NORTH QUEENSLAND ADVENTURES - DAY 2, A DAY AT CLAIRVIEW...

Steve didn’t have a great night sleep.  His heel was throbbing and he was up a couple of times for some ice and then Panadol to try and ease the throbbing…

In the end it was 7am before we finally surfaces… We had no great plans for today… He wanted to rest his foot so that it will heal enough for him to enjoy the rest of our holiday…

We had a leisurely breakfast of poached egg and smashed avocado on 7 seeded bread and once we were all cleaned up and we had dealt with the phone calls we decided to head back down onto the beach and just laze in the lazy couches on the sand….

 

 

 

  

 The time was on its way back in, but was still out quite a bit and there were a lot of rocks and rock pools exposed so I decided to go explore them and see what wild life I could fine in them.  I can’t say I found too much at all, in fact I saw none but what I did see where pebbles and rocks of all different shapes and sizes and colours…

 

 

 

On the whole big picture, they didn’t look that fantastic but up close when you looked at them individually, the richness of some of the colours were quite stunning.  I wandered over those rocks with a thankful and grateful heart…. Thankful to a creator who has made all of this for us to enjoy.  It is important to take time out and just look around and marvel and the beautiful world we live in

 

 

 

 

It wasn’t long before Steve joined me…. He had bought one of our hiking sticks with him today in the hope that it would help having some extra support so that he wasn’t putting all his weight on his sore leg….   It seemed to be working and we wandered quite a way up the beach until we came to a creek which stopped us from going any further…

 

 

 We had an easy walk down the beach stopping to admire, rock pools, beautiful rocks and shells, root systems and other interesting bit and pieces of nature.  We also met another couple out fishing and Steve spent quite a bit of time chatting to them. 

One of the many little rock pools

As we were taking some of the photos we noticed great plumes of smoke rising into the atmosphere somewhere in the vicinity of our caravan park.  I initially was a little concerned as the smoke was getting thicker and  closer to us on the beach. 

 

I then ran into another young couple walking down the beach and they confirmed that yes the fire was near the caravan park but it was an actual controlled burn between the caravan park and the highway in preparation for summer and the fire season ahead.   I felt much more at ease after hearing this and we prolonged our stay up that end of the beach..

By the time we got back to the van it was almost 11.30am and time for a cuppa…

We were sitting out enjoying it sitting under our annex when we noticed our new neighbours who had just arrived having some difficulty trying to unlock their van…  They had been trying for a good 20 minutes when Steve went over to see if he could help…. 

Appartently they had been in their van an hour earlier when they stopped on the highway, but when they got to the caravan park, their keys would not unlock their van.  Somewhere in the process of travelling down the highway their lock has moved and the door was jammed shut.  In the end , Tony (the guys name) unloaded one of his tunnel storeage sections and Steve climbed into it and they pushed the bed up to enter their van…  He had to use a screwdriver to take the lock out of the door to let them get into their van.  Then he had to rebuild the lock and then mount it again… This process took a couple of hours… 

The owners were ever so grateful (there is no way they could have done what Steve did, especially crawling into the storeage tunnel and getting into the van.  They wanted to pay our extra night’s accommodation at the park but we wouldn’t let them…. It is so good to be able to show kindness and help out a neighbour…  We don’t need to be rewarded for it… The reward was seeing how grateful they were for the help…

Our first port of call was to check out both of the boat ramps in Clairview before heading off to find the 4WD track that we had ventured down many years ago when our kids were still living at home….

We finally found the track but unfortunately this time there was a gate closing it off and it had a “Do Not Enter” sign on it, so  that soon put a stop to those plans we had…

 

 

 

 

Then it was back to check out the rest area and check out the public art painted on the buildings and picnic tables here

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the end we drove back to the caravan park and instead of coming straight back to our van we drove down amongst the unpowered site area and had a good look at the sites there… There were a lot more down their with ocean frontage…

We ended up back at our van for a cuppa and another game of “Five Crowns”.  This time I was the winner, but only won on the last two rounds…. None we are one game each so we will have to play tomorrow to decide the overall winner….

We had planned to go for another walk along the beach this afternoon in the opposite direction but as our game didn’t finish till almost 6pm, we decided to leave the walk until first thing in the morning. 

We didn’t want a late dinner, so instead decided to get set up to cook our tea… no eating out tonight…

Steve grilled some chicken kebabs for dinner along with some potatoes whilst I made a nice salad to accompany it…

Our evening has been spent in the van, reading, photo editing and watching some Netflix on the phone…

Looking forward to another lovely day in Paradise again tomorrow….