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Published: January 27th 2010
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Although we’d had an amazing adventure and really enjoyed the beautiful scenery of the more remote parts of Western Australia and Northern Territory, we were relieved to rejoin “civilisation” at Townsville, about half way down the Queensland coast. We decided against travelling any further north for a number of reasons:
• We’d had enough of driving!
• It was getting really hot
• The stingers (deadly jellyfish) were out in force so swimming in the sea wasn’t an option
• We were on a bit of a deadline to get further south in time for Christmas
• We’d already done a lot of snorkelling at the Ningaloo Reef out west where it is cheaper and easier to get to
So we decided to leave Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef for next time! Instead we cheated and visited Reef HQ in Townsville, an amazing aquarium with all the sea life close at hand, but safely behind glass - much more child friendly. We even saw a leopard shark foetus still in its sack and learnt more about sea stars and sea cucumbers than I probably ever wanted to know! Bella described it as the “best place she had ever been
to!” (until the next best place...)
The next day we headed north an hour to the southern limit of the tropical rainforest, at the Paluma Range, with amazing views up the mountains and an interesting, and refreshingly shady, walk through the forest itself. Billabong Sanctuary that afternoon was another great wildlife experience -free roaming kangaroos, geese and ducks; Tonka the wombat for Bella and me to cuddle; Mac the koala; and Jaws the crocodile who had made international news only the day before for chasing his keeper! The interactive session was good too, until the young crocodile I was holding headbutted me when I lost concentration!! But the olive and black headed pythons behaved themselves and even the kids managed to stroke them.
The nature viewing continued with loads of huge bats flying around our campsite which was pretty cool.
Airlie Beach in the Whitsundays was our lunch stop heading south. There’s a great lagoon there offering safe, jellyfish free swimming so we hung about for a while before heading onto Mackay and a lovely little campsite by the beach with lots of noisy kookaburras, more bats and pretty parrots. Unfortunately there were also lots of biting
insects which seemed to show a liking for Joe...
Our next stop was Gladstone which we got to after driving through lovely scenery alongside the Great Dividing Range. We had a friendly audience of fellow campers watching us put our tent up, and one lady even said it was “Grouse”, which apparently is a compliment! However, we couldn’t hang around long enough to learn any more Aussie slang as the next day we set off early to make it to Bundaberg - a pretty town famous for its rum and ginger beer. The attractions here include the house of Mr Bert Hinkler - the first person to fly solo between England and Australia in 1928. After he died his house in Southampton his house was taken over brick by brick. It was quite strange seeing a pebble dashed house in Queensland. We also swam in The Basin - a man made lagoon where we fed bread to flat head fish who swarmed all around us.
That night we went to Mon Repos Beach for the main reason for our visit to Bundaberg - the loggerhead turtles who come up every night to lay their eggs. The tours were
very well organised - volunteers roam the beach and radio when they see a turtle. There were so many on the beach that we had to do a huge detour so as not to disturb them. At first it was a bit disappointing, but then the one we were watching started digging her pit so we could inch a bit closer. Once she started laying her eggs, apparently nothing would disturb her and we could turn the lights on and starts taking photos. Loads of eggs plopped out of her bottom - they lay an average of 127. It was amazing to see. They return to the same beach they hatched from to give birth having spent about 30 years maturing at sea. The females mate with several males and store batches of sperm which they release when they want to fertilise their eggs!
The next evening we finally made it down to Brisbane, to stay with the Dalton family for a week, after stopping off to meet up with the Davies’s to borrow their GPS (more on them later!)
The only downside to staying with Rach and Al (Dalton) was that their daughter Ariel is an early
riser so the next morning the kids were up at 5am! However, we managed to spend a lovely few days relaxing, playing, shopping and generally enjoying the fact we weren’t packing up the tent and moving on ANYWHERE! One day Bella and Charlie went with Ariel to school for her end of year party, and on another we caught the ferry to South Bank, Brisbane.
Another trip was to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary where we went to the Bird of Prey display, lorikeet feeding, sheep dog show, sheep shearing, oh and a few koalas.
Finally we moved out to make way for Rach and Al to have some other UK visitors (!) and headed back north to Noosa Heads for a few days. Whilst there Joe decided he wanted to do some beach driving, and fortunately we managed to meet up with Merryl who’s something of an expert. We drove the length of 40 Mile Beach past beautiful sand and rock formations and across to Double Island Point where we had a picnic and played in the sea. On the way back we passed Portuguese Man-of-War jellyfish and a sea eagle which took off next to us with
a huge snake in its claws - amazing! Joe loved his beach driving but made me have a go. I was a bit worried about getting off the beach in all the soft sand, and rightly so because I didn’t manage to keep the revs up and once again we got bogged, although this time we were only stuck for about 15 minutes before a Nissan Patrol was able to snatch us out.
Whilst at Noosa we shopped at Eumumdi Market, the largest in Australia where we tasted frozen chocolate bananas - yum!
On the way back south we decided to give in to Bella’s request and drop in to Australia Zoo. Having been there ten years ago before Steve Irwin was a celebrity we were interested to see how it had changed. It was much bigger and posher, with a stadium called the Crocoseum, pretty girls bouncing around and footage of Bindi promoting her fitness video. The otters and red pandas were cute though, and feeding the elephants, watching tigers playing with their keepers and the echidnas snuffling about like little old men were definite highlights.
We spent another few days relaxing in Brisbane, this time
staying with the Cordingley family. Apart from one wedding and a bit of walking, we did nothing other than lots of chatting and it was really nice. Eventually though it was time to leave and on the afternoon of Monday 21st Dec we crossed the border into NSW.
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