I do NOT know where the time goes but it's the end of August. Somehow life and travel of late has seemed even more leisurely and peaceful than before and that's saying something for us two! Much more relaxed and we'll need to invest in EKG equipment.

Our final time with Thomas was a night in the Crystal Creek National Park. A little swim in the creek, cold showers, some guitar playing and singing (yikes!) at night, lots of good food and drink. We were sad to part ways with Thomas as it was just so great seeing friends from home again but we will hopefully be linking up with him again in the south so the separation wasn't too painful.

Back through Townsville for our third time - more Olympic watching on their big screen TV. Watching TV feels so natural. Even sitting in a park, it just felt like home. Ahh, the power of Television. Pedal down and off to Eungella National Park. Here we finally managed to see what the all elusive Platypus looks like. This was our 3rd or 4th attempt at spotting them at various locations and there were tons of them up in this creek. I had envisioned them as slow and plodding like the sea cow or the Koala, but those little suckers really move. The video is kind of unspectacular, but you can see just how quickly they cruise around. Really neat creatures. 3 days later and 0 (zero) showers later we came to Nebo. You need know nothing else about Nebo Qld except that if you're there by some unfortunate stroke of luck and haven't showered for 3 days, there's a public washroom. Don't choose the women's stall, and don't choose the men's. Go to the Disabled door and a world of cleanness will be opened up to you. We had a gloriously HOT shower in the middle of the gloomy coalbelt that made us feel like we were Olympic medalists. I don't know why there was a shower there, nor why we had hot water but it was like manna from heaven. Amazing what that can do for the spirit. Oh, if you do find yourself there, bring a friend as there are no locks on the disabled stall so you'll need someone to stand guard.

After infinitely more driving we arrived at Carnarvon Gorge. The pictures don't really do this place justice but it was great. Waking up to a symphony of birds in the mornings we walked about 25kms on our first day. Amazing diversity of sights and vegetation in the gorge and lots of Aboriginal art history too. The next day we dragged our less spritely butts up to the top of the gorge for the birds eye view before heading back down to have a little lunch by a peaceful turtle filled pond. After fuelling up in Rollston, leading contender for the worst tasting water in the developed world and possibly 3rd world as well (imagine overly chlorinated water that has sat in a mildewy concrete cistern for 4 years and, despite the chlorine, has still managed to go off - and that after 2 glorious days of drinking beautiful canarvon gorge creek water), we were back out on the road. We were only passed by about 4 cars all afternoon, and at the speed we lope along at, that's quite remarkable. We had a wonderful drive through rolling lightly treed fields that reminded me very much of southern Alberta and fondly of all of you that we continue to miss dearly.

Love from Baebs and Jason