The One Day Tour, Day 100 - Sydney to Townsville

So here was a day.

I woke at 5:30am, in order to be ready for the taxi to the airport at 6:00am. Sue was magnificent, rising to make me some toast and a cuppa. Many wouldn't have and would have had justification as a reasonable precedent. As a result, I was finishing my check in by 6:20am, for a 7:35 flight to Brisbane and then on to Cairns ...

... except ... the 7:35 flight to Brisbane was cancelled because someone broke the plane. Oh dear. I was rescheduled for the direct flight leaving Sydney at 9:15am and therefore finding things to do for nearly three hours. There was breakfast, which boiled down to a vegan salad of pumpkin, red stuff and white commas. It tasted okay.

Sue, meanwhile, enjoyed a sleep in and some sister time with Mandy.

I eventually left Sydney and had an uneventful flight. One of those lack of events was the lack of food which provided for my diet, which I had highlighted in booking but which was lost when my flight was transferred.

Sue left Sydney later in the morning but we both arrived at our destinations - 2000kms apart - at about the same time, not long after noon.

I went straight to the Subaru dealer to pick up my now fixed car and then to the caravan park, to discover that the van had been washed in my absence. The accommodation - Cairns Holiday Park - not only looked after us well in our absence but were happy to issue a cash refund. Rare service these days. At 2:45pm, I programmed the new GPS/radio system and headed for Townsville, 350kms away.

I finally reached the home of friends Judy and Jim Parsons, around 7:00pm, tired and a little shell-shocked. Steak and conversation - two of my favourite things - were provided in thick supply, as was a comfortable bed. I cant say thank your enough or enough times. All three were exactly what I needed.

Townsville to Kinka Beach

Starts don't come much earlier than today with the alarm tolling at 4:15am in order that I could have Sue at the airport for check in at 5:00am.

We went through the usual airport things including the obligatory security check. Top points to the Townsville security officers who accepted my absent mindedness in still having my knife on my belt when I presented. A lovely lady there took my offered knife and kept it in a safe place until my return. We had very little time to wait, as Sue, wheelchair bound, was first loaded on the plane and there was no time for emotional farewells, a short peck having to suffice for us both until the weekend. Sue, managing her pain and preoccupied didn't look back or perform and final wistful wave and I was left standing among strangers who just stared and waited as though there should be a postscript to the parting. I turned, fighting the first pangs which would stab me all day, collected my knife and headed for the hills ... literally, Castle Hill, a Townsville landmark which lies between the centre of town and the well healed shoreline.

Like most mornings, in a scene reminiscent of Uluru, the steep road which ascends Castle Hill is a hive of activity as people of all ages and readiness for heart attack, walk, run or stagger to the top of this 286 metre high pink granite monolith. The derivation of its name is no surprise as it looks for all the world the type of landform which would have been fortified in medieval times. As to the fixation with "conquering" the climb I am loath to offer the excuse "because it is there" as it holds no logic because the flat and go on forever Ingham Rd is there too and presumably also needs conquering but I saw no sweat jockeys there.

As I am nursing a damaged knee and for reasons of not being a complete idiot, I was content to weave in and out of people in various stages of apoplexy as I showed them how the ascent is done ... in my Forester. Some even bothered to give me dirty looks.

As I reached the summit, the sun was managing its first greeting on a cliff face of Mt Stuart, behind Townsville and beginning to light the surface of the Ross River. I was able to watch the take off of Sue's plane. I waved and blew kisses but Sue just seemed to ignore me, too intent on the imminent serving of breakfast and the movie full of tall guys that was just starting ... or perhaps the pain.

After stepping over several folks making resolutions and Labradors who wished for blind owners, I must admit that the sight of a guy pedalling his adapted road bike into the car park at the top of Castle Hill with one leg and the other, a titanium stick strapped to the side of the bike made me glad I gave up smoking and pleased I take the little pills to stop me being that determined. I got to wondering if he had back pedal brakes for the return trip.

The plan was that I was to break camp, leave the trailer with Jim & Judy Parsons for the day and follow my wife's instructions and go sightseeing. I did something very close to that plan. I packed up the car and trailer and hit the road.

The first stop was Airlie Beach, which appears to be for the beautiful people and the ugly rich. It certainly is beautiful with that postcard turquoise blue water, white sand, coconut trees lining the beaches and every shade of green imaginable, include those passing through who were subject to envy. There is even an inlet which runs into the town where you can feed the fish and watch the string rays.

I somehow managed to snag a park where no trailer parks existed, right at the beach and ate lunch and wrote some poetry, sharing a park bench with a friendly lass who claimed to be a major in literature and thought I was brilliant. A young couple nearby seemed to be undergoing some form of training for sucba diving, as they locked mouths for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time without requiring breath ... either that or the braces on their teeth were locked together, which might explain the way their heads were turning vigorously from side to side. I took lots of photos of the place to show Sue. Think Byron, think Cable Beach and then think prettier and you have the picture.

The rest of the afternoon was spent driving, as I was keen to get a long leg out of the way on the first day. The highlight was driving behind Skooby Doo ... which only reminded me of my girl again.

Sunset at Emu Park

I stopped occasionally for fuel or photos and eventually arrived at Kinka Beach about 6:30pm. I came back here because it was a place Sue loved. I had a rather nice pasta at the pub at Emu Park and was ready to head back to the digs when I spied a big, fat, red moon just peeking over Great Keppel Island so I drove up to the Singing Ship and soaked it all in and attempted to capture it with the cameras. This scene made sure I finished the day where I started it, missing Sue.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

Meanwhile Sue was back in Tamworth by mid afternoon, looked after mid journey by Sarah at Sydney airport and once she was home by a friend - Robyn Crosby - and then tonight by Chris and Sam. She's surrounded by people who will look after her.

I worked on some poems and snuggled into my empty bed.

Townsville Still

Another hot day in Townsville after a better night. Sue slept through most of the night and has decided to stay on the heavy duty pain killers for 24 hours in preparation for the flight(s) home.

She amanged to come out for a drive around midday, so I took her along The Strand which runs along the ocean shore and then up to the lookout on Castle Hill. She was only able to get out of the car briefly for a quick look at the view and then it was back to he bed at the caravan park. We've watched more tevelevision in the last two days than in the previous four weeks.

Its an early start in the morning with a 4:15am wake up alarm and a 5:00am check in at the airport. The sadness in the situation is just starting to set in.

A Little Further North to Townsville

Our night in Proserpine did prove to be a wet one and although we didn't have more than 8-10mm, it fell at inconvenient times had we been under canvas, including the heaviest and most prolonged of the falls at about 8am.

Before it got dark, I did a tour of the caravan park to gather more information as an adjunct to the signs which were on all possible walls excusing the council from any and all blame or responsibility from everything from high winds to burglary. The park was in the shape of a capital T, with entry from the base of the T and all of the powered tourist sites along the vertical part. On one side was a swimming pool complex and the other a bowling green. Once the top of the T was reached, resident's accommodation spread on either side and the standard slipped dramatically. Old buses, rusted ancient caravans with flat tires, lean too's against dog boxes on 6x4 trailers were some examples of quarters where standards we low or lower and everywhere flags proclaimed allegiances in the hope of defining the occupants. Aboriginal flags, the Eureka Stockade Southern Cross, Holden Racing Team, Bundaberg Rum, The Skull & Cross Bones and everywhere the Australian Flag, flown as a banner, no doubt, of defiance not pride. It seemed to me from the growls and expletives I heard in admittedly a short space of time, that the wonderful blue ensign was again being used as a justification for bad behaviour which has become so prevalent in the last five years. What a shameful way to treat such a wonderful symbol.

Less than happy with our situation for the night, I locked everything down on the trailer, including the trailer itself and we shut ourselves in. All that said, the cabin we were in was very clean, well appointed and very comfortable and for the only time in our experience, the TV reception was first rate! The rain during the night probably put paid to any chance of shenanigans but it was notable how quickly the park emptied the next morning.

Dingo Beach

We chose another coastal location for our first stop in a 70km out and back deviation from our route north, by travelling to Hideaway Bay, north east of Proserpine. A small and judging by the housing, recent (last 15 years) community which stands on a cost strip among towering and at times steep-sided hills, it appears to be a place where those with money have built substantial homes consistent with the nomenclature of the place. There is only enough room for a row of large housing blocks to sit between the beach and the main road which runs parallel to the beach.

The houses on the opposite side of the road have more room to spread but they do so by way of stilts to compensate for the terrain. On this side of the road are two storeys and large verandahs. Everywhere were large rainwater tanks. It was a tidy, expensive place made to look laid back but in a manufactured way. Kayaks were strewn about and secured from theft to the casurinas which grow onto the beach.

At the end of the road where the Gloucester Bluff allows only a road to pass, another Eco Resort is tacked away in all its exclusivity ... "No Camping Allowed" the warning to the likes of us. In a new area at the start of the limited residential area, a caravan park offered the only obvious friendly face and in an area across the road, a tennis court and sporting club - purpose built in the last two years with the much maligned Rudd incentives - seemed an excellent use for this community and a perfect answer to those who bandy about school halls in the same sentence as fiasco.

Despite all of my class conscious observations, it is an extremely pretty place and our morning tea was very pleasant among the casurinas, with those typical flat Qld waves lapping against the shore and bright sunshine filling the space where our shade couldn't reach. In then end, as Spike Milligan once observed in the guise of Eccles, "everybody's gotta be somewhere".

After morning tea, we drove back out towards the Bruce Highway along Dingo Beach Drive - we really are exploring the Australian vernacular in our road use - and then we were going a little further north to Bowen. Cane fields in varying stages of development lined the Bruce, always with the narrow gauge of the cane train tracks waiting silently beside us for their noisy, rattling customers. Cane loaders occasionally roared out from dusty roads between fields and crossed the Bruce at their will, like kangaroos unaware of any potential collision with polished steel, aluminium and glass which silently flashed past their working day at 100km an hour. Once or twice men with caps or sometimes bent, beaten and sweat-stained Akubras stood with one knee on something convenient, elbow on that one bent knee in the way that rural men do as a signal to their mates that they are partial to a short, non-committal conversation, usually about the weather or some flamin' thing or 'nother. These glimpses made in such haste as I sped by were in stark contrast to our next destination, Bowen, in the apparent portrait of Australia it aided a film maker to paint.

Bowen has changed. The word "Bowenwood" on a large water tank above the town gave that away. An old town with deep water access to a longish wharf, it's great claim to fame is a recent one. It was here, on the foreshore, that Baz Luhmann bought his film circus to town to recreate his version of Darwin in the early 1940's for the climax to his film "Australia". Before we even got to the Big Mango - duly photographed with Sue in comic mode - a giant billboard told us "Baz, Nic and Hugh loved Bowen ... you will too". Whatever may be your opinion of the finished product - my own is extremely low - you don't have to be a genius to see the effect it has had on Bowen.

The financial impact is clear, with $2million spent by the film crew on accommodation alone. A new foreshore development in the wharf precinct is beautiful and very welcoming to visitors as well as passers through. The strange part is the two vacant blocks which lie directly behind the foreshore, the location for the filming. They are just that ... vacant dusty lots. Nothing was left behind of the infrastructure that the film created, which one would have thought should have been kept as a tourist attraction. An opportunity missed perhaps.

We had lunch here and then drove out to Queens Beach which made no impact on us ... we are missing surf. Everywhere we drove in Bowen, mangoes hung prolifically from trees, driving Sue crazy. She is undergoing her own form of Mango Madness.

We put the head down then for the 200km drive to Townsville, stopping at Ayr for a break and some ice cream, devoured whilst looking a nice job done by the local Lions at a rest stop on the northern edge of the town. It depicted the local area in diorama and fact sheets and gave us the best information on cane cutting we have yet seen.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

We eventually made Townsville and through a combination of Google maps and Kenny, found our friends Jim & Judy Parsons. There is great comfort in old friendships and a familiarity which allows such an easy access to sharing stories. Nearly immediately we fell into warm conversations, the sort that make your soul glow with happiness and comfort, the sort that make you so safe that there is no need for the self-protection we have to hold in place in many relationships. We spent a wonderful evening in laughter and meaning and safety and enveloped by the blessings God provides.