Melbourne to Qld

Melbourne to Queensland

The Chase for Warmer Weather

 

The trip to Queensland was off a speedy one, the kids had colds and we were eager to get to the warmer weather and see some more of QLD.
We only had overnight stops and it only took one day to cross the NSW border. Our first night was in Albury a nice park across the road from Hungry Jacks, very small but ok for one night. The amenities were good they had floormats for when you had a shower and hand towels as well. The other stops were Goulbourn and we did have 3 nights at Sydney Gateway. This was a 5 star caravan park all amenties were sparkly clean and the sites were slab and they even had a slab for your vehicle.


The highlight was watching the guy next to us reverse his van straight into the fence behind us and missing our car by the skin of his teeth!!



Port Macquarie was the next stop we arrived at a reasonable time but because the computers were down they couldnt allocate us a site, so we had to just park anywhere and then wandered around. Along the coast they had a rock wall and each individual rock was painted that was quite neat. The amenties here were disgusting and they should be ashamed of themselves. It didnt give us a very nice experience and I cant say we will be stopping there again.


Coffs harbour was next, we stayed at the showgrounds here and that was nice and we had plenty of room although it was noisy.





Ballina was next, this was ok, but the park we choose charged us an arm and a leg due to their facilities for the kids. A bit unfair as we were only staying a night and we didnt use them, but you live and learn and we wont stay there again.

We stopped at Ballina as Gwen and Henk were staying at a park across the river, we went over to catch up with them which was lovely and then headed off the next morning.


Finally we reached the QLD border things were slightly warmer but still at the max of 25 during the day, not bad considering it was still winter. We stayed at the Broadwaters on the Gold Coast and it was nice and close to everything. We were trying to catch up with Robert and Glenda because this is the park that they stay in with their fifth wheeler, but the park had only 5 nights for us and then we would of had to move sites, not going to happen. So they were arriving the day we were leaving and it wasnt meant to be. Amazingly when we were on the road we did see them pass us on the other side of the freeway and it was amazing because most of the freeway is divided by lots of trees and bushes so for us to see each other at the moment when there was nothing between the freeways was amazing.



While we were on the Gold Coast it gave us a chance to test out the annexe a bit more, check for mail, do the washing and map out our next journey.

Our plan was to head up as far north as we could and stop when we thought the weather was perfect and slow down the journey.


We stopped at a few free camps along the way, Tiaro, Benarby, Claireview which was a magic spot right on the beach, Guthralunga just on the roadside and Townsville right on the beach but with heaps of sandflies, no good for Clint or the kids as they were savagely attacked.


After Townsville we headed straight to Port Douglas to collect more mail we booked in for 4 nights and then thats when the magic began...