SYDNEY BROOME TRIP 2006 - Saturday 26 August to Sunday 3 September

SYDNEY BROOME TRIP 2006
Saturday 26 August to Sunday 3 September
Townsville to Inskip Point
Blog 18

We arrived at our friends place in Townsville stress free thanks to our wonderful GPS.

John and Rhondas had gone home after Darwin and it was lovely to see them again.

We had a wonderful day on Magnetic Island together. The ferry trip took 45 minutes and there was a lot of low cloud in the beautiful morning. We drove to all of the bays, the water was beautiful and we walked to lookout at Hawkings Point. It was 600m pretty much straight up but the effort was definitely worth it. We visited West Point, Picnic Bay, then drove to Horseshoe Bay, Radical Bay, Florence Bay Arcadia and then back to Nelly Bay to the Ferry Terminal.
Back in Townsville, we still had time to see some of the lovely sites.

On our journey south we stopped at Bowen to have a look around. The beach was lovely but quite different from the west coast of Australia. We were back in sugarcane and mango country.

We stopped for lunch at Airlie Beach and what a dramatic change in the last 30 years. There are lots of resorts, marinas, shops, backpacker set ups and LOTS of people, particularly young people. It was really a buzzing place.

We stopped at the Olsen Limestone Caves also known as the Capricorn Caves, which are just north of Rockhampton. They are above ground limestone caves and are quite different from any other caves that we have been into. It was a great tour and we went into a cave that they call the Cathedral where they actually have weddings and Christmas Carols. The acoustics of the cave were great and the tour guide switched off the lights and we listened to the music in the total darkness. It was most memorable. We then continued our journey to Yeppoon on the coast.

We took the coast road to Emu Park which had a fantastic sculpture on the headland which was a sailing boat which pipes that whistled in the wind. It was late afternoon and the pipes were whistling with the view of the water behind it.

We decided spend the last few days of this trip in Hervey Bay which has grown from a population of 5000 to 60,000 people in the last 10 years. The weather was much cooler than we had experienced for the last 4 months and it was raining.

Hervey Bay very much feels like Mornington in Victoria.

Maryborough which is a beautiful little town known for its well preserved historic buildings and an over 100 year old Banyan tree in Queens Park.
The buildings around the old wharf area were beautiful. Maryborough is also where the author who wrote Mary Poppins was born. There is a lovely bronze statue of Mary Poppins outside the building where she was born.

We walked from Queens Park to Mary Park along the Mary River and then down to the Muddy Waters Café where we had morning tea watching the boats, ducks and pelicans.
Tin Can Bay was our next stop which is on a little peninsula and is a fishing village. The next peninsula was Rainbow Beach and then Inskip Point, both beautiful places. Inskip Point is the closest mainland point to Fraser Island. The point has surf beach on one side and calm bay waters on the other.

After the repairs on the caravan were completed in Maroochydore we made our way home only stopping to eat and sleep. It was a great trip and we continue to be overwhelmed by the sights, sounds and smells of our beautiful country.