We needed a holiday from our holiday! Since I first met Joe during our nautical years, I have been itching to sail through the Whitsunday Islands off the mid-QLD coast. In June when we spent a few days in Airlie Beach (the gateway to these islands – post 4) that longing became more dire. So when we considered the route for our journey south, we booked a catamaran sail for 4 days/3 nights on the yacht Whitsunday Getaways. We joined…
We wanted to spend a week on housekeeping after 2+ weeks in a world of red dust. We chose the coastal city of Townsville because it is has a Ford dealer and we needed a 15,000 kilometre service on Ranger. With a population of 170,000 it would have anything and everything we might need for Silver. Our last visit to Townsville was in 1981 during our honeymoon. Our friends there now live in Burleigh Heads (our first stop in QLD…
The drive to Charters Towers – day 3 heading east from Boodjamulla – was the easiest of the outback roads to date. And not because we shared the 250 km drive (yes, I have finally gotten behind the wheel of our 14-metre rig), but there were no road works, no “development” aspect to the road, and no varied speed limits except for the occasional tiny roadside town consisting of a pub and motel. Charters Towers is another gold boom town…
To drive the Queensland Outback is to experience roads that are different to any others we’ve driven in Australia. And I mean the Outback in Northern Territories and Western Australia, both of which are really remote and sparsely populated. Sure, they all have unsealed roads and rough roads and narrow roads without shoulders. But here there are “developmental” roads and this often means one sealed traffic lane and a dirt shoulder on either side. If you happen to approach another…
Traveling from Cobbold Gorge to Karumba on the Gulf of Carpenteria was a history lesson amidst a flat featureless landscape. We were advised that Croydon was a worthwhile stop and considered staying 2 nights…until we arrived and discovered it was about 4 blocks square. Indeed, it has a rich heritage from the 1885 gold rush that local historians are proudly displaying, particularly admirable since the population was 7,000 at its peak and is now less than 300. But we were…
We’ve made our first foray onto unsealed roads after serious preparation for the inevitable dust that might infiltrate our home. My motto is “death to dirt” and I was keen to keep the dreaded particles out of our caravan, so we duct taped two vents. The trip off-road was actually innocuous: no potholes, a few corrugations, but really quite tame. We were able to cruise along at 80kph for most of the 50 km on this road in the middle…
Heading west along the Savanna Way from the Tablelands, the dense green forests change to a dry landscape. We entered an area of thicker trees at Forty Mile Scrub NP. The one significant thing we learned from the short interpretive walk is that this is a “dry” rainforest. As explained, from December to April this particular spot gets tons of rainfall from the coastal monsoons especially given its elevation at 800 metres. The rest of the year it gets little…
This fertile plateau above Cairns sits at an elevation of about 1000 metres (3200 feet) so temperatures are more pleasant here. It also gets about 1000mm (40 in) of rain a year. I think it must all be falling while we are here. We had two one-week stints in the town of Atherton at the Woodlands Big4 CP, the first when we couldn’t extend our stay in PD and the second on the way west. Surely my favorite CP so…