NORTH QUEENSLAND ADVENTURES - DAY 1 - ROCKAHMPTON TO CLAIRVIEW

 Finally we are on the road…. We have been waiting to do this since April.. 

Last minute adjustments...

Yah we are finally on the road....

What with the corona virus meaning nil travel and nose plummeting superannuation crashes, our retirement was delayed for another six months…

Steve’s last day of work was the 14^th September… We then had a quick trip to Brisbane to see Dan and Chloe’s new house and catch up with Sarah and Colin and the grandchildren.  It was then back home, time to take the PJs off the caravan and pack her for departure…

Originally, we had hoped to have got away a couple of days earlier, but with feeling a little unwell, it was very hard for us to get to motivated in regards to cleaning up at home and pacing the van…

Then we thought about it, no need to rush.. time is on our side for once, no rushing back to work after holidays, we can leave when we like so we took our time.

It was 9am by the time we left home….  We only had a couple of hundred kilometres to go today as we had run the day before and booked two nights at the Barracrab Caravan Park at Clairview right on the beach.  We wanted to spend a couple of days just unwinding before we took off and got into sightseeing mode….

We had a couple of brief stops just out of Rocky….

As we pulled over into a truck stop to let a big semi that was trailing us pass, he also stopped to let us know that one of our back tyres on the van seemed to have a wobble…

After both he and Steve inspecting it, it was deemed fine and we took off again, Steve stopped and checked it again another 20kms down the road and we finally figured out why the truckie thought it was wobbling… That particularly tyre had some light coloured mud on it and we assume that with the shades of dark and light spinning around it would give the appearance of a wobble… Anyway after checking it for a second time, and all seemed fine and no heating of the tyre or rim we set off to complete our journey…

St Lawrence Wetlands..

In the previous few days before leaving I had read about the St Lawrence Wetlands and seeing as it was only 6kms from the highway we decided to detour into St Lawrence to check them out…

As a town there is not much there…. We did notice though that there were a few RVs staying in what looked to be some either cheap or free overnight camping…

St Lawrence wetlands are one of the most significant wetlands on the Queensland coast, with over 55 waterbird species recorded in the area.  Whilst there are walking tracks through the wetlands, we were not set up to do this so in the end we just drove through them and took some photos from the sides of the road….  The road we were on actually is a loop road and comes back out onto the Bruce Highway…

It was only a further 20 or so kilometres down the road until we reached Clairview… We pulled into the Caravan Park around 11.40am.   No senior’s discount here… The cost of a site is $36 per night or if you want absolute beachfront you pay an extra $2 per night and it is $38pn.  The place is pretty booked out… In fact, when we rang to book, we were told we had the last site.  The manager today told us that there are over 300 booked in for the long weekend, and it should empty significantly tomorrow…

Clairview is a lovely seaside community on the Isaac Coast and has a rustic beachside community feel about the place.  With its golden sands it is famous for both crabbing and fishing.   This was one of the things that appeals to Steve and one of the reasons he was happy to stay for a couple of days.  The caravan park is right on the beach and we are looking forward to waking to the gentle lapping of the ocean right outside our door. The waters around here are also a protected sanctuary for an endangered mammal, the Dugong.

Once we had the van unhitched and set up, we took off down to check out the beach.  The tide was right in… so the water levels were high.  It is such a pretty area with islands dotted off the coast, she oaks draping over the beach, and the coast palms swaying in the breeze.  

The Caravan park has some day beds scattered along the foreshore, so Steve and I found a couple and settled down on them to enjoy the beautiful salt air and sea breezes…  We probably spent an hour down here just enjoying our surroundings before finally heading back to the van for a late lunch….

 

Just chillin'

  

 

 

 We kept lunch pretty simple, with a bit of corn meat, chilli cottage cheese and some lettuce and tomato on some rice cakes…  Both of us were feeling very tired so somewhere between 2 and 2.30pm we lay down for an afternoon nap….

By the time we woke up it was after 4.30pm… Hears hoping we will still sleep tonight… We are not used to having naps like this in the afternoon… Must be all that lovely sea air…

We had booked a table in the restaurant for dinner at 7pm so figured we still had a little time to kill…  Definitely time for happy hour, so we cracked a bottle of our Moscato with some cheese and crackers and a few chocolate liquorice logs and enjoyed spending the next hour or so playing a game of “Five Crowns”….  Steve won this game hands down…

Having a game of 5 Crowns...

By now it was time to go have a quick shower and get ready to go out for dinner…

We decided to celebrate tonight and have dinner at the Caravan Park Restaurant… We hadn’t organised anything and since it was our first evening on the road, we would splurge out and celebrate finally getting away…

 

 

 

 

 

This is definitely not a scallop...

The meal was average,  the roast had sold out so we settled for a seafood basket (since seafood is Steve’s favourite).  We had thought that Clairview, having the reputation of being a great fishing and crabbing spot that we would have least had some fresh fish etc.  Nope all packaged and the calamari and scallops were not calamari or scallops at all but some processed roll of carbohydrate that didn’t even resemble the proper taste of a scallop…  still although the meal was average, I didn’t have to cook it, so anytime I don’t have to cook is a good meal….

It was a little after 8pm when we wandered back to our van to have a cuppa.  It was a pretty chilled out evening spent, editing photos on my half and Steve researched new camping fridges on his side.

It was close to 11pm when we finally called it a night..