Monday, 12th December 2022

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The days seem to be going really fast now!

With motel hopping you do tend to get quite a mixed bag, take our abode for the night last night in Townsville. While the location was excellent and we had a sea view from our room, the ‘kitchenette’ was basically a tiny fridge, microwave, a kettle and toaster, no sink so washing up would’ve had to be done in the bathroom sink. This would be a pain, but could still work, however the bathroom was so small, the extra narrow door had to be opened right back so you could walk down the narrow room to the shower end in order to close it again! This was £72 worth of room!

Compare that to our motel room tonight at Comfort Resort Blue Pacific, just north of MacKay (pronounced MacEye) for just $14 more than the last one we have a studio with a table and chairs, a sofabed, a kingsize bed, separate kitchen area, bathroom and use of a laundry room and clothes line out in our back garden (shared with our neighbouring unit). In fact, our only gripe here is that we have an interconnecting door which means it’s not very soundproof!

Anyway, back to our day on the road. As we didn’t fancy making breakfast in our tiny room, we decided to treat ourselves to a Macca’s (what they call McDonalds) – while we were waiting for our food we got chatting to a guy who was from the Isle of Wight! He’d come over 11 years ago for a 6 month break to see his parents who had moved over here and never went home – I can see how that can happen! When he heard about our plans for today, he recommended we take a look at Airlie Beach so we made a note to stop there.

Breakfast done, we set off on our journey to MacKay, which was just under 400km and approx 4.5hrs away with no stops.

We were happily driving along, sun shining, ridiculously hot and humid, then Roy suddenly veered off, and when I looked at the road we were on I spotted a warning notice about the road being very steep and unsuitable for lorries/caravans e.t.c. Oh great! Obviously it was my side of the car near to the edge of the road on the way up too! Once we’d reached the top of Mount Inkerman though, you could see for miles around from a couple of viewing platforms. You could fully appreciate the acres and acres of sugar cane they’re growing around here. The way down was worse than the way up! But at least the car was hugging the mountain this time.

Further along, we spotted a smoke warning sign, and saw they were burning one of the sugar cane fields, google says this is a largely discontinued practice where they burn the crop before harvest to remove the leaves e.t.c. There are health concerns with inhaling the smoke which is a worry, but I’m sure the one field won’t harm us! There are still long networks of cane train tracks around here, we even spotted a train today, it wasn’t pulling anything though.

Then next stop was Airlie Beach, this was a bit of a diversion as it was off the main road, but it was recommended by the guy we met earlier and I have to say he was right, the views of the sea and the marina as you drove in were amazing. You really can’t describe the colour of the sea here on a nice clear sunny day, it’s the most incredible blue. The town itself is very touristy and it was heaving! There wasn’t really anywhere to park, so after a drive round, we headed back out and found a place just on the outskirts where we could park and enjoy the sea view while we made our sandwiches and ate our lunch in the air conditioned car.

After that we pressed on to get to MacKay, we’d looked at available motels before we arrived and found one just north of MacKay backing onto Blacks Beach. It had great reviews and after we parked up and had a little look around (learned our lesson about booking unseen last time!) we decided it was perfect.

It’s very peaceful here, and a couple of mins walk out the back of the motel complex there’s a grassy area which guest can sit at picnic benches and use the BBQ. There’s steps at the end down to the sandy beach which goes on for miles! We had a lovely walk along, it was practically empty with just a few families and dog walkers.

Every now and then there was movement in the sand, creatures emerging then hiding again – that was enough for me to decide to put my flip flops back on! There were also strange holes with little balls of sand that had been pushed out by whatever it was in the hole. We eventually spotted a crab on the surface – it was tiny! We managed to get a picture of it zoomed right in and it was almost transparent.

After heading out to get some supplies, Roy decided to take the opportunity for a quick swim in the motel pool, had it all to himself.

I’m sure we’ll be back for another stroll along the beach before we head off in the morning.

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Photos

1. Mt Inkerman Road
Warning sign on the Mt Inkerman road, it was pretty steep

2. View from Mt Inkerman
The Savanah like view from the top of Mt Inkerman

3. Road from Mt Inkerman
The view of the road from Mt Inkerman, the road shows how high it was.

4. Airlie Beach Houses
Wouldn't mind one of these propertirs at Airlie Beach

5. Airlie Beach
Some of the what we think are Mangrove's by the Airlie Beach Harbour

6. Blacks Beach
Black Beach, Mackay. This is at the bottom fo the Motel that we are staying in tonight