Set off this morning for a 30 minute drive arriving at Australia Zoo right on opening time. There was already about 30 cars there. There was no waiting at the gate which was good. We wandered around the zoo seeing all the normal animals, giraffes, hippos, zebras, meerkats, otters, snakes, lizards, kangaroos, koalas etc, etc and of course crocodiles.
I love the picture of the giraffe that has its legs spread apart so that it can get its head down to ground level. It is in the picture below in the very middle of the shot. There is another giraffe leaning on him.
While looking at the wombats the keeper came and put a harness of it and they went off to do a tour of the zoo so people could get a closer look.
They had a kids playground and water park which was being enjoyed by quite a few. There is also a wetland area.
Part 2 to follow
Up this morning for a 2 hour drive down to the Gold Coast. The traffic on the freeway and through Brisbane wasn't too bad. We kept flowing all the way through fairly constantly. First stop was Pacific Fair. It is just too big and when you don't know what shops are there you just aimlessly wander around, which we did for a couple of hours. Drove to Ian's aunt and uncle's house for lunch. We had a lovely bbq in the their backyard with their daughters and grandchildren. The time passed far too quickly and we had to return to the car for the trip back to the van. It was lovely to catch up with everyone.
The trip back to the van was not quite as easy as the trip down. We were in bumper to bumper traffic crawling along at 40kph and even came to a complete standstill at one point. There did not appear to have been an accident and we could not fathom what the reason was except too much traffic trying to return home after a day out!
Very slow start today. We had less than 1 hour to travel and couldn't get into the Caravan Park until after 11.00. We left just after 10 and travelled towards Toorbul stopping for fuel and coffee on the way. Toorbul is on the coast of Queensland abutting the estuary between it and Bribie Island. The estuary is about 1 km wide so we can easily see Bribie Island but to get there we have to drive about 35km to the bridge to cross over onto Bribie. We arrived at the park and set up. There is one house block and a road between us and the walkway along the estuary. When we had finished setting up I realised I had lost the magnetic card to open the boom gate so we could enter and exit the park. I knew I had opened the boom gate for Ian to drive through but couldn't remember what I had done with it from then. I knew I didn't have it when getting the levellers out of the boot. I checked my pockets but couldn't find it. So then I walked to the boom gate and back looking for the card on the ground in case I had dropped it. I searched the car 3 times with no luck and also the boot of the van where I got the levellers out of. Only thing left was to go to the owner of the park to say I had lost it. I them remembered I had walked over to the laundry and amenities to check them out so retraced my steps. Still no luck. Walking back to the van I searched my pockets again no luck. For some reason I then realised I had back pockets on my pants and checked them to find the card. I had probably spent 1 hour looking for it. Still I am glad I found it. Spent most of the afternoon at the van before walking along the path running beside the estuary. Unfortunately there is no sandy beach to walk along. The tide was out so there was 100 metres or so of mud before the water started. This is to be our base for the next few days.
After a cold night woke to a beautiful day. Had a slow start to the day as we didn't have far to travel. Todays driving was over the Bunya Mountains so it was a windy and up and down trip. An easy trip though. As we are getting nearer to Brisbane and the coast the traffic has picked up considerably. Our destination was a free camp in Kilcoy but when we pulled up there were 4 vans and 3 cars already there. It may have held a couple more vans but the ones already there turned us off it so we decided to move to the showgrounds. Headed up there but it was quite full and we couldn't easily see a spot so pushed on to a free camp 3km west of Woodford. There are currently 3 motorhomes, us and 2 guys in a car. It is fairly noisy as we are in a park just off the highway. Hopefully the noise will lessen during the night. It is currently mid afternoon and now that the blog is up to date time to get a book out.
Back on the road today and reached Dalby in time for lunch. We parked a couple of blocks from the city centre (nearest we could get with van in tow) and strolled around. Quite a good array of stores. After we had had our fill of shops (probably 10 minutes worth!) we had some lunch and then went to the supermarket to stock up. Lugged the shopping back to the van and stowed it away before heading about 20 km out of town to a caravan park in Kiamkillinbun. We were the only travellers there. They have about 20 permanent vans but only 2 were occupied while we were there. In the township there is a pub and about 4 houses with the caravan park. We walked down to the pub which was 2 houses away and ate our evening meal there. There were 4 locals sitting at the bar and 2 others playing pool. They all spoke to us while we were ordering our meal but we then sat in the dining room to eat while the 3 children of the woman working in the kitchen watched tv. Strolled back to the van where we decided it had cooled down enough to warrant winter pyjamas. During the night I had to get up and get an extra blanket out and we even had to turn the heater on the next morning to warm the van up before venturing out of bed. Not used to the cold we had been sleeping with just the sheet and pulling the doona up overnight.
Woken up a couple of times through the night from either the thunder or the rain falling on the roof. It only ended up being 2 mm but always sounds more in the van. Today was cloudy all day so kept the temperature down. I had intended to go for a swim but decided it was too cool. The day was filled in with some housework and washing with lots of relaxing going on in between. We also packed up as much as we could before heading off tomorrow.
