Monday 7th December

Long drive to Airlie beach, over 700 kilometres, lunch at Clairview, lots of kangaroos along ‘Dead kangaroo pass’........

We are up early again, breakfast & we’re off! A quick stop for some provisions. There is a fish shop on the way out of town that sells all types of fish & chips & also sells wet fish. The mackerel is unbelievably huge. They are at least 10 times as large & delicious as those you can get in the UK. The owner tells us that the mackerel catch is up & fish sizes have also increased. I love mackerel so that’s ok with me. Although I would not wish to meet 1 in the water, they have far too many sharp teeth for my liking.

We buy more fuel (diesel is $1.25 here, that’s about 80p) & check the oil & water & tyres. All is ok so off we drive.

Not much to report, drive takes us about 3 hours. 2 things interest us. This stretch of road is littered with the rotting, smelling carcasses of run over kangaroos. We have to drive with the windows closed. At first there were so many & they were well rotted that i thought they were vegetation blown onto the road. Some of the dead kangaroos are enormous & they must do a lot of damage to the vehicle that hits them.

The second point of note is the number of creeks one crosses when driving here. Creeks are anything from a ditch to a stream or massive river! And they are all named. The man who named them all must have either had little imagination or I imagine he just got bored with it all. Perhaps he wanted to change his career but did not have the courage? Who knows. Anyway, we drive along & cross 1 mile creek, then 2 mile creek, 3, 4 5, 6 follow, then after a bit 7 mile creek, this continues, 12 mile creek. Then bam! From way out of nowhere, ‘one tree creek’. It continues much the same elsewhere. He gets a theme, for example 1 tree creek, 2 tree creek, 3 tree creek, etc etc to 17 tree creek, then bam! ‘wet tee-shirt creek’.

One set of creeks must have been named near lunchtime & his mind must have been on food for we get, cheese sandwich creek, ham sandwich creek, scrambled eggs & bacon creek, then his wife calls him & we get savage crocodile creek. Fascinating insight to the workings of this mans mind!

We did stop at a gorgeous location for lunch Clairview, right on the coast, turquoise sea, sun, sand, palm trees, it was idyllic. We would recommend the very small detour to get here. It does make us think of Clare back in Impington & we do hope she is well.
We arrive in good time & Airlie beach looks fun, much livelier, the temperature has definitely increased as we have travelled North & the sea has changed colour, it was green/gray down on the gold coast it is turquoise now & very inviting, shame its stinger season!

Love & hugs,
Jeff & Janet