NORTH QLD ADVENTURE - DAY 34 - HOMEWARD BOUND….

 Our last day on the road today.

The plan was to travel as far south as Clairview and stay one last night before heading home on Saturday, but once we got on the road, we talked about it and decided that really, we might as well just head straight home today.  It wasn’t like staying one more night would be relaxing.  I think once you know you are home bound; it is sometimes just easier to keep moving as you know the work load ahead of you to unpack and clean up.

Before leaving the caravan park at Airlie Beach, we droved in to say goodbye to Fay and Chris before moving on. 

Today’s drive was long and pretty uneventful.  We drove to Sarina without a break, but stopped there to take a photo of another of the Big Aussie Icons being the famous Sarina “Canetoad”.  We had also planned to check out some of the beaches at Sarina so as it was lunch time, we decided to drive into Armstrong Beach and have our lunch there.

 Armstrong Beach was a little disappointing as there was no esplanade you could drive along and parking, particularly with a van was very limited.  Beach Access seemed to be little walkways alongside the many homes that were built right on the beach.

In the end we drove quite some distance around the coastline until we came to the boat ramp.  As there was quite a bit of parking there and it was easy to turn the caravan around and head back out, we decided that we would just have our lunch here…

The beauty of having the van on, was that we just went inside and made our lunch and were able to eat it in there in the shade.

Steve wanted to have a flick out with his rod to see if there were any fish around.  He probably spent a good half hour down on the boat ramp flicking out his line, but didn’t even get a nibble at all.  A bit disappointing for him.  Even more disappointing was the fact that he snagged his line and lost one of his good lures.

We probably spent a good hour and a half here before heading back into Sarina to fuel up before continuing our journey homebound. 

There were still a couple of Big Aussie Icon’s that I wanted to photograph near Koumala.  We had noticed them on our way up but not until it was too late to stop, so decided we would photograph them on our homeward journey instead.

We had a quick stop here so that I could photograph the large crocodile on the front of the building and the last can of XXXX on the side.

A little further down the road we noticed a very simple blue sign that just read “Ice-cream 20kms”.   We kept an eye out for this and about five kilometres from Flaggy Rock, noticed another sign which read home made ice-cream and home-made pies, so thought we would stop in here for afternoon tea and grab and ice-cream.  

 

Flaggy Rock Café was a rather quaint little café on the side of the road, miles from anywhere.  We pulled in just before their closing time of 3pm and ordered a strawberry ice-cream for me, and a mango one for Steve.  She advised us to get a single serve as she always made the servings quite large.  She was right about that; anywhere else they would have been considered a double serve.  She really was lovely, as it was closing time, she also gave us two home made pies and wouldn’t let us pay for them.   A beef and mushroom, and a lamb shank pie for Steve.  We decided to keep these for dinner for when we got home, so Steve put them in the car fridge for the rest of the journey home. 

 

From here there were no more stops.  We passed by Clairview without even going off the main highway.  This is a first for us as we usually like to drive alongside the ocean here.

The day was fast fading, we had left Airlie Beach around 9.30am and it was not after 3.30pm and we still had a good couple of hours drive ahead of us.  It is also the hardest part of the drive with long stretches of nothing.

We were both starting to feel a little tired so were keen to get home.  The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful, except that the kilometres seemed to be rolling past ever so slowly, especially as we were coming into the north side of Rockhampton where there are massive amounts of roadworks happening as they work on the ring road that will bypass Rockhampton if you are heading north.    We arrived back in Rocky just on sunset around 6.15pm.

 It was good to be home.  We parked the van in the middle of the front yard so that we can unpack it and then give it a good clean down.  It is quite filthy from being on the road, and we have a lot of debris from trees losing their flowers and leaves etc, so we want to give it and the solar panels a good clean before packing it away.

We managed to unpack the van, mostly, all the washing and bedding, and clothes etc came out, but we still need to unpack the fridge and food which we will leave until tomorrow. 

 

We have obviously had some rain as the lawn is quite green ( it was dead when we left) and the garden is overgrown, so will need a bit of time spent on it to bring it back to scratch before we head off again in a few days’ time. 

As good as our time away has been, and as much as it would have been nice to had a few more weeks away, there is still no place like home and it is good to be home….