The Rambling Retirees: An Unexpected Stopover

Wednesday, 9th March -- Our departure from 'Dylisglen' this morning was a little emotional as it will be some time before we see the little lad and his parents again. We seem to be missing so many special moments as our grandchildren grow up. So glad we had this opportunity to share in the celebrations of Master Landon's first birthday.

Now it is time to continue our adventures. From Mackay we are heading north. We have ten days before we must be in Palm Cove for another special celebration, so there is really no rush as it is less than 800kms in a straight line ( for those readers following our travels on the map link we gave in an earlier post, Palm Cove is north of Cairns along the east coast).

Grey Bay Bowen

We finally departed Mackay around 11.45am. With such a late departure we decided to break our journey with an overnight stay at Bowen. It had been easy travelling along the Bruce Highway despite the heavy rain. There was a lot of water alongside the roadway but no flooded sections today thank goodness. At least the Magpie geese were loving this weather!

As it was my birthday the OWO decided it would be appropriate for us to stay in a van park tonight and go somewhere for dinner - I must say here that we are not van park travellers usually and prefer free camping so it was a surprise to hear the OWO making that decision. Oh, but what a great decision it turned out to be.

Looking down on our van park

We chose to stay at the Queens Beach Tourist Park. A really lovely park with spacious, private sites, superb amenities, friendly owners and walking distance to the beach and the pub. After being given a choice of sites we decided to book in for two nights and spend tomorrow exploring Bowen - a place we had bypassed many times when we were posted in Townsville back in the eighties.

Bowen is renowned for its wonderful sweet mangoes. So, of course, we drove past many mango orchards as well as many sugar canefields. The other thing associated with Bowen is the filming of the movie "Australia", directed by Baz Luhrman and starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. The town of Bowen was transformed into a movie set and the main street was where the cattle droving scene was filmed. There will certainly be a lot to explore in this area in two days.
But tonight we enjoyed a wonderful birthday celebration at a restaurant recommended by the van park manager - The Cove. Great recommendation - wonderful meal at a wonderful location.