15th to 31st October - going south

                     Saturday 15th

 Townsville port early Sat. morn

    The Townsville air show was a blast!!  Although we started out parked a bit far away, we moved a closer and saw most of the display.
     the picture left is the view over the ocean from where we first parked up on Port road.


      We spent the weekend and the first few days of the week at Currajong, doing a bit of shopping and catching with a few friends before departing on Thursday 20th, making our way south.

                     Friday 21st
     We got as far as Homehill yesterday spending the night at the comfort stop, it is a well set up stop-over with laundry, showers etc. I made use of the laundry while there.
    

Jim enjoying a drink on the verandah

     Traveling on today we had breakfast at a rest area south of Bowen and lunch at Bloomsbury, making about 240 km this morning. Refueled Dilligaf at the servo here and continued to the Leap Hotel about 20km north of Mackay. The hotel here has a camp area free to use,  just have a beer or something at the pub. We had a takeaway dinner and a drink or two, as the picture of Jim here shows.
             
                         Saturday 22nd

The Leap mountain

     The hotel and few residences (most of whom (I think) would commute to Mackay to work) rests in the hollow of hills and mountain's. The morning was pretty cool with a heavy dew on the ground. We walked to the base of this hill this morning before leaving for Sarina fairly early.

Shadows on the beach at Cape Palmerston

Once in town we had to wait for the real estate to open, we are looking at establishing a new home base.  We went on to Cape Palmerston Holiday park by mid morning on Saturday for the weekend. The beach is lovely and we enjoyed a walk and a splash.

Sunset at Cape Palmerston

          The sunset was very colourful with our bus in the fore.




                             Monday 24th

Marion creek - low tide

Marion creek - high tide

     We ventured to Notch Point road to find a quiet camp spot on the bank of Marion creek. I was amazed see the water rushing up the creek as the tide came in, it went from a sand filled stream to a wide and pretty river, the tides vary by about 5 mtrs, huge movement in my book, never seen the like. I tried my luck at fishing on the high tide resulting in one whiting. GREAT!
    The two photo's of the creek show a little of what I saw between the high and low of the tides.
     We stayed here until Thursday then ventured in to Sarina.

                Thursday 27th
    After restocking the larder at  Woolworth's this morning and checking the real estate we drove out to Sarina beach where we had a look at a property, spending a couple of days there. The beach is long and the tide goes out a long way but it is all sand no matter what the tide.

Coal loading terminal at Hay point

                    Saturday 29th
      Drove around the corner to Campwin beach this morning where we had a good view of the coal loading terminal at Hay Point, south of Mackay, and the surrounding seascape. BEAUTIFUL!! I counted 13 ships waiting to get into the wharf to do what they do.

      Later in the afternoon we drove back into Sarina township parking near the sports park for the next couple of days.
               
                         Sunday 30th
     The local showground markets are on today, held on the last Sunday of every month. I took a drive out to have a look, it is a huge market with all sorts of anything that you might want (and some you may not). I only had a quick look as I will take more time when it comes around again next month.

                         Monday 31st
                  Awaiting real estate agents!! 
     October is over! I'll blog again in November.