Judy & Brian Tour Oz

We left Airlie Beach early and headed north, first to Bowen and then Ayr, where we took our first break. We were back on the Bruce of course, but surprisingly it seems to have survived the road works and is quite an easy drive. One thing that is noticeable almost straight away is that the landscape is changing; we are now in country reminiscent of the outback, huge, wide totally dry river beds, rocky outcrops and fringing mountains. About 30km north of Ayr we took a left turn toward Woodstock, bypassing Townsville and saving ourselves about a 100km and an hour. As we drove along this beautiful valley we slowly started to realise that we had in fact been down here before; last year when we stayed in Townsville and took a big day trip down tho every road. From Woodstock the road opens up and is wide and smooth, giving us a pleasant run through to our destination. With John Williamson's song of the same name ringing in our iPod, we did indeed make it into Charters Towers, not quite ...

*** 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...