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Cool Waters Campground, Yeppon, Queensland, Australia. 1738 km

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Australian word of the day: Stubby – a beer bottle. As in: I’ll have one.

The last few days we have covered a great amount of distance driving south. We left Townsville on Friday morning and got stuck in a 3 hour traffic holdup. The highway was blocked due to a timber truck overturned on the road. Thank goodness for a motorhome in such a situation. The kids watched a movie and played while we were waiting.

We continued a mostly uneventful drive till we reached Airlie Beach for our night’s camping. Jumping pillows, swimming pool and then a nice BBQ dinner before Shir and Orr collapsed into bed at 7pm. I took Ron to the outdoor theatre where we saw one of our favorites – Madagascar – on a big screen. Airlie Beach is the launch pad for people going out to the Whitsunday Islands, a very beautiful set of 74 isles that we decided to forego. We had enough islands in Fiji, and want to visit Fraser Island later on instead.

On Saturday, after an early morning session on the jumping pillows, we drove southwest to visit Eungella National Park, a subtropical rainforest famous for easy to spot platypus. It took us 4 hours to get there. The park and campground are set at 700 meters altitude and the 12km climb was very steep and narrow. Unfortunately we had to climb it twice. Yours truly didn’t notice that we were running low on fuel. When we got to the top of the climb, the fuel gauge was close to zero. The local gas station had been closed since July. Not wanting to drive another km not in the direction of a gas station, we drove down the hill and then some, about 25km, to the gas station we had passed just an hour earlier.

We filled up and drove up the mountain again. On the second climb a truck was stuck on the uphill and after a few minutes of deliberation, we just barely managed to squeeze alongside and pass it.

Our campground was perched right on the plateau edge with a good view of the dry plains we had just climbed up from. We had lunch and lazed around for a bit before driving 15 minutes to the platypus viewing area on Broken River. A short walking path from the parking lot and we were on a viewing platform overlooking the river. Everyone kept quiet, except for Shir and Orr, waiting for the shy animal to surface. And indeed, every few minutes a platypus or two would swim up for air, wait a few seconds and dive back under. It was hard to photograph, but I think I got one or two decent pictures.

That evening, back in the campground, was the first time we felt chilly since arriving to Australia. (OK, my first time, Paola gets chilly every evening). And later at night it was so foggy outside that you could barely see 10 meters ahead.

Yesterday was a long day on the road, 450km worth of driving with nothing very interesting to see or tell. We did drive by a 30km stretch of road marked as koala habitat, but at 100km/h it was hard to spot any of the fuzz balls on the trees alongside the highway.

We reached a nice town called Yeppon on the coast and are staying here two days in the same campground, just to chill from the long drives of the last few days. Yesterday, just as it was getting dark we took the kids for some fresh air and jumping pillows. It was fun because we were the only ones there. Shir is timid when other are jumping, as she falls down a lot. But with just us there, she ran freely and happily with Orr and Ron.

By the way, Shir and Orr are developing very nicely from a language perspective. Orr is starting to speak in 3 word sentences (“I got it”, “Daddy more pasta”). Shir must be a mathematical genius; she is forgoing the boring counting scheme of 1,2,3 and delving straight into a geometric series, counting squares (“one, four, nine..”).

Today we spent the morning in the playground, then the pool. In the hot afternoon hours we watched a movie in the air conditioned comfort of the RV. But at 16:30, as the winds started to blow and it got a bit cooler, we walked along the shoreline, exploring rocks and sand and shells. The sunset light was glorious.

Tomorrow more driving south.

Good night,

-Hemi

This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 11:14 pm and is filed under Australia, Big Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.