it, Geoff found that the suspension arm had cracked in the same way as another arm did heading into Darwin on our trip in 2012. We decided to seek repairs in Mackay, and were fortunate to spot (well Marg spotted it actually) a facility able to do the repair as we entered the city. We dropped the van there before lunch, grabbed the washing that had accumulated and headed into town while the repairer did his work. It was nearly 4.00 pm when we picked the van up, and Geoff was not happy about having to deal with ‘peak hour’ traffic as we traversed the city on the way to Cape Hillsborough, but what else could we do? The cost of the repair was $600 and we are hopeful that we may recoup some from the chassis manufacturer. We were in touch with him before the repair and advised him that it could cost around $500. Of course that was rounded out to $600.

We arrived at Cape Hillsborough National Park around dusk and by the time Marg had guided Geoff into the parking spot she had been eaten by hungry mosquitoes and sandflies. Have we mentioned the BLOODY sandflies? The buggers are vicious and Geoff has been ring-barked around the legs and arms often. Anyway we settled down for the night in a very shady spot (hardly any daylight even during the day) – and not Marg’s fault this time. It was a lovely beach where the tide went out for what seemed like a kilometre. We met a couple from NZ who come over to camp here often and they had been catching fish, but by the time Geoff decided to cast a line in the next day the tide was well out and there was half a km of mud to traverse. We had only booked into this NP for two nights and had to move. This we did going to the caravan park in the same National Park a whole 6 kms away – site to site! This was the first time that we had been in a busy park with lots of screaming kids and we are not anxious to do it again. It was the long weekend and everywhere was very crowded. They had a movie every night for the entertainment of the kids and we were very close to the screen – fortunately it finished by 8.30. There were lots of wallabies and Geoff went on a couple of walks. There were also hundreds of butterflies.

On the Sunday morning there was a market at Seaforth – 20 minutes away- and Marg bravely decided to set up a stall to sell her paper flowers, bags, and cards. It was blowing a hurricane and the only people we saw selling anything were the food stalls. Marg sold the huge number of 8 cards and nothing else. She also spent money on cakes, passionfruit and paid $7.00 for the privilege of setting up the stall. So no money made, in fact a loss incurred. All experience I suppose.

We have moved on to a place 20ms West of Proserpine, just near Lake Proserpine/Peter Faust Dam.

We will let you know about that next time.

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Photos

Lake Elphinstone
Camp oven extraordinaire...

Lake Elphinstone
Next time I will remember the tripod!

Cape Hillsborough National Park
You cannot see the mud when the tide is in

Cape Hillsborough Nature Resort
Mother and child - boy did she give it a biffing

Cape Hillsborough Nature Resort
Who is that beachcomber?

Cape Hillsborough Nature Resort
Just down from the caravan

Cape Hillsborough Nature Resort
It was impossible to get the masses, so I asked these two to pose...