Country Comfort Mackay

... down here for a week. I am exhausted after all that driving and the magnet of the bar has this amazing magnetic effect on Jo.<br><br>From Clairview to Kinchant Dam was a bit stressful, a little bit like the sparrows in China; there is a festival in China where the locals shake the trees from dawn til dusk to stop the sparrows landing. The sparrows become exhausted and die. Now I know what these little sparrows felt like when we couldn&#8217;t find somewhere to rest!!!.

... training in the tropics at the end of November. <br><br>SKIA - Gladstone<br><br>Just by coincidence we happenned to be in the neighbourhood when Kancho Kanazawa and his son were in town for Shotokan week. We only had the one training session with him but it was a unique experience and it may be the last time he's in Australia I'm told. I caught up with natsuko and brant and quire a few other people who were ...

... township. I thought we would see some of the &#8216;old&#8217; town. The older settler/colonial buildings .. But we found none .... Disappointed we drove north on the Mount Bruce Highway, destination Townsville. While not overly scenic it was an interesting drive ... <br><br><br><br>On the way as we had no booking for ...

... that we could still see some in Hong Kong...in a theme park, no less. We all win!; · We got to see a wind farm, which is of little, if any, interest but it provided a "renewable energy source" lesson for the kids. More importantly however, by mentioning it, we have an excuse to include a picture of it that both Tracy and I liked. So now we are continuing our way south down the coast for our last week in Australia. We heard something about a large ...

... Ben Elton bit about the lunatic on the bus, he sat down. He was in no way aggressive, although his delight at discovering I was a pom was somewhat excessive. He began to wax lyrical on a variety of subjects, which included the following: Reading "Best book in the world is To Kill A Mockingbird." "Yes, I read it a few years ago, it's a great book." "It made me feel bad about seeing things. You know, with your eyes. Movies are **** for me now ...

After leaving Mackay we intended to stay in Rockhampton for the night, but having knocked some of the chore off the journey last night we decided to head on further, to Gladstone. The big rush was we needed to be in Hervey Bay by 2pm tomorrow to go to Frazer Island the day after, besides Elaine read there was not much to Rockhampton in the lonely planet. We did, however, stop off at the Capricorn Caves just outside Rockhampton. We had read about this amazing natural ...

... here for the rest of the day. Saturday Today we did a 15km walk in the rainforest - we don't think many people do this walk because we are constantly getting attacked by cobwebs - yuck! We were then lucky enough to see a Platypus on the Broken River as well as Turtles. So awesome to see them in their natural habitat. That night we went back to the $9 campsite and chilled out.

Alex - We set off from Hervey Bay really early and made it to Rockhampton by lunch time. This is the beef capital of Oz, with lots of ranches dotted around. It was really hot and with no air-con in the car Samantha was not feeling great. However I told her to man up and we drove on for another 3 and a bit hours! We got to ...

... And then came the floods. And the monsoons. And the cyclones. It has down nothing but rain since we've been here, declaring it a national disaster zone. We were getting over 4 inches/hour at sometimes. The town has been shut down, the water on the sidewalks was past our knees, and there were crocs spotted cruising the streets in town. And so we sit inside, in our 10x10 room, with no tv, no books, nothing to do but stare at the ...

... that there are so many lovely places like the ones we are finding. We much prefer this to a caravan park where you are lined up next to each other with no space around you. We choose a spot overlooking the water with a great view from our van and set up camp while the boys went played in the playground sliding their hotwheels cars up and down the slide. This morning I phoned the TJM's in Mackay this ...