Another wallaby (just over a metre high)

We didn’t realise we had another adrenalin pumping experience to come. We picked Ben up and set off back home in the dark, which isn’t very enjoyable as I have mentioned before. We had enough petrol to get to the one petrol station that lies on the 200km stretch between Mackay and Moranbah in a place called Nebo. But as the petrol began to empty and we continued along darkened roads there was no sign of Nebo. Australians don’t see the need for trivialities like sign posts that tell you how far you are from somewhere on these roads. Finally, we had 25km of fuel left, not enough to get home and not enough to get to anywhere else! We decided to keep going and phone for help, but there was no reception! The next plan was to keep driving and then sleep in the car if necessary and flag someone down in the morning. This would have been far from ideal with none of us having eaten, and no water. Then, by some stroke of luck with 15km of petrol left, we sighted the wonderful lights of Nebo! We must learn to fill up with petrol before every journey because you just don’t know when there will be a petrol station in these remote areas, and I don’t want to go through that experience again!

We slept well that night.

(I still haven’t seen a kangaroo).

A Wallaby!!

The beach was lovely and the sea really clear to swim in, and there were quite a few people fishing from the beach. There were little star-shaped and zig-zag patterns all over the sand as we walked along which are caused by sand bubbler crabs. We found a place to sit, and waited, and waited, but there were no wallabies anywhere in sight so we headed off back to the car. Just as we were walking off the beach I spotted three wallabies eating in the grass bordering the sand. We managed to get really close (a few metres away) and watched them for a while!! They didn’t seem too bothered about us being there. It was the perfect end to an exhilarating day!!

Wading across to Wedge Island

After spotting another lizard, but thankfully no more snakes, we eventually ended up on the beach. This walk now takes you to a small island nearby called ‘Wedge Island’, at low tide a causeway appears allowing you to walk across there. The tide when we got there was going out, but only half the causeway was showing. This was no problem for Lara and Indiana, we just waded right in there and crossed over to the island with the water up to our knees at one point! We sat on the beach on the island for a while to recover, and then walked back along the beach to go and find some cute cuddly wallabies to make up for the nasties we had just seen. (We had been told that kangaroos don’t tend to go on the beach anymore, but there are wallabies).

A little spider we passed...

I spotted another snake-like head peering at me from the rocks, but we realised this was a lizard, about a foot long. It sat and looked at us for a while then darted away. We saw another similar lizard a bit further along too, it was great to see them that big in the wild. When we saw this beast of a spider (above), I was really past caring whether I was going to die or not, so we bravely took a photo of it. It looks like a wasp with legs.

Lookout 3: View down the coast

We climbed the last few steps to the top of the cliff where it was now quite exposed eucalypt forest. As we walked along the top this is where I heard the first rustle, and saw a fairly small thin dark coloured snake in the grass. Andy now began to sweat, more so when I spotted the next small snake a few metres further along. Then it was the big one, I heard more rustling and looked to my left to see a huge 6 foot long jet black snake slithering in the opposite direction to us. We stopped and watched it glide along, I tried to get my camera out, but it had gone by the time I was ready. Andy was now like the scene out of Airplane with sweat pouring down his face. The big decision of keep going, or turn back was discussed at length. It was then that our trainers and shorts made out legs feel very vulnerable and we realised we had no reception on the phone, so if one of us got bitten we’d have a long way to get help. There was absolutely no-one about and that moment was probably one of the scariest I’ve had (for Andy, replace ‘probably’ with ‘definitely’). We then decided that noise was good, to try and scare anything on the path away by the time we got there. I was crying with hysterical laughter as we both marched like soldiers along the path, if we had to stop then we marched on the spot – looking back it was hilarious!! Lookout number 3 couldn’t have come soon enough but we didn’t really concentrate on the great view, we just slumped against the safe wooden platform. Here, to our amazement were a man and boy with bare feet, to whom this walk was probably not even worth worrying about. The man kindly told us that most snakes won’t bother us… it’s just the big taipans we need to watch out for because they will chase us if we disturb them. Oh, how we laughed! So on we marched back down the cliff path to lookouts four and five.

Lookout 2: Wedge Island where we sit on the beach later

With lookouts one and two conquered, we gaily walked on admiring the beautiful scenery. It was at this point that our naive happiness was significantly dampened; we bumped into two young boys. This alone was not the problem, it was the words they uttered as they passed us, “Hey, we’ve just seen about 10 snakes up that path”, gesturing in the direction of our walk, that struck fear through us. Initially Andy thought they were messing about, so we laughed and asked how big, “about to that tree” (tree was about 1.5 metres away). We stood there after they left us and convinced ourselves that it was a big wind up, and that they were evil boys sent to scare us. However, I was made to go first just in case.

Lookout 1: View of the main beach at Cape Hillsborough NP

On the back of our visitor leaflet were details of 4 walks one can do here. I picked the longest one, aptly named ‘Andrews Point’, which is described as a 2 hour walk with spectacular lookouts. The first part of the walk was more of a climb up the hill through the edge of the rainforest. They had built in steps to help us out, but by the time we got to the first lookout point we were glad that it was a cloudy day. This photo is from the first lookout, of the main beach of Cape Hillsborough. This is a similar view to that of the second lookout, strangely placed about 10m away from the first – although to be fair you could see more of the island in the other direction.

After bumping into the Australian cricket captain on the Monday, we decided go on a day trip the next day to Cape Hillsborough National Park. We had heard about being able to see kangaroos on the beach and as I am still one of the only people in this continent who haven’t seen one then we thought it would be a worthwhile trip. Cape Hillsborough is about 50km up the coast from Mackay. Because it is a national park then no dogs are allowed so after a quick swim in the sea at Mackay, we dropped Ben off at kennels for the day and headed up the coast.

I will pinch the sales pitch of Cape Hillsborough from their useful visitor information leaflet: “Rugged hillsides plunge steeply into the sea, and stately hoop pines project above the surrounding vegetation. Rhyolite boulders, lasting evidence of volcanic activity millions of years ago, scatter the headlands. Between the rocky headlands are broad sandy beaches where kangaroos can often be seen late afternoon”. Sounds idyllic eh? Well, it’s all part of a cunning plan to cover up the terror that lies beneath those stately hoop pines, and lure innocent tourists like ourselves into what can only be described as a death trap…

At the Drive-In

This is the Drive-In drinks store we have in Moranbah, at the side of the pub/nightclub/games room/bookies/restaurant – one building just brimming with fun! You can probably make out the sign informing us that the left lane is for ‘Cash Only’ and the right for ‘Browsing and EFTPOS’. The Australians use the expression ‘EFTPOS’ all the time, they seem to make life unnecessarily complicated sometimes. I didn’t have a clue what it meant to start with when someone asked me whether I was using eftpos – it actually stands for ‘Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale’, which to us simple English folk means a credit/debit card transaction. Why they can’t just use the expression ‘cards’ or have a visa etc sign I don’t know. The other example of this is the fact that they use the expression ‘SMS’ (Short Message Systems) all the time, rather than just using the word ‘text’ which would be far more obvious than having to constantly work out acronyms (they would love the SITS software out here – how nice it was to write ‘SMS’ without thinking about module selections!!).
Anyone want to guess at what the most popular drink is here…anyone?…(Gladys?!)!!

The official signed photo

Ricky's autograph on the celebrating England team!!

Me, Ricky and Andy!!

We thought it must be a look-a-like turning up when we saw that Ricky Ponting, the Australian cricket captain, was turning up for 2 hours at the Moranbah shopping centre!! We were assured by the staff it was genuine, so Andy got his England shirt washed and ironed and we headed off to queue with the kids to see him this afternoon! I had kept the front page of one of the newspapers here that had published a huge photo of England winning the ashes, so I brought that along too as I thought it would be nice for Ricky to sign it!
He started laughing when he saw Andy in his shirt and asked whether he'd get any stick off us! I said we were the only ones here happy with the win, and that we had really enjoyed the series. We shook his hand, had our photo taken, and then I said unfortunately we couldn't find any other paper in the house for him to sign other than the picture of the England team...
He asked us loads of questions about why we were there and where we were from in England, and was absolutely lovely, we were really impressed, and said to him we might end up supporting them next series... yeah right!!!

Another shot of the new car

You won’t be able to see on the photos, but the cool thing about the number plates are that they say ‘Queensland – Sunshine State’ at the bottom!! The odd thing for us about the number plates is that they hold no clue to how old the car is, so you don’t have that period like in England where you can swan about smugly knowing you have one of the newest cars on the road for a few months!!

Our new car!

This is our new beast of a car – the brand new Ford Territory TS AWD, which we have just purchased. The Territory was designed and is manufactured in Australia and at the moment is only for sale in Australia and NZ. We’ve got it as a lease with the option to purchase at the end of it, the great thing is that the money comes from Andy’s wage before tax so we end up paying a very minimal amount for the car, servicing, all petrol, insurance etc. It feels a lot safer being in this when driving around the bush, as you can guarantee that the kangaroo will come off a lot worse than you will! It’s possible to get a full mattress in the back, so it will be ideal for exploring Aussie!

A humpback diving underwater

We took a lot of fantastic footage, but most of it is video – which I mistakenly thought I could chop some still photographs from. However, we got a few still shots which don’t show the experience too well, but give you an idea anyway! We saw about 10 whales during the trip, which was fantastic. The only thing we didn’t see, was any of the whales breaching, which was a shame because it is meant to be “one of the most dramatic and awe-inspiring actions in the animal kingdom”. However, when we get any visitors who want to go whale-watching, we’ll most certainly be there with you!!

The fluke

More time passed and although it was a glorious day and we had seen whales, I knew that I wouldn’t be satisfied unless I got to see one that little bit closer. At last, a shout came and we strained to see another speck in the ocean, but then the shouts of “hey – there’s more than one”, “I think there’s a baby” and “there’s definitely at least 4 of them” got us excited and we rushed down to be first on the viewing platform. We had struck gold, there were quite a few large whales and a ‘little’ baby whale (about 8m long). It was such an amazing, spectacular experience that I can’t do it justice by describing it here. They gradually got closer and closer, until baby naughtily came right next to us on the boat, which meant mum had to come and get him – so we got the rare experience of seeing a baby humpback and the mother surface right next to us on the boat!! Then some other whales came past, blowing and making noises, and diving into the water. They are called humpbacks because of the way they dive into the water, they arch (or hump) their backs as they dive, often rolling forward right until their tail sticks out of the water – called the fluke. The fluke shots are pretty impressive, and apparently each whale’s fluke is like a fingerprint, none are identical.

Mum and baby (to the left) humpback

As we sailed into the open sea, we were officially allowed to whale watch. The whales are strictly protected, only so many licenses are given out to selected boat operators, so that the whales are not inundated with trips. They cannot be disturbed in the vicinity of the islands, and in the open sea a boat is not allowed to cross the path of migrating whales, nor sail closer than 100m to the whales. The best way to see them is to shut the engines off 100m away from the whales and hope they come over to see you!! We were told to look for tell-tale signs that whales are about, apparently the splash made by a breaching whale (where they haul themselves out of the water and flip backwards) can be seen for miles – as you would expect when a 40 tonne mammal decides to do somersaults in the sea! Another sign is the mist/spray from their blow when they come to the surface for air. It seemed to take ages before we saw anything, everyone on the boat desperately hoping that the trip wouldn’t be a wasted one. When someone shouted, everyone jumped up and raced to see what appeared to be a very distant splash of water. The boat sailed in that direction and we got a slightly better view of a mum and baby whale in the distance. They opened up the front of the boat when we stopped so that we could get closer to them. I took some photos, but was all too aware that they looked like little black specks in the distance – I made a mental note to buy an additional zoom lens for my camera as people stood beside me with humongous telescopic lenses. These whales weren’t playing, and if they don’t want to come near the boat, then the operators don’t pursue and harass them (which is good). Everyone trooped back to their seats and we returned to the game of whale spotting. (The fab whales in the piccie are from later in the day).

Indian Head on Pentecost Island

This is a rock formation called ‘Indian Head’ on Pentecost Island, one of the Whitsunday Islands that we passed. You can easily make out the side profile of a person when you look at the rocks.
Geologically the Whitsunday Islands are all drowned mountains, prior to the last Ice Age they were connected to the mainland and would have all been prominent mountains in the area. The first European (i.e after the aborigines) to explore the area was our own Captain James Cook who travelled through the area on his journey up the eastern coast of Australia on the Endeavour in 1770. He passed through Whitsunday passage, a narrow channel which lies between the mainland coast and the islands on Sunday 4 June which happened to be Whit Sunday (the seventh Sunday after Easter) - hence the name of the area. You see, I’m educating you here!
Pentecost Island was the first island in the Whitsunday group to be named and the only one in the group named by Cook, in June 1770 with the phrase “More remarkable than the rest”. It was named so because his trip was made during the feast of Pentecost (Whitsunday).

The Whitsunday Islands

After lots of running and swimming at the beach, an exhausted Ben went to stay in kennels for a couple of nights at Mackay, and we drove up the coast to Airlie Beach in readiness for our whale watching trip the next morning.
Of course we had a drama in the morning when we were waiting for the bus to take us to Shute Harbour, just down the coast, for the boat. I had naively assumed that when the lady on the telephone had said that a bus would pick us up at 8.20am, that it would be a ‘whale-watching’ bus with pictures of whales on, and other people of a similar destination aboard. But no, we were supposed to have boarded a service bus that stops at the hotel at this time. Luckily, we had half an hour until the boat left so we drove ourselves to the harbour – I didn’t need this kind of stress at such an early hour of the day! It turned out we got a great seat on the boat, on the top deck right at the back and we watched Shute Harbour fade into the distance as we sailed through the many (74 in total – only 7 have resort facilities) Whitsunday Islands into the vast expanse of the Coral Sea – home of the Great Barrier Reef. Our cap’n for the day assured us that it was perfect whale watching weather, and he had a good feeling about the day, which I am sure he says every time he runs this trip, but it made us feel optimistic anyway!

Ben cruisin' in the back seat

This journey was the last in our Toyota hire car, as we were on our way to pick up our new Ford Territory AWD! Ben will miss travelling on the back seat of the car like a human (see photo above), but has now got loads of space in the back of our new car!

The Peak Downs Highway

This is the Peak Downs highway that starts in Mackay on the coast, passes Moranbah and ends in Clermont, about 275km (170 miles) inland. This is a fairly brief highway by Australian standards where the longest highway is the Eyre Highway, which travels from Perth to Adelaide, a mere 2700 kilometre drive. Moranbah to Mackay is about 200km (124 miles) – a distance that in England would get you from Hull to Liverpool, but here it is quite acceptable to ‘nip’ to Mackay on your day/s off. It is an extremely straight and featureless road, the highlights being dead kangaroos or the massive mining equipment coming past on trucks – so huge that you actually have to completely off-road until it has gone past. This journey is additionally exacerbated by the fact that the speed limit is 100km/hr all the way (62mph), and the police are plentiful, in their Toyota Landcruisers. They can even nab you for speeding if you drive up behind them too fast, if you get caught doing over 140kmh (about 87mph) then you’re banned instantly. I’m unsure as yet whether the points on my heavily decorated license will count over here! The worrying thing for us is that we have to take a Queensland driving theory test in order to be able to drive after 3 months of arriving in Australia – we’re having to learn how you should drive all over again!! There are also a few variations on the rules we know that we’ll have to learn – for instance that it is acceptable to undertake on a highway as long as you do it safely! Anyway, you can retake the test every day if required (at a small fee of course) so the competition is on between us – who will pass first?!
I thought the school sign on this photo was quite amusing, as there doesn’t appear to be any houses anywhere, and the nearest school must be a fair distance for the poor child who has hiked across the bush to the bus stop!

Doing what he does best...

Ben loves the house for several reasons:
-It has gardens everywhere, and all doors lead to a garden, plus they are much bigger than what he is used to so can run around.
-It’s a bungalow with not many doors so we can’t stop him getting anywhere apart from the bedrooms/bathroom. Therefore Ben’s bedtime tends to be spent glued to the bedroom door, and then a comfortable sleep on the settee.
-The waste bin has a flip lid where you just push it to put stuff in the bin, or in Ben’s case, just push it to take things back out of the bin. This is driving us mad.

Within two days of having him here we threatened him with the crate!

This weekend he is actually going to kennels, but only for one night. We’re driving to Mackay on Saturday to go to the beach with him. After that, we’re dropping him at kennels and heading up to Airlie Beach for the night, and then going whale-watching on Sunday!! It can be cancelled if there is a slight wind, so finger’s crossed I’ll have some amazing photos to put up next week! The whales are Humpbacks and are in the warm waters here to breed, they have travelled thousands of miles from Antarctica to get here! They can grow up to 18m in length and weigh up to 40 tonnes, so to see them diving about in the water should be impressive!!

Ben having a swim!

Ben ran and ran, and ran, and managed to find every pool of water to race through (same old Ben eh mum?!) on the beach before we reached the sea. Andy and I were walking barefoot on the wet sand before we caught sight of thousands of little crabs marching towards us, the ‘thongs’ (flip-flops for those I haven’t educated yet) soon went on then! They were very bizarre with pale blue backs, and there was a king/queen crab that was about 10 times bigger than the others marching along too.
Next stop was the park at the marina, all parks here are fantastic – they without a doubt will have a cold water tap (great for dogs, and us!) and picnic tables and almost always have one or more BBQ’s, complete with gas and hotplate so all you do is bring the meat!! Even in these harsh winter conditions (;-p) there are people cooking up their dinner in the parks.
Finally, we went to the Harbour Beach at the Marina, where the sea is much closer, so Ben had a good swim here, which just about finished him off for the day! The sea is quite warm even now, so it’s an ideal time for swimming because between October and May you have to be really careful about swimming in the sea due to the ‘stingers’ – all the jellyfish are about then and some are so lethal that they can kill you. The worst thing is that their tentacles are so long that you could get stung and not even be able to see the jellyfish.
We drove back from Mackay with an exhausted Ben sprawled out on the back seat and me squashed in the corner.

The most expensive dog in the world is reunited with us!!

After surviving:

- Numerous injections and vets visits to prepare him for Australia
- A last-minute eye ulcer after getting long grass stuck in his eye at mum and dad’s house, requiring drops 3 times a day
- A 24-hour flight stuck a crate like a contortionist (“if you can get him down to a metre in length then we can fit him in the standard cage”)
- 30 days in quarantine in Sydney
In which time he managed to:

- have an eye infection due to his ulcer treatment
- be depressed
- vomit his dinner
- get a cough which they though was kennel cough, hence he spent the last week in solitary confinement
AND
- A cancelled flight up to Mackay from Sydney, so we got him a day later than expected

We have finally been reunited with Ben!!
We were taken to a freight warehouse at Mackay airport, and I spotted a pair of eyes looking out of a crate nearby, then the most exited dog ever, with his tail wagging about 100 times a second, was released and came hurtling towards us!!
Because we have a hire car with a self-contained boot, then he had to sit with me in the back seat as we drove to our first destination – Far Beach (named due to the fact that when the tide is out, which it was, then it is about a mile to walk to the sea!). They also play beach volleyball here – Mark, what is the regulation length of women’s beach volleyball shorts??!