Emerald was also a bit of a service town but it does have a huge Van Gogh Sunflowers picture (much to Claires delight). We spent mosrt of the day getting Claire to a doctor about a rash that seemed to be getting far worse by the day. It rained. After lunch the next day, in Emerald, we decided to take a chance fossicking out in Saphire at Pats. It was great fun, basically washing a bucket of dirt looking for gems. We expected to find nothing, only the poss...

We drove via Townsville into the outback to Charters Towers, an ex-gold boom town. It wasn't as Outback as Chillagoe and a bit of a one salloon town. We heard our bad news about the boiler so we dropped into the local aussie pub for a pot (1/2 pint of beer) and bought a bottle of gin on the way out. On the way to our 'out of town' campsite we passed a flock of hundreds of flying fox bats hanging over someones garden (most likely their mago trees). The camps...

We left our mission beach early for the long hot drive to Paluma. On the way we stopped at the 'frosty mango café' for a frosty mango icecream mmmmm. Just after the turn off to Paluma National Park in the mountains we took a side trip to Paradise Creek watering hole. It was a lovely cooling clear water oasis. After checking that the locals used it and weren't afraid of crocks we jumped in to cool off. To our amusement some local kids were having a bomb dive co...

The next morning we woke with a comedy bird song to a glorius day, not a cloud in the sky. This place is great, really relaxing so we decided to stay for a couple of days in the hot sun and swimming in the warm sea. This is prime Cassawary area so we did the odd rainforrest walk to try and spot them.

We woke up early to phone the backpacker market to get the details for who bought delia and track half the money that never made our account. During our breakfast beautiful parrots were eating berries in the tree next to us. We set off for the Milaa Milaa waterfall circuit and as we pulled up to the first one we saw a tree kangaroo bound across our path. The other 4 waterfalls were quite nice but it was raining so we didnt swim or anything. All the ...