Today I had a 240km drive to do from Mission Beach down to Townsville and at lunchtime I pulled into Frances Creek Rest Area where I sat and ate my lunch on one of the picnic benches there. I was joined by an Aussie guy on a motorbike called Dave who told me about his most recent accident on his bike and that he was driving to Townsville to have another scan on his back at the hospital down there as he had an operation on his back after the accident and was going back for a check up.

I drove the remaining way down to Townsville, found a car park at the end of the main promenade and went for a walk along the strand. Walking back I bumped in to Dave who had parked his bike up by the beach and was sitting on the grass close by. I said hello again and we talked a little more, this time about him working in Cairns as a security guard patrolling the Lagoon at night time and all the antics that went on with the drunk tourists up there. He had some sunny stories of things that went on as you could imagine.....

I popped into the information centre to find out about camping in town and they gave me a map and some prices, I decided that although I would have liked to stay in the town for a night and go out for a drink it was just getting too expensive having to pay to park every night so I decided to head out to the highway and find rest area that was free. I found Bluewater Rest Area and parked up for the night.

At the rest area I got talking to a Swiss girl who had just got back from driving in the outback and she put the idea in my head of doing the same, until I worked out the cost of doing so. It was around 2500km and would take around 5 days EACH WAY! It would work out too expensive and would be very boring and she had also told me that she had done it with only 1 CD in her campervan and there were no radio stations out there and the CD she had was a rubbish one!

I looked at my map and decided to head towards the outback tomorrow but only go inland for about 200km to an old gold mining town called Charters Towers, based on her recommendation.