The drive from Rainbow Beach started well enough, after five days of waiting for the car we were finally on the road again! Our plan was to stop at Eumundi Market and then continue on to the Gold Coast. We'd pre-bought a 3 day theme park pass and the kids had been looking forward to this part of the trip since we started. We'd been driving for 80 km and were passing through Gympie when we heard the now familiar, completely disheartening sound of the radiator bo...

Thankfully Rainbow Beach was about the best place on our whole trip to be stranded without a car. The caravan park was 1 minute from the tiny strip of shops and 2 minutes from the beach. They gave us a site away from the other van sites and right beside the pool, which we had to ourselves for what turned out to be five nights. The kids could make plenty of noise, swim and ride their bikes around. The township had a supermarket, coffee shops, butcher and bakery as...

We drove the short trip from Hervey Bay to River Head and were first in the queue for the barge across to Fraser Island. Toby and I were both a little nervous as the driving conditions on Fraser had deteriorated since the big storms a few months ago; there were particular warnings about towing and Toby had watched too many You Tube clips of people getting bogged as they got on/off the barge! Things didn't start so well when the barge arrived and the attendant to...

The drive inland to Carnarvon Gorge from Calliope River was long, slow and fairly boring. We passed through farmland and small mining towns before eventually reaching the turnoff into the Gorge. 450 kms took us 7 hours, mostly due to constant roadworks. Things improved as we neared the National Park and spotted wallabies, emus, brolgas and bustards along the roadside. The only camping option outside of school holidays was a private campground called Takaraka whic...

We continued heading south from St Lawrence and pulled into Gladstone around lunchtime, quickly found our bearings for where we needed to catch the ferry and then just as quickly, headed out of town. Gladstone is a huge mining port town and very unattractive! Instead we camped about half an hour away on the Calliope River, which reminded me a little of camping beside the Murray, we had a campfire and then an early night. We were watching the weather keenly as we...