With the weather beginning to settle down and food back on the shelves in the supermarkets again, we leave Elliott Heads and travel on up the coast. Our next stop is Calliope free camp for 2 nights then on to Gladstone.
With all the rain the east coast has had and then some high temperatures, the humidity was now so bad that we need power to use our aircon so we booked into the Showgrounds. Its been the worst humidity we have ever known and we spent most of the time in our van, only going out to places that had aircon, it was that bad! We did try to organise a informational bus tour around Gladstone but that had to be cancelled because Darryl the driver, had to go into home isolation as his wife had Covid.
Gladstone is known to be an industrial city with the NGR Power station, QER shale mine, Orica Australia ammonium nitrate plant, Cement Australia plant and Rio Tinto Aluminium. It would have been interesting to hear more about these places but never mind, next time!
While we were in Gladstone we walked around the botanical gardens and also chatted with a guy who was part of a group doing bonsai. It was interesting watching and learning what’s involved in this art.
We watched the big tent go up at the Showgrounds in preparation for the show “Infamous” which was coming to town but we didn’t feel the need to hang around for another few days to see this so leaving the humidity behind us, we head further up the coast.
Next stop was Kershaw Gardens, a free camp near the shopping centre in Rockhampton. We stocked up on shopping and enjoyed a good happy hour with other travellers before heading out the next day to Emu Park. We enjoyed 2 weeks at this park where we have stayed before. We drove out to the old South Sea Islanders museum (also known as Kanakas, labourers brought to Australia for sugar cane and cotton farms) at Joskeleigh and visited the Koorana Crocodile farm.
We enjoyed our walks around the town and along the memorial walk which was not there on our last visit. This project was the dream of Ross Coulter and was well thought out, with all the plaques and history this made interesting reading. Of course no visit to Emu Park would be complete without seeing and listening to “The Singing Ship”
We are now heading to Seaforth which is about 35kms up from Mackay. We spent a night at Waverley Creek on the way up and then arrived at Seaforth which has to be one of our favourite places. It’s a no fuss basic campground next to the beach with lots of bird life in among the big old mango trees. We first came here 9 1/2 years ago when we started our life on the road. We called in for one night and stayed 7 weeks. It was like we stopped the world and got off for a while. This place has that effect on us? We only stayed 3 weeks this time but it still has the same pull on us.
We spent our days alternating our walks on the beach with swimming in the netted sea pool, (because of the crocs) reading and watching the bird life. We adopted a family of curlews who spent their days under our van and watched a family of ducks stop traffic as they crossed the road to walk passed us every afternoon. A group of Kookaburras would compete with each other with their laughing calls and the black cockatoos would fly over to settle in the trees in front of us. I have still yet to discover the proper name of the bird we can hear but haven’t seen which I long ago christened the f’koff bird because of the sound it makes. f’koff f’koff, f’koff f’koff
We again did the walk over to the islands at low tide, climbing to the top and watching the turtles swimming below. Another day we drove out to Finch Hatton Gorge to do a bush walk, stopping off at Platypus beach on the way back for our picnic lunch. We sat in the car in the drizzling rain hoping to see the platypus but as always, we had no luck.
As we were here at Seaforth early in the season this time, the park was very quiet, except for the Easter weekend when it was packed with Mackay locals. We were camped at the back of the park having the place pretty much to ourselves. None of the regular grey nomads had arrived for the season yet so we didn’t get to catch up with anyone we have known from previous visits. We left messages with Mark the caretaker to pass on our good wishes.
Now we pulled out this morning in heavy rain to begin our trip back down the coast, and to hopefully drier weather. Next stop Fardooley’s, another of our favourites spots.