May 21 - Mackay to Proserpine - 135 km

Last night we couldn't be bothered with cooking so we headed down a local Thai restaurant called "Noodlek" and enjoyed some green curry (I had prawns and Tony had chicken) and rice with some beer. After we got back to caravan park we went over to the kitchen area to work on the blog and chatted to a family who were just finishing dinner.


This family of seven from Bairnsdale (5 kids under 8) were living in tents while they try to get some housing. Dad is a mechanic working on mining machinery. There is huge demand for accommodation up here because of all the mining work. The situation was the same in Gladstone where the caravan park is full of permanent residents working on the mining related infrastructure projects. Everyday we have seen huge pieces of mining equipment being transported on the highway. A real eye opener about the 2 speed economy.


We adopted a steady but relaxed pace this morning. The first stretch had some rolling hills but nothing too strenuous. After 35 km we stopped at Kuttabul for morning tea. The was a road crew laying some new bitumen out front and had put out witches hats to guide drivers around the new work. We were greatly amused when one bloke driving a campervan manoeuvred through the witches hats over the new work to get to the petrol pump instead of going around. Not even sure that he was conscious of what he'd done such was his focus on getting to the pump.


Our next stop was Calen. you've heard of the pub with no beer?  Well this is the town with no pub.  Its burnt down.








We went to the general store for some food for dinner.  What a classic place.  Obviously run by a hoarder.  It had boxes and boxes of stuff everywhere.  you can even see the front veranda is filled in by empty crates and boxes wired together.


A lot of it was bizarre, for example we spotted a box of shuttlecocks. The box would have contained 100s. Not sure how many shuttlecocks a small country town would go through but it didn't seem that they were big sellers. 


The lady running the store took our picture to send to to local paper, the Mercury. She told us the store was owned by a local woman in her 80s who had very strong ideas about what the shop should stock. Unfortunately there was a lot of stuff and not enough of the right stuff.


After the Calen the wind picked up and we raced along until lunch which we ate beside the primary school at Bloomsbury.


One of the hazards riding is this sort of thing.  The big truck on the right has just passed a slower 4WD moving into Joe's lane and then back to his lane.  The second white truck has also moved out into the oncoming lane to pass.  Pretty scary looking at two big trucks coming towards you taking up the whole road.  Lucky this road had a good shoulder.  If you look closely you can see Joe clenching his cheeks.


We originally planned to stop at Midge Point short of Prosperpine but decided to take advantage of the tailwind and push to Proserpine. Also Tony had bad experiences at Sandfly Point on the Milford Track and did not want a repeat.

Joe was running out of steam as we arrived so we decided to find a caravan park as we did not see the rest stop marked on the map.










Before going to caravan park we spotted an Irish Pub with a backpackers sign. Unfortunately there was no vacancies. The proprietor reckoned he could ridethe extra 30 kms to Airlie Beach in 20 minutes. It was bulltish but it seemed like a good pub so we went back for dinner.


The council-run caravan park was excellent and we had the camping area to ourselves.