Day 33 Thursday 24th July
Black River to Cape Hillsborough NP....with a detour to Airlie Beach....(450km)

Once again we had wet canvas...but from the heavy dew; no rain. The sun dried it off a little, but we wanted to be on our way, so didn't wait for it all to be dry.
Once through the outskirts of Townsville and lots more roadworks, our first stop was in the town of Ayr, where we got fuel, some supplies and had a coffee.
There are no road trains allowed this far south, but we saw our first cattle train.....on railway tracks rather than on the road. We felt rather sorry for the cattle...wondering how far they had to travel.....
It is the middle of the sugar cane harvest at the moment, so we saw lots of 'cane trains' loaded up and on the move to several nearby sugar processing plants.
As it was yesterday, it was pretty much just a driving day today, but we detoured into Bowen where we had our lunch by the beach. Bowen is a well-known mango growing region....but they are not available at this time of year!
Our next detour was to Airlie Beach. We have never visited this popular location before. Boats leave from here to go to the Whitsunday Islands. Yes, it was pretty, but what we hadn't realised was that it was really a town...with a big shopping centre, industrial area etc. We had naively thought it was just a little beach village!! So we had an ice cream and headed back to the main road, feeling just a little disappointed!
We arrived at our chosen camp for tonight at around 4pm. Queensland National Parks has adopted a system whereby permits to camp have to be pre-booked online or by phone, which rather takes the spontaneity out of camping, and so not everyone does it....they just head into the campground and grab any site which is vacant! This can pose problems, of course! When we arrived at our, (pre-booked), site, there was indeed another campervan on it !! However, they said they were just having a cup of tea, and then leaving...which they did. We think, based on what we were subsequently told by other campers, that they were hoping that because it was getting late in the day, they might have been lucky and no-one would have come to 'claim' the site. They had apparently only driven in not long before us!!
Anyway, we set up camp....it really is a very nice bush camp site...... and then took the 1 minute walk to the beach to watch the sunset. (Even though we are on the east coast, the orientation of this beach means that there is a great view of the sunset).
It had been quite cloudy all day, but it was a really lovely evening and the sunset didn't disappoint.