We were very fortunate to secure a beach front site at a caravan park in Harvey Bay for 2 nights. (Lucky, as there are the Grey Nomads who come up here year after year and secure the same good site, our neighbour has been coming here for 20 years, 3 months at a time and always on the same site. Whilst we were there, they sat in their air conditioned caravan for most of the day!!! Disappointing for those infrequent travellers, as this scenario is commonly found across similar type places throughout Australia. A few people commented to us on how lucky we were to get the site - on our site would normally be a couple who had been coming here for the last 30 years, but had to leave a little earlier! They'll get their site back again next year.

The site required us to drive the van in (not back in), this meant we could lie in bed looking out at the ocean.

We enjoyed our couple of days busy watching sun rise, sun set, swimming and walking on the beach. The boys collected Hermit Crabs (just like my brother and I did when we were there as kids), Lach and Cam set up Hermit Crab races.

Out at Urangan (just a few kms up the road from our camp) is an enormous jetty that runs over 500 meters out. Up close to the shore there are the usual schools of small fish commonly found under most jetties, as you walk further out the fish get bigger and the schools are so big, they block out the sand. This jetty is very, very popular with local fishermen and women. Many have bikes / trolleys rigged up to take their gear. Live bait fishing is the common method of fishing, some fishermen even put air into their bait tanks/buckets. We saw evidence of large fish being caught, a 5km Tuna, large Spanish Mackerel. Fishing on this is on the to do list for next visit to the area.

Onto Inskip Point we travel. We have learnt that the National Parks in Queensland are very busy over the weekends, so getting in on the Thursday, we are able to secure as close a water front site that is possible, we were approx 70 meters from the beach front.

Another family from our Ski club are here, they about to head out onto Fraser Island the next day, we have a lovely afternoon catching up with them. The next morning, we walk to the point and see them off on the barge. On our walk back to camp, just before the bitumen starts, the sand is really boggy. One young guy gets bogged; he has no idea what he is doing and has no recovery gear. Lach and Cam jump into help, taking the initiative to ask others stuck behind if they can borrow some maxx tracks. Eventually that guy gets out, with the assistance from many. Then the next car gets bogged, then in the other track another car gets bogged (there's one track out, one track in), no one can get in or out, cars are piling up. No one close has a winch, so Camo heads down the line looking for a car with a winch to get them to come forward and help. This goes on for about an hour, the boys are in their element and even better, it's not us bogged!!! Mind you, Brad wanted to go back and get our vehicle (with the winch) and join in the action.

We've decided a day trip out onto Fraser Island is going to work best for us this trip, it was a nice change being guided, no driving, no navigating and the boys listened and retained the driver's commentary. We all had a fantastic day. It was low tide as we arrived, so up the East side of the Island we travelled out on the beach. We soon started seeing Dingo's, the highlight was a baby Dingo, he/she was very cute. We all went for a float down Eli Creek, then onto the Maheno Wreck. It has really deteriorated since we were last there 18 years ago. It's interesting to ponder as to how long it will last. The tour guide thinks it's likely to be removed at some stage as a few tourists are not following their rules and climbing on it and hurting themselves. Onto The Pinnacles (coloured Sands), then inland for quite a slow old journey out to Lake Mackenzie. Whilst we were out swimming in the Lake, in walked our friends from the ski club! We were able to catch up for about 45 mins before our BBQ lunch was ready.

We all agree that Lake Mackenzie is the best swimming spot we've had this trip. The pristine white silica sand, the blue turquoise water, the pleasant temperate and the fact that it is fresh water makes it number 1 for us. We wish we could bottle this and take it home.

Our tour continues onto Central Station and a walk through the tranquil rainforest along the silent creek. Silent as it runs over sand, there's no rocks for the water to bounce from and create sound. On the return leg of our tour, it was approaching high tide. The driver tackled the softer sand on the East Coast for as long as he could before we were forced to take the inland bumpy track back to the barge.

One morning, we ventured into the sand dunes and coloured sands off Rainbow Beach. The boys were lucky to be offered to borrow a boggy board by an Italian Back packer. They had fun surfing the sand dunes and we all had a laugh watching their stacks. The backpacker has just finished his medical studies, he is about to return home to start his job where he will specialise as an Orthapedic Surgeon, thankfully we didn't need his skills today with the stacks the boys were having.

We became friendly with some other campers, who are also teachers and have also taken long service leave this term and have also travelled to Cape York. They've got a son Cam's age and a daughter who's 7, all played well together for a couple of days. It was great for the kids to have some company, everywhere else we've travelled, there have been no other kids.

In total we had 5 nights at Inskip Point. We spent our days watching sun rises and sunsets. The boys had no luck fishing, despite many efforts (no one else was having any luck either).