Cairns

We arrived in Cairns yesterday afternoon and have been having trouble uploading pictures to our blog - we will keep trying! For those who asked, the fish and chips were very good but not as good as those at Pauls on the Parade! More from Cairns later!

Rollingstone

The caravan park at Rollingstone has beach frontage but also signs warning that swimming is not permitted because of crocodiles - at the moment while the weather is in the mid 20s there is no need to have a swim to cool off, but it must be frustrating in the middle of summer heat having a beautiful beach that you can’t use.
We made an overnight stop here partly so that we could have a meal at the highly recommended nearby Fisherman's Wharf, famous for their fish and chips. We had been told by several people that the cafe served the best f&c ever with a beautiful setting.
The journey here was nearly 500 km and for 75% of that time we were driving through an unbroken landscape of sugar cane plantings, the countryside crisscrossed with train lines used to move the cut cane and every now and then the chimneys of a sugar mill. We passed by Bowen, famous for its mangos, some vegetables growing in that area and now its more cane and pineapples.
Tomorrow we pack up for the relatively short drive to Cairns... H invited me to add a word or 2, so I stepped back & took the photo.You will understand when I say it’s a hell of a life!

Cape Hillsborough National Park

Cape Hillsborough National Park is about 30 km north of Mackay and we have been here for 4 days. Being school holidays the camping park is full and there are lots of family groups, we have been surprised at how many people camp with young babies and there are little ones crawling in the sand and pushers everywhere - certainly the parents of today are more adventurous that I ever was.
The camp is on the shore of Casuarina Bay and the beach is fringed with coconut palms and in some parts heavily wooded with native trees which grow almost to the sand. Cape Hillsborough is the youngest volcanic area in Australia, formed from a series of volcanic eruptions 30 million years ago and there are spectacular rock and cave formations at both both ends of the bay.
At some times of the year turtles lay their eggs here, there are many native birds, brush turkeys, bats and butterflies and at sunrise kangaroos and wallabies visit the beach to nibble on the seed pods that wash up onto the beach.
We went with our neighbors, Dennis and Patsy, to fish from Wedge Island which can be reached at low tide from a rocky causeway - the tide was out and we decided to take a short cut through the water - what we didn’t realize was that the sand turned into mud and was almost impossible to walk through - we had no choice but to go on, but going was very difficult, it was mud up to mid calf and my sandals were sucked off (were there stone fish waiting for me to step on!) and even getting my sandals back out of the stiff goo was a real struggle. And then there was a long walk back over the rocks. We got separated from D & P, they got back after us, by then the tide was coming in and they had to wade back through knee deep water. Needless to say there wasn’t any fish for tea that night but lots of muddy clothes and bodies. The next day L cleaned all the gear and said “to hell with it” and bought some delicious wild barra fillets for dinner.
There are many marked walks in the area, yesterday we took one which started off in Melaleuca woodland, then became a boardwalk over mangrove swamps and ended in eucalypt open forest and vine thicket - there is a very diverse environment here, one thing that is missing is a Telstra signal, so not easy for addicted mobile phone and internet users. If you have been wondering what has happened to this blogger, that is the reason, perhaps I have been taking for granted the easy access to the internet, we will wait and see.

How sweet it is

Sugar has been grown in Queensland since the mid 1880s, the mill at Sarina was registered in 1894, and sugar cane is now grown on farms stretching over a 2,100 kms of coastline. The harvest begins in June and lasts for about 6 months and when we drove through the area it was in full progress, machines cutting the cane, and trucks and small trains with baskets of cut cane heading to the mill. Sarina, which is just south of Mackay, has a miniature sugar mill and distillery which is used for educational and tourist purposes so we stopped off for a tour and learned some of the history of the industry and the innovations over the years. We were able to follow the whole process from planting the “sets” through to the finished product and then sample some of the finished products, fairy floss for the children, alcoholic liqueurs for the adults! The record production was in 1977 when 248,771 tonnes of sugar were produced from this one mill - that’s a hell of a lot of the sweet stuff.
We are spending only 2 days in Mackay and opted for a cabin stop, we needed to do some shopping as our ancient gas camping stove has bitten the dust and we don’t have any cooking facilities. This morning we went to the camping store and now have a shiny new model which even has a toasting facility, what luxury! Speaking of luxury, the cabin has a TV and last night we sat up and watched Lleyton Hewitt slug it out with the A-Rod.

The first -

An early morning fishing expedition provided 30 whiting!

Clairview

We took the Bruce Highway, which passes through Rockhampton and stopped further north at Clairview, one of the few places where the highway meets the coast. Clairview is described as a “pleasant fishing and crabbing town with unspoiled beaches” - it is an accurate description, and apart from the caravan park and holiday houses there is not much else here, but the caravan park is fairly crowded and is popular with Queenslanders.

As we were running low on alcohol and other supplies we drove 20km or so to the nearest town with a pub and shop. We bought the pub’s only cask of red wine and the choice in the shop (which doubled up as the post office) was pretty meagre, but enough to keep us happy. The sugar cane harvest is in progress and the roads are busy with trucks transporting the cut cane, there are miles and miles of cane plantations so it must still be a profitable crop.

We stopped en route at the Exotic Fruit Garden and Ice Creamery at Flaggy Rock, a tropical fruit orchard run by a Danish man who makes his own ice cream from the tropical fruit he grows, think mango, coconut, ginger, and lychee. Unfortunately some of the more exotic fruits are not in season.

Nobby, a Viet Nam vet who has a camper trailer across the way, has given us some of his catch of whiting for tea and Laurie is getting the rods ready hoping for a further catch. I don’t know whether or the not the statement that a saltwater croc has been seen in the creek nearby is true or not but I won’t be going!