Hit and miss

Leaving Cania Gorge

After another night, more time on the bouncing cushion and more bird feeding we left Cania Gorge and drove off towards Biloela. We thought we'll have a nice morning tea somewhere on the way but it turned out there wasn't anything to stop at... instead of 45 min we drove for 2 h, feeding Sarah crackers and TickTacks on the way.  We stopped at Biloela, the next town on the way, had a play on the playground, bought fresh minced meat and nearly lost Regines sunnies (which turned out to be packed away with the cookies in one of the many drawers in the caravan).

Jambin Hotel

free camping next to the old Jambin rail station

For the night we stopped at Jambin Hotel which is kind of in the middle of nowhere. At least there's not much around apart from a gravel parking spot for trucks and the old Jambin railway station. Courtesy to the owner, who allowed us to camp for a night - and we payed back by enjoying a good pub meal and patting the cats! 
The night was not much fun: Sarah didn't go to bed until 8 pm, we were looking at the map until 11 pm and at 2.20 am the "low battery"-alarm went off. We figured out that we hadn't switched our 3-way fridge from "battery" to "gas" (even though we turned on the gas bottle). Martin had to start the car to re-charge the battery above the critical 25%. After 20 min of staring at the battery display with the torch, it finally rose to 26% and we could go back to bed...

Mount Morgan - hit and miss

picture perfect toilet block, the best playground ever, the dam and the wooden bridge

No coffee shop in Dululu so we decided to take the road to Rockhampton through the mountain ranges via Mt Morgan and stop there for morning tea. The lady at the bakery told us about a beautiful playground at the dam and Sarah had a great time. Martin didn't want to cross the wooden suspension bridge (from the 1890s) that you can see on the picture :-) At lunch time we drove on to Rockhampton, hoping that Sarah would fall asleep... We stopped at Gracemere Campground (to re-charge our empty battery at a powered site) and had a nice afternoon at...

Rockhampton Zoo

Rockhampton zoo, a spoonbill, a goana, a "freshy" and a huge "salty"

Sarah had a quick dip in the pool before heading into Rockhampton to visit the zoo. By the looks of it, it had be damaged a fair bit by the cyclone that went through the area in March. Sarah enjoyed the birds and wanted to pat the ducks but didn't like the chimpanzees...

Back at the caravan, reading up about the area and thinking about the blog, Martin figured out that Mt Morgan is THE tourist attraction on the way: it is the largest single mountain of gold in the world (now actually a big crater), discovered and mined from the late 1800s and now the largest excavation in the Southern Hemisphere. There's a historic station with tea-rooms, rail museum, and a restored 1904 Hunslett Steam Engine... which we all missed. But the tour guide doesn't mention the playground ;-)

On the way

some more pictures of the landscape between Mt Morgan and Rockhampton. 


Meeting the natives

The big orange and some pictures from Archers Lookout

We had a wonderful view over Gayndah and the Burnett River from Archers Lookout. However Sarah was more interested in collecting little red tree seeds that looked like beans. We bought some lovely, fresh mandarins at the big orange and then started to head north. We got our first impression on how remote some of the places really are. Apart from a couple of small towns there wasn't much to see or do. Occasional we've spotted some cattle, but mostly there was a beautiful long golden grass that seemed to go on forever beside the road. 

Cania Gorge National Park

Finally meeting some natives

Cynthia, from the Gayndah Museum, suggest to stay near Cania Gorge National Park. It's a great area and the caretakers of the caravan park are feeding the birds every evening at 5pm. 

We all had a ball feeding the Lorikeets, Cockatoos, Galahs and King Parrots

So much fun feeding all those birds!

Finally on the Road

Finally! After a Goodbye breakfast with Götti and Dianne we hit the road and left Brisbane, our house and friends. Off to new places, great adventures and a whole new experience.

The first stop was our favourite "black-swan-and-duck-pond" in Gympie where we were welcomed by 3 new baby swans. Sarah remembered the playground and the Flying Fox.

Leaving Gympie we headed inland through Wide Bay and North Burnett. We stopped for a morning tea in Kilkivan (which has a nice little playground) and than drove further to Gayndah where we stopped for the night.

Gayndah has a beautiful Museum showing lots of old cars, tractors, household and military items and: a collection of barbwire. As usually Sarah was mainly interested in the playground opposite the museum, so I didn't see a lot ;-) 
Gayndah is an agricultural area with a lot of citrus plantations. It's picking time and the city was packed with fruit pickers.The lady in charge at the museum offered us a place on their grounds to park our van for the night - which we happily accepted: a quiet area right at the river all to ourselves!