Weipa and a mine tour

Around Weipa. And fishing

To Weipa

To Archer River Roadhouse, about halfway up the Cape York Peninsula.

Around Jowalbinna and its rock art galleries

Leaving the pavement behind up Cape York

First day on tag-along tour to Cape York

More errands.

Errands.

We head north to Townsville for the night.

A busy diving day: four dives

Our first open water dive!

Our second day of scuba course.

Our first day of scuba course.

We've had enough of rainforests... so we decided to scoot to Airlie Beach,

In the morning, a quick visit to the Kershaw Gardens, an Australia native
botanic garden, then the other two Rockhampton tourist attractions of Dreamtime
Aboriginal Center and Capricornia Caves, before driving north to Eungella
National Park, west of Mackay.

Capricornia Caves, Rockhampton QLD

North of Rockhampton

Heading north out of Rockhampton

Kershaw Botanic Gardens was OK. Not spectacular, but not sucky
either--just OK. It was built as a Bicentennial project in 1988, and is a
bit tatty here and there, but the trees and plants don't seem to mind!
Almost all the plants were labeled, and as it specialized in …

Mexican Food

To Rockhampton

Another kinda long day through sparsely populated country, with just a break or two.

After yesterday's tiring day, we got on the road late--10:00--and drove west. About half an hour out of Mitchell, we spotted a turnoff for "Ooline Park", to find an out-of-the-way set of picnic tables and a bunch of numbered posts along a hillside trail. Nothing else. I was interested in finding the wily ooline tree, a rainforest remnant tree known to be growing in those semi-arid parts. No luck, though I did finally a good picture of a 5m tall prickly pear cactus. They grow …

Eurovision

We drove down from the Bunya Mountains and stopped in Roma, a few hours west,

A long 4WD touring day... about 500 kilometers long, through the little visited Mt Moffat section of Carnarvon National Park in western Queensland. We saw a bit of wildlife, and one of the caves with Aboriginal art, but were disappointed that the largest cave was closed a month ago, and the second largest was a bit damaged. It was a long day, with a bit of interesting things thrown in, but in the end just tiring.

Countryside towards Injune, QLD

Mt Moffatt section, Carnarvon NP

Big Butch Landcruiser

Artwork, Kookaburra Cave

Can't drive particularly fast around here

Road towards Mitchell …

A stroll around the Bunya mountains

It's pleasant

Packing up early, we finished up at Binna Burra with a 'bush brekkie BBQ' and a trip on the flying fox, then headed into Brisbane for the final car preparation work for our Cape York and Kimberley trips. Once finished there, we decided to see what the Gold Coast is all about, and stayed in Surfer's Paradise for the night.

The bush breakfast was OK... Barry did all the cooking, and I saw how billy tea is made. Billy tea is simple: boil the water in the billy, throw in a handful of tea, take the billy off the fire …