Back on the coast, it’s somehow comforting. I know we were barely half the width of the state inland, but that’s still two an a half hours by plane. There, roads are straight and horizontal. Townships are truly well spaced out. Between them there are very few signs of human presence apart from miles of fencing and road signs offering advice on which roads are closed by flooding!
One of our first ports of call was Point Cartwright. The magnificent surf beach at Buddina stretches for miles to the south.
Magnificent it may be, but dangerous too. If the sharks and sea snakes don’t get you, the dynamic waves might. Sadly, a young off-duty surf lifeguard lost his life here the other day. A sad reminder of the power of the waves.
The local council has established a photographic beach survey here. You place your camera on a sturdy mount …
… take a picture and add it (electronically) to the collection. So we have contributed to a long string of photos of exactly the same scene! Very useful!
It’s always good to catch up with the local fauna.
I discover that there are at least 15 different species of goanna or monitor lizard in Queensland. This fellow is a Lace Monitor, about a metre long. Normally slow and lumbering, they can move surprisingly fast and will shoot up trees with agility when threatened.
It’s coming to the end of our time in Australia. But there’s always time to take the boys bouldering.
Glenda’s brother, John, eventually got to Australia and we were lucky enough to spend some time with him revisiting some of our favourite coffee and lunch haunts.
And the final one of these was La Balsa Café, where, by chance, we bumped into Peter and Beryl. Talk about leaving meeting with friends to the last minute!
Before we leave the Antipodes, we have our “routine” skin checks. Suffice it to say, Glenda emerged with eight stitches in her thigh and I went for the record this year with some 200 stitches. Well, 29 anyway plus an undisclosed number of internal self dissolving bits of embroidery. Thank you Kate Jin! Her super customer-focused service concluded with a call with the histology results… while we were at the departure gate at Brisbane Airport. I just can’t imagine that sort of thing happening in the UK. EVER!
The day we arrived at Robin and Linda’s place, Wayne moved in to start re-landscaping the pool area. After two months, on our last whole day in Queensland, he officially finished the operation!
After eight weeks of work, the pool now has a legal fence, very posh aggregate/concrete surround and planted areas. Very snazzy, but sadly we haven’t been swimming once.
Donald Trump is waging war in Iran. Things may never be quite the same in the future. There’s certainly some instability in the financial markets. The three large airlines of the Middle East, Etihad, Emirates and Qatar are more or less shut down. Most of their flights have been cancelled. Thousands of their customers are looking for seats with other airlines. It’s chaos. Flights are being over-sold like nobodies business. Not only that. Because of the enthusiasm pilots have to avoid airspace over war-torn countries, and bearing in mind that as well as the wars in Iran and Ukraine, Afghanistan and Pakistan are at each other’s throats. All air traffic is being funneled through narrow corridors.
Air traffic control is “stretched” in some areas, further limiting the number of planes transiting these bottlenecks. Our flights home may be a bit “interesting”. They are certainly causing us some concern… We are just hoping that Cathay Pacific has got enough petrol to get us home!
You obviously arrived home safely, and probably already on your next caravan trip somewhere by now. This trip to Vietnam and Australia was a bit different, with floods and war to contend with, but very interesting, and enjoyed your blog once again.