More Roadtrippin'

That morning after Devil’s Marbles we made our way to Mount Isa where we had booked a spot for our tents at a local camping. It was on this day that we started to get the news that the cyclone/tropical storm was causing havoc behind us. The tropical storm changed the weather forecasts to our destination in Mount Isa as well. Where before we had expected a whole lot of sun, now there was a good chance we would have a whole lot of rain instead. Not really feeling like setting up tents in the rain, we opted to stay in a cabin instead. On their website the camping had advertised being close to a really nice lake. So when, after a long day of driving, we finally got close to this camping and our navigation system seemed to have no clue as to exactly where this place was and we did see a really nice lake, we decided to follow the road around the lake, hoping we would get to our destination. We were following signs that were leading to a park, and we figured that was were the camping would be. It wasn’t there. We followed that road until it died and our camping still wasn’t there. Garmin was still confused, and you know when navigation systems get confused they are just annoying, they keep talking and guessing when really they should just admit that they don’t know! Anyhow. I think at this point Mervyn said the name of the place we were looking for out loud again. It is at this point that Melody goes ‘o, that place? We passed that a long time ago, you know, where we saw the policeman..’. ‘So why didn’t you tell us then?’, Mervyn asked. To which Melody responded,‘I thought you guys knew where you were going’. Melody is a phlegmatic, a real one. She doesn’t talk much, but when she does talk it is probably important. We drove back to where we had seen a policeman about 10 minutes before and Melody was right, the policeman was gone and now that he was no longer there to distract us we could see the pretty big sign that read the name of our camping. We checked in, Melody cooked us some delicious spaghetti and then we slept. The next morning we got on the road again, heading to Townsville. Mount Isa is not the most beautiful place in Australia, it’s an industrial city that reminds me of Spijkenisse, which is basically an industrial place in The Netherlands where various factories form a substantial part of the landscape.

Townsville was nice. I thought it would be a small town, but it really seemed to have everything you could need. We went for a beach walk in the morning, I loved that. I wish I lived closer to the beach.

The stop after Townsville was Mackay. This is a place where Mervyn knew two sisters, Nathanea and Nadine. To say that he knew them might be a bit of an overstatement actually. They were facebook friends, but had only met once in person and had had some, but not too many Facebook interactions. They had invited him to visit them a few times, and now that we were passing Mackay he had arranged for the 4 of us to stay at Nadine’s house. Due to some circumstances we weren’t able to stay at her house so we were going to stay with Nathanea instead. Nathanea has two kids so we knew it would be at least them 3, and us four which makes 7. When we rolled up to their house though, we counted 5 cars on the drive way. At this point we are starting to feel more than uneasy about the idea of potentially overcrowding this house, since it would now be 7 + however many people came with these other cars. As Mervyn gets out the car to go and talk to his friend we tell him to tell her that we’ll just find like a motel or something to stay in, that we appreciate her hospitality, but that we just can’t take her up on it. So he spoke to her, and I’m not sure what went wrong but he didn’t convince her that we weren’t staying. So we stayed. I’m so happy we did though, we ended up having a great time. First Nadine, Nathanea and her two gorgeous daughters gave us a tour of Mackay. Because it was rainy and grey that day we stayed in our car as we followed Nathanea. She drove her own car and give us the tour guide information over the phone as we would pass landmarks in Mackay. Nathanea is a racer, and she didn’t seem afraid of the wet (and therefore somewhat slippery) roads, which reminded me of Hadassa (my youngest sister). When Hadassa gets into a car she becomes fearless. Nothing phases her, not wet roads, not icy roads, not the police :) . Anyhow, so we got our tour through Mackay, and towards the end of it we ordered some take out and got some ice-cream to go with our Bowen mangoes. Bowen is a place we cruised through on our way to Nathanea’s house and Bowen is famous for it’s delicious mangoes. If you go through the pictures in the link I posted in my previous post, you’ll see a huge statue of a mango, that’s hows serious they take mangoes here!

After Mackay, came Agnes Water. That was the prettiest spot of our road trip. Our view from our tents were the palm trees at the beautiful beach. It was nice and hot when we got there as well, so after we put up our tents we headed straight for the ocean. Next time I go to Australia I need to figure out this surfing business, it wasn’t high on my to do list, but it will be next time. We went to bed quite early that evening and we slept well, even though the wind was blowing like crazy. Our assigned spot was one that would normally be used by caravans. It would’ve been no problem for a caravan that the soil was so full of rocks that pegs do not want to go in there completely, because caravans don’t need pegs. Tents do. So yeah..Mervyn and Marko worked really hard at making our tents ready for the night but as the wind was blowing that night I heard how one of the ends of the tent escaped its peg. I was seriously praying that the wind wouldn’t take our tents, it was blowing in the direction of a small forest you see and I really, really didn’t feel like chasing after my tent and having to climb in some tree to retrieve it. Both our tents kept their ground though so none of my fears came true. We woke up the morning after, spent about an hour sitting on the rocks looking out on the ocean, and then we got ready to leave. It was Saturday morning (December 31st), so once we got into the car we started making our way to Gin Gin church. Gin Gin church was really nice, the sermon, the people, and the potluck were all good to/for us :) .

Since it was New Years eve we were planning what to do around midnight. I think we were all just tired from this week of traveling, so even though part of us maybe wanted to stay awake for the new year, once we got to our camping near Noosa Heads, had put up our tents, had dinner and a shower, we just lay down on our mattresses. I fell asleep at 10pm, I woke up at midnight because of the fireworks, wished Melody a happy new year, and then I fell right back to sleep.

So that was our road trip! The camping near Noosa was about 2 hours from Brisbane (Marko, Mervyn and Melody’s home) which we reached around 1pm. Tetka Maria, awesome as she is, had made us some lunch, and had also gotten all of us some (belated) Christmas gifts. I got a t-shirt with two hearts on it. Because I’m loved, she explained :)