Today we were woken 'early' by the V8 Supercars as they were warming up for the Townsville Challenge. Once we were organised we went for another walk along the foreshore, the Strand and around the Marina. Charlie then found a good place for a coffee while I then went for a challenging walk up the famous rocky outcrop just behind Townsville, called The Castle. The road wound around the 'hill' up to a Lookout that had a 360 deg view. Charlie picked me up from the Lookout. Some of the photos on the blog show these views as well as some of the Supercar Race.
We then headed north 1st past Proserpine then to Bowen & on to Ingham. At Ingham we went for slight detour to Halifax and Lucinda Point, (after a chatty ph call to Aunty Margaret one of my few remaining aunts on dads side, She was full of stories about dad's time up there and also about when she and uncle Allen had visited there in 1964 & met the family that dad used to board with)this is where dad spent much of his teenage yrs after his father died when he was only 14. His mother had died when he was 7. Dad moved up to that area to do cane cutting and to be closer to one of his sisters. A pretty tough life for someone of that age, hard to imagine in this day and age! Further along the road Caldwell was a lovely surprise, very pretty, coast on one side at Caldwell and mountains on the other. Lots of lush valleys and agriculture along this area including Tully (meant to be the wettest place in Australia) The weather became pretty bleak the further north we went, and our overnight destination of Innisfail was damp. A quiet night there for us at the Park cooked a pasta dinner at the camp kitchen which was yum. Innisfail Show was on so town was very quiet that afternoon, not somewhere we'd rush back to! From here we headed early to Cairns on the Sat morning.