Day 207
Sunday
23 July 2017
Airlie Beach – Mackay
Another beautiful day was upon us in Airlie, but we weren’t
going to get the opportunity to enjoy it as we were moving on. I loaded photos
onto Facebook while reading in bed. Paul was out at 7.30am, as usual he is up
early when it is moving day. I managed to hang on until 8am when the comments
started, so I relented and got out too.
After breakfast, I went for a shower and by the time I
returned the van was ready to move on. I finished off what I needed to do and
by 8.50am we were pulling out of the caravan park and making the drive through
Airlie Beach for the last time, I was a bit sad to be saying goodbye to the
paradise we had enjoyed for the past five days, but am sure there will be
others to explore ahead of us.
The drive to Mackay took an hour and 45min. It wasn’t
particularly picturesque as it wound its way through cane fields. I read a
friend’s travel blog of Sicily to Paul as we motored along, before switching to
the small amount of tourist info I had for Mackay. We had one impatient trucker giving us a hard
time over the CB for slowing him down, but Paul made it known he wasn’t the
slow vehicle and the guy should go jump.
Just before 11am, we pulled into “The Park” caravan park,
booked in for three nights and made ourselves at home once again. We had a
mid-morning snack while Paul spoke to Jaden to hear that the car was dead again
and had to be towed yesterday, hopefully the mechanic will be able to properly
diagnose the issue with the starter motor this time. After the call, I
organised our lunch, which we packed into the car and drove in to the centre of
Mackay.
Our first stop was the large Caneland shopping complex. Paul
was in desperate need of new shorts and we were needing to upgrade the GPS.
Thankfully Rivers was having a sale, so he got his clothing at a reasonable
price and as it turns out, JB Hi-fi was having a sale on GPS units and we saved
$60 on the model we were after, a good shopping expedition.
With the shopping done, we returned to the car and drove to
a spot on the edge of the Pioneer River, finding a bench with a view and having
our lunch. We then walked the Bluewater trail along the river’s edge watching
people fishing from boats and the traffic bridge.
We eventually came across a bike show, it was a $10 entry,
but the back door was open so we just wandered in and did a loop of the bikes
on show. Paul happily admired what was on display but I am glad we didn’t have
to for out any cash for it.
We returned to the car via the same route, passing the Bluewater
Lagoon, a large three-tiered public pool that is free to use, however it was
closed. We then drove to Dan Murphys to stock up on needed supplies, before
driving to the tourist info centre and collecting some brochures on things to
do.
Once back at the van, I went through the information and then
set up the GPS. We went for a walk
around the park, checking out the facilities and the other vans parked up. As
we returned to our van I decided we really should give the ole girl a bit of a
scrub down as she hasn’t been cleaned for 7 months.
We got out the buckets and brooms and set about scrubbing
the caked on bugs and dirt that we have managed to collect on our travels. It
was a bit of a struggle, as it took a real scrubbing to shift some of the
stuff. We had plenty of encouragement
from fellow travellers and lots of requests as we went about making her shine.
We didn’t finish the job as it was getting dark and talking to others had
slowed down our progress, so it will have to be a job completed in stages.
I then came in and organised our dinner, before
going through the photos for the day and loading them on the net. It
No comments:
Post a Comment