Tuesday 3 October 2017 On our taxi ride to Kingsford-Smith airport, the driver treated us to the usual complaints about how close we live to the airport and how this undermined his livelihood. The whingeing is a small price to pay for cheap fares. The real challenge lay ahead, on the Tigerair Flight from Sydney…
Bellingen to Sydney
22 September to September 2002 On our first morning back at Minnie Water, Susie wanted to relocate our camp. I was reluctant to do this, having grown tired of setting up and breaking camp for short stops. But we found a spot further away from the beach that was shady and secluded, being nestled in…
Brisbane
21 September 2002 Judy Venn lent us her Brisbane street directory, so we had no trouble finding Robbie’s house in Chapel Hill. We also had her excellent directions to follow. The house was an impressive structure, “More an environment than a house”, as one of the proud owners observed, reciting the wisdom of a previous…
Kenilworth to The Big Pineapple
17 September—19 September 2002 We stayed in the Charlie Moorland Camping Area for the next three nights. The first day we were there, Susie went into Eumundi markets with Joan and Bruce. Ruby and Clare stayed back with me and we went on a long walk through Kenilworth State forest. We saw different types of…
Coolum to Kenilworth
13 September—16 September 2002 The caravan park at Coolum Beach is located just behind the sand dunes. The path to the beach is directly in front of our tent. We couldn’t be closer to the ocean short of camping on the beach itself. Since we arrived last night, a small village of tents, cars and…
Wongi to Coolum Beach
12 September 2002 On our second day at Wongi State Forest, we did some serious mooching around. I played the guitar by the river nearly all afternoon. I also helped Ruby photograph a model of a bird she had made from found objects, for one of her art projects. Susie had helped her put it…
Wongi State Forest
11 September 2002 The next morning we packed up and headed out along the main road out of Hervey Bay until we realised (not for the first time) that we had no idea where we were going. After some deliberation, we decided to aim for Wongi State Forest, so we returned to Hervey Bay for…
Fraser Island 2
9 September 2002 On our second morning on Fraser Island, we had an enormous breakfast and then departed with the tour group once again, this time to Lake Wabby. This involved a short drive up the beach followed by a walk of about 2 km over a sand blow to a small freshwater lake nestled…
Fraser Island 1
8 September 2002 I got up at about 6.30 a.m., wiped the outside of the tent dry, and made 14 slices of toast while we all finalised preparations for our trip to Fraser Island. We left the trailer locked to the car in the caravan park at Hervey Bay and boarded a bus. Susie forgot…
Hervey Bay
5 Sept—7 September 2002 We had an excellent day of whale-watching, despite the drawbacks of a packaged tour: we spent the first 50 minutes on a bus that meandered through the suburbs collecting other tourists, until we finally alighted at an-awful private marina development and sped out to sea in a large diesel powered catamaran. …
Moree to Maryborough
1 September—3 September 2002 The Caravan Park in Moree was a total dump. The sink got blocked, the bunk bed was dangerous, and everybody including the caravan park manager smoked in the toilets, despite signs prohibiting it. In hindsight, we might have done well to stay in Collarenebri and put up with the exposed site…
Broken Hill to Moree
The next morning we headed back to the tourist centre in Broken Hill to see if we could get some more information about outback New South Wales. There wasn’t a lot to be found, so we decided to make up our minds about which way to drive to Queensland once we got to Cobar. First…
Wundercliffe 