After the remoteness and silence of the many thousands of Ks
we’d travelled on the Cape and far N and W Qld, the population crush and
traffic of the built up areas of the coastal regions from Cairns on down to the
Qld-NSW border and beyond, was a very confronting contrast. And driving became
a matter of who’s the bravest! Double lines? pff*^@#tt, it is less than nothing!
We’re not talking death wish here but .…… road toll figures .. hmmm. However, taking bit between teeth, we took
the most scenic route options and trawled along the roads that hugged the coast
as much as possible looking for good things to ogle. Fortunately we were
swimming against the tide – isn’t that typical?
When most are travelling north to sun and warmth, here we were blithely
travelling south, but it does have its advantages. There were many hidden, magical
spots that didn’t give up their secrets easily so one had to take a punt and
drive through innocuous looking streets until – voila! there you were popped
out onto a magnificent beach, with views over Magnetic, Hamilton, the
Whitsunday Islands and the like, wide stretches of beach fringed with storm
swept palms, pumice and coral fragments, spreading beach almond trees with
their carpets of nuts, and fallen giants – palm, eucalypts and others - silent,
battered witnesses of cyclones and wild seas. Quite lovely and if not for the threat of
crocs, we would have been in the water. Sigh!
It was a blur of traffic, lush green field of sugarcane standing
at attention, or perhaps at easy, in neat rows swaying to their own secret
music, awesome mountains – some the result of subterranean land movement,
others dramatic remnants of volcanoes. We chilled out with drinks at Bowen
yacht club watching the local pilot boat come in to port at sundown, marvelled
at Gladstone and its humungous shipping port, and Townsville and Mackay with
their massively growing metropolises and thriving ports, found ourselves off
the beaten track in Marlborough with a surprise overnight stay with a delicious
meal of local fish, and then it was on to Rocky and Childers famous for its
backpacker’s fire way back whenever. Centres
like Gladstone and Yeppoon are massive residential developments spreading like unstoppable
lava flows in all directions – the scary price of prosperity and dare I say
‘progress’. I am still a little overwhelmed
by Qld ports which like Gladstone, ship out an astonishing variety of huge
chunks of Oz – coal, alumina, magnesia, loads of –ites such as calcite, etc. We will become a negative land mass if we’re
not careful!
Then we visited friends! (our primary reason for travelling
coastal in Qld). It was wonderful. From
Noosa to the Tweed we ate and drank like royalty and talked the legs off a
whole dining room suite of chairs – it was good! We got lost in Tweed whose
roads double back and back across the river till we flung up our hands and reverted
to the trusty MAPS app on my trusting iPhone, found our family of osprey who
seem to have been nesting on the same post for years - we first saw the nest ~10 years ago -, lunched
at a magic Bali-kind of place at Fingal’s Head, which set the scene for lunch
at the Yum Yum Tree café in New Brighton
where I indulged in a plate of ‘Peace Love
Vegetables’ and left there feeling zoned out and at one with the world wishing
that I could sit cross legged to meditate - we were in Nimbin territory! and
the atmosphere and conversation was
entirely one of zen and the food to die for.
Beaches all the way from the Tweed to Grafton – rolling
surf, stunning sand, fishermen with huge surf rods, and halleluiah NO CROCS! Early sunsets, rivers needing a packed lunch
to cross – the Clarence, Brunswick, Richmond, Tweed and more. But can you believe I was still scratching?! The mozzie itch has ruled the nights and I looked
like an aboriginal bark painting with splodges of calamine lotion in faded pink
forming crazy patterns on arms and legs, itching like a dog with fleas - thank
goodness for drugs! I tucked into the antihistamines as a last resort – and
they work pretty well. Now I just look like a flea-bitten dog with red blotches,
reminders of mosquito nights.
With one last friend to visit on the coast, we took a day
trip from Grafton, home of the most beautiful Jacaranda trees, to Sawtell and
talked (and ate!) for hours – again! Sawtell is a totally delightful place of picturesque
beaches and inlets, but we couldn’t linger as night was falling so we pointed
the Beast back to Grafton.
Having had our fill of beaches and main highway traffic, the
next day we headed inland towards the big skies and the back of Bourke.
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