We awoke to a clear day on the coast. Sam was awake fairly early and wanted to see how far away the beach was – it turned out it was only 50m walk from our caravan. He came back and gave us a description of the bay. Some ducks had come waddling along to just outside the caravan, so Hannah and Bethany went out side to see them. They asked if they could feed them some bread – I said no (thinking of the ducks’ digestive system), and then an older man from one of the caravans asked them, as they were standing outside, if they would like some bread to give the ducks – of well – let them enjoy it then:).

Once Hannah and Beth had breakfasted, dressed etc, I went with them and Sam to have a look at the beach (Lauren tends to wake up later, so she was still breakfasting at this point). Suddenly memories of my childhood came flooding back – the palm trees on the fringe of the beach, the muddied sand, the flat calm water, the colours of the sand and water – it all spoke of north Qld beaches. The 3 children had running races on the beach for a while and we went and felt the water – I said they could swim a bit later, after I’d done a few jobs at the caravan and was free to watch them. Lauren joined us then and they did a few more games like hopscotch etc on the sand. Then they saw some palm fronds higher up near the fringe of the beach and some bamboo sticks. They decided they would start to make a ‘fort’ (like they’ve done at home on our bush property). I watched them start it off and then left Lauren and Sam in charge, with instructions that no-one was to go near the water itself without asking Mum or Dad first. Then I went the 50m back to the van. 

Michael had had a sleep-in, but was up by now. We decided we needed at least the morning to get a few jobs done. We had quite a bit of washing to do, we needed to clean out the van floor and also a couple of the storage cupboards near the wheel arches had had some water come in ( we will try to get the edges siliconed up somewhere). Also Michael wanted to fix the bike tyres that needed fixing. We plugged away at all these jobs, checking on the children every now and then. They were thoroughly entrenched in their project of building a hut (rather than a fort, it had been decided it was a ‘hut’ ) and Hannah and Beth were pretending to be aborigine children who were going off hunting and gathering (I had been reading some Australian history to them all in the car the previous day). They had the big stick which was the pretend spear and they were killing kangaroo to roast in the fire back at the hut. Lauren and Sam had found some logs for the seats and made a pit for the fire. They had found some coconuts and were in the process of trying to get into one. They were being quite inventive in their attempts. It was lovely seeing them all playing and enjoying themselves together in that way. A couple of hours passed and then we called them back for morning tea. Michael had gone down at one stage and helped them finally get into the coconut and try the milk. The taste also brought back memories for me. By the middle of the day, the tide had gone a long way out, and it was mudflats for about 100m out to the waters edge. The kids asked if they could walk out there together, so I said yes, and then to come back for lunch. Well they came back quicker than I expected, with stories of the hundreds of crabs that had been out there. And Hannah and Bethany kept saying how loudly Lauren had screamed. Hannah was sad that she hadn’t been able to have a swim yet, and now it was too late because the tide had gone out. I hadn’t realised the tide went out that far. I said hopefully she could have one when the tide came back in later.

We then had lunch and got the 2 younger ones to have a rest on beds for half an hour, listening to audio stories. Then they rode their bikes around for a little while. It was only a fairly small caravan park, and we were the only family with children there – I think all the rest were either permanent residents or grey nomads – many of them had gone out for the day so it was fairly quiet at the van park – so there was no problem with the girls riding their bikes around for a bit.

Then they were keen to go back to the beach and continue their game. It felt good for me to be able to get all the washing done, dried and put away, and the van cleaned and reordered. I also managed to catch up on some blogging and posting of blogs I had written but hadn’t been able to post due to lack of 3G coverage at the time of writing. Michael pottered and was able to watch a movie and have a rest after all the driving of the last few days.

About 4.30, Michael and I found the kids on the beach and we all went for a walk along the beach for about 45mins. We collected some nice looking shells as we walked. On the way back, the younger girls started to walk in the water. Michael and I decided it would be bath time soon anyway, so they might as well have their ‘swim’ in their clothes (which had started getting wet anyway) and I would take them for a shower once back at the van park.  They enjoyed a splash for about 15mins and then we headed off to the showers, while Michael and the others did dinner. We all agreed it had been a great day, and were a bit sad to be on the move again tomorrow. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could have a whole year to travel around Australia and we could take even more time? Of well, we are thankful for having the time we have anyway.

We packed up as quickly as we could – it was too wet for the kids to go out and ride bikes or anything. Then we backtracked towards Springsure and Emerald. Just after leaving Rolleston, we had to go through water across the road – another indication of just how much water was flowing in the rivers and creeks around here at present. When we got to Emerald, we stopped at a shopping centre to pick up some groceries and some new bike tyres (2 of the bikes needed some maintenance). We also posted some birthday cards for Nana while we were there (whose birthday is this Sunday). We then drove a bit further along to Morton Park in Emerald where there is a giant copy of Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ painting. We got a photo standing under it. This is a sunflower growing region – we had seen the crops of them alongside the road as we drove.

After Emerald, we headed north towards Clermont. This was a big mining town, with the huge Blair Athol mine just nearby. We had hoped to do a tour of the mine, but they only ran on a Tues and Fri (we were driving through on a Wed). Still we got to see quite a bit of the large machines in the industrial areas of the small towns we drove through. And we might be able to do a mine tour over in WA. We did have a short stop at Clermont and saw the monument to the 1916 flood which occurred there, killing 65 people – the worst disaster in Australia at the time. The monument was a tree with a line marking how high the water rose – 4.3m. A tree was chosen for the monument because so many people survived by climbing trees.

We then turned NE and headed along the Peak Downs Hwy towards Mackay. We drove past some cotton growing areas, and past the Peak Downs Mountain Range, which had some very unusually shaped boulders. We passed through some small towns called Coppabella, Nebo, Epsom and Eton. As we were driving, I was trying to work out where we were staying that night. Even though it meant driving a bit longer again that day, we wanted to get close to Mackay so we could stay somewhere for 2 nights at least. We had hoped to stay at Cape Hillsborough NP campground, but it was full. There   were a couple of other campgrounds in that area, but there was no power and generators were not allowed. We wanted to stay somewhere nice and close to water to have a rest day. We tried a place at Lake Kinchant, but they didn’t answer. Then we tried a place at Armstrong Beach, near Sarina, just south of Mackay. We got their last powered site. So we drove from Eton to Sarina, and didn’t have to go in to Mackay. Then Armstrong Beach was 10mins from Sarina towards the coast. We arrived about 6.30pm. The first thing we noticed when we got out of the car was how much warmer it was – being a little bit extra north and closer to the coast. We didn’t need a jumper, even at that time of night. The friendly managers helped us reverse into our spot. We had a spag bol dinner from the frozen dinner stash and got ready for bed. We got to say hello to Kermie the green frog, who sits on the wall just outside the ladies toilet every night.

After leaving Longreach, we backtracked along the Capricorn Hwy back to Barcaldine, had some lunch and picked up a few supplies. Then headed east for the 300km run to Emerald. We went through a couple of small towns called Jericho, and Alpha. It was a bit overcast and drizzly at times. It was getting close to 5pm as we approached Emerald, so we rang ahead to see if we could book into a caravan park. All 3 that we tried were booked up for powered sites, but had vacancy for unpowered. We rang ahead to Springsure, which was another 68km further on – they had one last vacancy for a powered site, and at a good price too. So we booked it and continued to drive on. It was about 6.30 when we arrived at the caravan park, so we had to reverse in to our spot in the dark – which was not too bad. It had obviously been raining quite a bit in this area, as the dirt roads had turned to mud. The lady at the park office enquired if we were headed for Canarvon Gorge, and advised us to ring ahead and check the road conditions in the morning, as all the rain may have made it impassable for our caravan. Lauren and I cooked a quick dinner of devilled sausages, instant mash and vegies while Dad and Sam setup the caravan. It was a later dinner than usual, then Beth and Hannah went to bed straight after. The others of us read or did some research on our iPads. I read up on the different walks available at the gorge. Then it was bed time.