Day 75

Airlie Beach - Proserpine - Mackay - Yeppoon

"so jump in my car we'll go 100 around the bend, we'll take this road until we're back at the start yet again....."

Today was a moving day. Everyone was on the move. Some heading North, some heading South and some moving on.....poor Leonard!

We left Airlie Beach under light grey skies with lots of blue patches just after 8. We drove through Proserpine and then headed South towards Mackay.

We stopped in at Mackay to fuel and we checked out the Bluewater Lagoon - a massive 3 pooled area. It was a pity it was still overcast and windy as this place would have been great for a swim. It's only open for another day too so we were lucky to see it at all. Closes till October now Qld school has gone back.

From Mackay we got back on the Bruce Highway and headed for Rockhampton.

The road between the 2 towns is long and obviously a lot of fatigue based accidents occur. The road signs have trivia questions on them to generate conversations in the car or to get the driver thinking. Every second sign too is encouraging you to stop. Surprised it wasn't more like a car park!

The road was a busy one too. The Army was heading North. Obviously just finished a massive exercise at Shoalwater. There were lots of big artillery guns on trucks heading up the road as well as huge camo trucks larger than the bushmasters on semi's and even trucks with camo quad bikes on them! In between them were the usual Land Rovers and trailers too. A convoy of camo!

Heading South though with us were the V8's! Clearly they were after Round 2 with the Disco and Van! There were 10 V8's all together - and I held them off for a good 10ks this time round!! I was pretty pleased that by the time we all pit stopped (today's pic) I was only a couple of seconds off the pace!

There is a free Zoo in Rockhampton that the kids were eager to see. It closes at 4.30 which would mean that they would have less than an hour by the time we arrived. We decided then to detour out to Yeppon and the beach for the night to give them more time there tomorrow morning.

We drove onto the Capricorn Highway and headed to the coast. We missed all the rain thankfully and arrived to a wet town but with blue patches in the sky. We left the van hitched on and walked over to the beach.

It was a nice stretch of beach to walk in the late afternoon light. It was just before 5 that we got onto the beach and the tide was well out. We walked about 2ks down the beach with the kids collecting shells before we found Leonard...

Poor Leonard was a sea turtle who was well up past the high tide mark and had died a few hours before we found him. The kids have been so keen to see a sea turtle in the wild - this wasn't what they had hoped for though. It was a shame that we weren't there earlier or we might have at least attempted to save him. Leonard though was limp and lifeless with glazed eyes and the ants had just put out the mass call to action.

We walked back the 2ks in the fading light sad that Leonard had moved on. We were moving on too - back for dinner.

Tomorrow we will head into Rockhampton and then head to Agnes Waters. Delaying crossing the border as much as possible!