We left Bowen behind and headed towards Airlie Beach ... a place we both wanted to visit. We were back into cane country and followed one of the big cane hauling trucks for a while. We arrived at Airlie Beach and were immediately caught in a major
traffic jam. There were roadworks and 'stop/go' people on the main road
leading into Airlie Beach. We ended up driving through the town and
back out again as it looked way too busy and 'touristy' for our liking.
You can usually tell pretty quickly whether a town will be easy to get
around in with a big van and whether you will enjoy the atmosphere. We
were glad we didn't try to stay as we heard the next day that a huge
cruise liner with 2000 people on board was due to dock there.
We drove another 50ks or so in the intermittent rain to a place called
St Helens Beach. We investigated the Council van park there and decided
that it wasn't very nice. We continued to Seaforth, roughly 40kms
north of McKay. We checked out the Council van park on the beach there
and it was much nicer, offering water and grassy areas as well as clean
and tidy amenities. We stayed hooked up to the vehicle as we were only
going to spend one night here. A bit later the wind blew up and became
very unpleasant. As we were located under a couple of big gum trees, we
decided to move to another area in the park in case a dead limb came
down on top of us. We hadn't been there very long and the heavy rain
started. We were in a lower area of the park and the water came about
4" up the wheels of the vehicles, before easing off again ... thank
goodness!
We got talking to the caretaker of the park who explained the enclosure
on the beach was for swimming. He told a story of a couple of
enterprising young fellows who cut a hole in the side of the enclosure
and replaced it with a gate that they could open and close. During high
tide they would burley the inside of the enclosure and leave the gate
open. Later they would swim out and close the gate and wait for the
tide to go out so they could collect whatever fish were silly enough to
swim in after the burley. Apparently it wasn't long though before the
guys were caught and fined for their efforts.
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| Cane hauling truck with cane mill in the distance |
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| Looking down onto the Airlie Beach Marina while waiting in the traffic jam |
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| Our camp at Seaforth (note the high water mark on the yellow wheel chock) |
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| A lone fisherman on the beach |
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| The swimming enclosure |
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