Judy & Brian Tour Oz

Long day in the saddle, 470km from Airlie beach to Rockhampton, mostly because there’s not much in between. After wending our way down and past the outskirts of Mackay, avoiding the 3 car pile up, we stopped on the side of the road in Koumala for a cup of tea. Much later, we strayed into Marlborough looking for the van park, found the pub instead and had a counter lunch. Found the van park on the way out chose to keep driving, only 102km more to Rocky. Van park in Rocky is just down the road from my Alma Mater, now called Central Queensland University, as opposed to University of Central Queensland (they must have nought to do, probably the result of a University Study leading to a PhD in Signology, I'd love to read the thesis, although its probably not called that) or the original title of Capricornia Institute of Technology. Now I think by now that I can claim to have been in a few van parks, but this one takes the cake. The driveway up between the cabins and vans must be ...

Apart from doing some exploring in the area between Airlie Beach and Proserpine, finding out some of the locals hidden secrets, we have been on two more ‘cruises’. The first was a sunset cruise on board Illusions. Any illusions we might have had about a nice comfortable relaxing cruise watching the sun set slowly in the west dissipated from the moment we were picked up. The little bus was hot and stuffy in the back and had the oddest smell – like paint or turps, and you couldn’t open any window and the air-con didn’t work. Once on board, even though it was crowded we found a comfortable enough possie and drank the complimentary plastic of champagne and munched away on the crackers and things. No mention was made of the sunset, which plopped down of its own accord behind us as we steamed out toward the headland. For whatever reason, they just kept going, for more than an hour in the same direction, only turning back after dark to retrace or steps. Now I don’t mind a boat ride, but ...

Ah gee golly gosh.  Who would have thought that this...  ...would turn into this...    In just 13 short years!!!!! Happy Birthday Andrew Love from Nanny & Poppy Airlie Beach, Qld

Derwent Hunter Cruise Today we went out at the crack of dawn on the 22m gaff rigged schooner, Derwent Hunter. Our luck was in, the wind, which had stayed away for the Hamilton Island race week, was up and blowing strongly. Up went the Fore, up went the Main, the Head and the Stay sails. For an old girl, this old tub cuts a pretty fine swath through the briny main! We anchored at Black Island and went snorkling; sadly the water at 20C was too cold for my liking even with a 2mm wet suit on. Talking of wetsuits, and snorkling in general, these people need to do themselves and their clients a favour and dump the whole rotten, worn out, perished lot and get some new gear. Anyhow the snorkling was good, not great, well not up to the outer reef, and in my opinion, not as good as the Low Isles. A second site, Caves Cay, was better, with more colourful coral on its small bommies and some good looking friendly fish. The crew were great, the boat is a good old timber craft, the...

*** Happy Birthday Paul *** Who's a cutie then? Made our way down to Airlie Beach, negotiating the non-stop road-work from Townsville to Ayr – they may even be duplicating the Bruce in places, one can only hope so. We thought we’d go into Bowen and find a nice place by the water for lunch, all we found were empty streets as it was after 12 noon on a Saturday. Finally we found the bakery and had our choice of 1 pie and cake, but hurry, they closed at 1pm, even while other lost vans were prowling around looking for a feed that didn’t involve large yellow ‘M’s. Our van park is actually at Cannonvale, about 2km from Airlie Beach itself and is excellent by van park standards. It even has a … heated … pool, which needless to say was full of people swimming and sunbaking and generally having a good time. Can you imagine that, a van park providing amenities that you can actually use, what will they think of next? We grabbed a few brochures on day trips and now can’t decide w...

I godda cold. Rats. Last day on Magnetic Island a bit of a blur. I did manage to have a swim at Rocky Bat which was lovely. Then before you know it, you’re back on the boat and back in Townsville. We went to the Maritime Museum, but nearly didn’t make it past the front door. The man in charge was obnoxious, gave us a hard time because we asked for the seniors discount. He then went on to whinge about all us seniors coming there and getting a $1 (yes all this for one dollar) off the entry price, even opened the ledger and started counting us! All we could do not to mention that if ‘we’ all stopped coming he’d be out of a job, because 90% of the entries were us old farts. He was the genuine PITA. I later made the mistake of asking when they were going to get the Townsville moved down the river to give their collection some real attraction. Boy oh boy, he went of like a Roman candle citing the $26000 a year for insurance and the kids would put graffiti all over it and of yes the...

Left the van at the van park and booked ourselves into Peppers Blue on Blue resort on Magnetic Island for a few days. We took the car though, travelling over on the FantaSea vehicle barge, a trip of about 40 minutes through perfectly calm waters. Magnetic Island is big enough to warrant having a vehicle, but small enough to see all of it in a few short hours. We did the whole lot in one go, first Nelly Bay, Picnic Bay, Cockle Bay, West Bay and A something Bay. Then there is a small carpark beyond which rental vehicles are forbidden, and most sensible folk as well. We took a chance and drove down the ribbon of medium to large potholes held together with some smatterings of tar to Florence Bay and then on to Radical Bay. Regaining the main road, and giving a sigh of relief, we travelled a little bit further to Horseshoe Bay, the biggest of the lot and located on the northern end of the island. To be honest, apart from Picnic Bay, which is rather pleasant, none of the others do...

Fairly pleasant sort of run, despite the multiple road works and truck drivers, who would run everyone else off the road, down the Bruce Highway to Townsville. The caravan park is in the most peculiar place behind a service station on the corner of two main roads. Let's see how noisy it is tonight. It is a bit higgeldy piggeldy with lots of cabins, but has a nice, warmish pool, so all is forgiven. Went down town to book the car ferry to Magnetic Island and a couple of nights in a hotel - a bit of a splurge. Heading over on the 9am ferry tomorrow.. Drove around to ‘The Strand’ and had a glass of wine in our most favourite restaurant out over the water (we had lunch there 9 years ago!). Had to make the obligatory drive up to the top of ‘The Hill’, weaving in and out between the hoards of health freaks running and walking their way up. It's 2.9kms straight up and there are a lot of red faces, sweaty t-shirts, people standing under the water misters as well as those doing ...