Fantastic tailwind all day meant that we made rapid progress along the Bruce Highway from Granite Creek. There was still on some roadwork to negotiate but we received great help from the traffic controllers at each work-site. The amount of road construction going on between Gin Gin and Rockhampton is huge.
See how far it is between rest areas up here? In Victoria we are used to them every 20 or 30 kms.
We arrived in Miriam Vale for morning tea. It seems like a nice little town. Greg from the Tourism Information site was really good and provided with very helpful advice and explanation of bauxite refining and smelting in Gladstone. He also provided us with map to the only caravan park in Gladstone. There was another one but it has been taken over by Rio Tinto to provide "Single Mens Quarters" as there is a shortage of accommodation there.
Joe took the opportunity to reduce his wardrobe by half and posted a bag of clothes home at the Post Office. Unfortunately we didn't get the message from Sean suggesting that we try the prawn wraps at the cafe but had cake instead. We also shopped for lunch at the "Friendly Grocers". The shop was a little "Mother Hubbard" but we eventually bought some bread, tomato and cheese to make sandwiches.
Back on our bikes we rocked along sitting above 30 kph for long periods which is pretty damn good for fully loaded touring bikes. The tailwind and good road surfaces make a big difference.We pulled in at Benaraby Rest Stop for lunch and made our sandwiches. The cheese was a bit odd but we ate it anyway only to discover the use-by date was April 20th. Fortunately neither of us suffered any ill effect.
We turned off at Benaraby and headed for Gladstone. Wow, hard to believe that its only 1190 km to Cairns.
It took another hour and half to get to Gladstone and then find out way to the Kin Kora Caravan Park. The reception office wasn't open and there were some residents who suggested the manager was an unhelpful type who would only turn up when it suited. We decided to head into town to the Tourism Information site.
Bad luck we will not be around for the Camel Racing in June. I expect Andrew Howard will be wanting to come up for them though. Andrew, the trick with camels is to get a good looking one.
We discovered that there was virtually no accommodation of any sort available in Gladstone. Lyn who helped provided a lot of suggestions as to where we might stealth camp if we had to.
Fortunately when I rang the caravan park the manager answered and he told me there were sites available. We raced back to the caravan park and had a long conversation with the manager. Basically he thought we were mad riding to Cairns but he did tell us tales of his travels. He seemed like a pretty nice guy. we ended with a very nice campsite. He also suggested a nearby tavern for dinner.
After setting up Tony went off to KMart to buy a gel seat cover. What a princess!!
TM - In my defence, when you have an ITR approaching 8 (see previous blog dated???) and you know that there are some rough roads coming up, a gel seat is called for. Also, I have a cute little bottom that needed some TLC.
The caravan park was interesting because there were people living in tents and caravans permanently because there was just no accommodation.
We went to the Harvey Rd Tavern for dinner. Their Bistro is a "Steakhouse" which had me worried, fortunately there were some fish options. We particularly enjoyed watching some of the patrons. Just near us was a table with a bloke and an attractive younger girl. We were trying to work out the relationship as they were clearly not father and daughter. After a while it looked they both separately thought they would rather be somewhere else. Not really sure how it worked out.
Back to the tents, for a change no truck noise but we were under the airport flight path and there were train tracks nearby. Not that we cared, after 120 k we could sleep through anything.
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