The beachcomber
Carmila Beach
Tidal Creek at Carmila Beach
Brahminy Kite
Hello,
This morning we awoke at around 6 to a cloudy morning at Carmila Beach. The sun was well above the horizon which is consistent with what we were told yesterday that it rises at about 5am. We headed down onto the beach and walked southwards for a considerable distance until we reached the creek. This is where the Kite picture was taken. Unfortunately i missed taking a snap of a much bigger bird that was much closer due to the remove and replace the battery technique that i have to invoke to persuade my camera to work. Too slow!
The tide was out again so no fishing. We heard some loud wave noises in the wee small hours which was the water coming in. The water rises to a certain level and then pours in about 300 metres over the flats so the flat goes from being dry to high tide in about an hour. We witnessed this this morning at around 11. The water was quite dirty.
There were quite a few groups free camping along the beachfront all the way down to the creek. As usual no swimming due to nasty snappers. We paused for a quick chat and for Susan to purloin a plastic bag to store more valuable shell fragments for transport back to Adelaide. We toyed with staying another day but the thought of facing the longdrops again and the fact there was no potable water was enough to tip the balance. These long drops were undoubtably the worst composting toilets we have encountered due to their lack of maintenance. I shall spare you the gory details but they were bad.
We packed and left by 1130. The previously mentioned tawny frogmouth(s) had managed to miss the strategically placed mat on top of the tent so another cleaning job. Birds of prey don't digest their food very well, enough said!
Amazing even after 122 days we still manage to get things wrong. Today we left the ladder and mat inside the tent as we folded it up. I noticed the ladder was missing and we extracted it through the zip up floor panel. The mat we found when we set up tonight. Laurel and Hardy are alive and well.
We travelled southwards for a couple of hours until we reached Rockhampton. Another very large regional city with a lot of older buildings. We visited the tourist information centre and the closest caravan park which was cramped and relatively expensive. I took the executive decision that we should travel back to Yeppoon located on the coast adjacent Great Keppel Island since Susan also had a vague recollection of a recommended tourist park which we located. We will stay here 2 nights.
Viewing Cairns, Mackay and Rockhampton makes you realise that SA is a bit of a backwater sizewise. However there is no Bob Katter or midges in SA and for that you should be thankful.
We have been discussing storage options (drawer units and a fridge slide) for the Pajero and some rearranging of the way we pack our kit to facilitate a more efficient use of our time when we are on the road. We seem to spend a lot of time packing and unpacking which is annoying when you are in travelling mode. Looks like i will be busy building once we return to Adelaide.
Tomorrow we will have a look around Yeppoon and Rockhampton.
For those of you returning to work tomorrow .... suffer .. hehehe
cheers Simon
No comments:
Post a Comment