Here we are, Friday afternoon at Rollingstone Beach north of Townsville camped under (well not quite for OH&S reasons) coconut palms loaded with coconuts.
We departed Hideaway Bay near Airlie Beach just after 9.00am, returning to the Bruce Highway before continuing our journey north. We passed through Bowen, famous for its mangoes (which are out of season) and through a lot of sugar cane country. We could tell where the next town was by the plumes of smoke and steam billowing from their local sugar mill. The sugar cane harvest appears to be well underway with cane trains full of the harvest queued outside the mills waiting for their turn to be unloaded.
Stopped for another successful spot of geocaching at Ayr before continuing on to Townsville. On our approach to Townsville a rather inconsiderate ‘tradie’ pulled out onto the Bruce Highway while we were cruising along at 100kph. We had to hit the brakes hard as he tried to get up to cruising speed with the rest of the traffic. Just had time to flash my headlights at him before a stepladder fell from the back of his ute, right in our path! What fun!!! This time we really hit the brakes (as did the cars behind us) but to no avail. Fortunately no damage done to the Prado or Tvan. The same can’t be said for the stepladder. After an exchange of venomous stares with the driver of the ute, we were on our way and left him to pick up the considerable number of pieces scattered on the road after a succession on vehicles finished off what I had begun.
We had a weekly shop in Townsville, which was shrouded in smoke from fuel reduction burns in the nearby hills. We stocked up primarily on fresh fruit and vegies. Refuelled as well, taking advantage of diesel at $1.41 cents per litre. We checked out two free camping areas north of Townsville – both of which were full. Settled into our current campsite at about 4.00pm and have now packed away the shopping while another glorious sunset caps off one more day on the road.
