Judy & Brian Tour Oz

Atherton Qld July 21 2023 Easy run up into the mountains except for the last 40km which was at snail’s pace due to climbing and twisting and narrow road  which banked up the traffic into a convoy. Oh well nought to do but tag along and enjoy the scenery. Made it into what must by now be in our top three van parks, the NRMA Atherton Holiday Park. Shock! Horror! They’ve heated the pool! Yeah, way to go them. Got parked up and nipped into town to hit the shops for some essential food items, and Bunnings for a new heater and a new hose fitting. Later in the day I walked back up to the platypus pond, saw nothing, then went around to the old train station and took some snaps of the carriages now being used  for a cafe. Train cafe, Atherton Qld Train cafe, Atherton Qld Atherton July 22nd 2023 I was up early and did the Atherton Parkrun for the second time. its been four years since I did this one last, the time certainly gets away. This time I walked up to the start of Parkrun, maybe...

Mackay Qld. Eungella Qld. Broken Creek Qld. 22-24 August 2019 We had originally planned to go back to Blacks Beach in Mackay and stay for a week. But something was niggling us both about the place and the length of time we had booked. Judy rang and cut the time back from 7 to 5 days and copped an earful of abuse for her trouble. By the next day, having read and reread all the rules and regulations they have to cover every facet of human activity, and keeping in mind our run-in with one of the long-term inmates last year, she rang again and cancelled completely. And that's why we are now in Mackay, but much closer to town, in the Big 4 across the road from the harbour. When we pulled in at lunch-time the place was deserted. By the time night fell it was bulging at the seams! I tried the pool but it was the normal fresh-to-chilling, so we went over to the marina to have a drink and watch the boats go in and out, of which there were none. Today I went over to the Harbour Beach for...

I was awake at 6:30am and next thing we knew, it was 7:30 and we were pulling out of the van park and heading towards the Gregory Developmental road, heading toward Atherton, via The Lynd, Mt Garnett and Ravenshoe.  Any idea we had of a nice easy run were dashed as we proceeded to drive through thick fog for the first 85km, caused no doubt by the fact that the road runs parallel to the Burdekin River. Once clear of the fog, the road immediately turned to a true development road for 10km but was ok then for a while.  After clearing the fog and the dodgy road, we hit a good patch and were making good time when I failed to see the dead 'roo in the middle of our lane early enough to avoid it. The sound as it thudded along under the car and the thunk as it hit the towbar and the van chassis was pretty ugly. One has to blot these things out, the car felt OK and so we pushed on, and on and 'smack', a dirty big rock from a car and trailer going the other way, put a huge star in o...

Atherton, Qld August 6th 2013 When you leave Undara and head east, you effectively leave any semblance of the outback. You start to climb a bit, up past Mt Garnett, and then it starts to get serious with lots of climbing and twisting and turning up through rainforest until you get to Ravenshoe.   On the way through, we stopped at Innot Springs, supposed to be a hot spring fed creek to splash about in. What you have is a caravan park that has sucked the creek dry to feed its six(yes 6) swimming pools with varying degrees of hot water. For only $10 a head you can get a day pass, or you can dig a hole in the creek bed and sit in that. We saw some people sitting in mud puddles near the bridge, so we took the third option: drove straight on and dreamt about Mataranka and Katherine springs.   We stopped at Ravenshoe for a cuppa and a bit of a look around. We found a fabulous olde worlde milk bar / café which had fantastic coffee and even better jam drops, fresh out of the oven. They...