Saturday January 3rd, 2009 East Coast of Queensland

As I write this blog – it is 8 in the evening and we have just finished a fine dinner of instant noodles, cheese, bananas/tarts and wine/rum and coke. This comes at the end of a busy driving day that saw us leave Townsville and 9 AM this morning and travel down the Bruce Hwy to a very small town called Marlborough, where we will spend the night in the only motel for about 100Km in either direction. We went a total of about 670 KM today with only four stops, twice for gas/coffee, once to buy lunch at Bowen, and the other for lunch at Shingly Beach which is close to Airlie Beach at Whitsunday. Here we shared the table with two New Zealand Couples who were vacationing in the area.
The highway is great, the scenery consistent, with sugar and Mango crops, and an increasing number of ranches. The weather was inconsistent, the outside temperature ranged from 25 to 35 C, and we had a couple of periods of such hard rain that the wind shield wipers could hardly keep up, then at other times the sun was so hot we had to crank up the A/C.
Just after we arrived at our hotel – the night sky was filled with hundreds of flying foxes – quite a sight!
So it is off to bed and up for an early morning start. Hopefully we will get to somewhere with an internet that works so we can download these last two blogs.
Not too many pictures today as we spent most of the time in travel.