23 - 24 February 2015
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| The Lake |
We had been planning this trip for some time with our main destination Tasmania. Our eldest daughter has just moved to Devonport and the plan is to be there in time to celebrate her 21st birthday. We're still tent camping but have bought a new car - a Toyota Prado so we have 4WD to be able to do some more serious (but not extreme) exploring. We considered all the things we wanted to do along the way, organised friends to look after the house and picked our departure date - and then along came Cyclone Marcia which crossed the coast near Yeppoon on Friday 20 February. That in itself was not a problem for us - but the resulting flooding south of Rockhampton and the significant areas affected by cyclone damage (including loss of power and telecommunications) meant that we had to revise our plans.
So... we headed from Townsville on Monday morning, taking the inland route through Charters Towers, Belyando Crossing and Clermont. The weather was horrendous - a legacy of the cyclonic activity creating a "doldrum" of extremely high temperatures. We decided to go as far as we could on the first day in the hope that the further south we went, the cooler it would get - but we were wrong! As we drove through Emerald at 4.30pm the temperature was 40 degrees (Celcius) - there would be no camping tonight! We made our way out to Lake Maraboon (Fairbairn Dam) and checked into a cabin at the caravan park. The air conditioner struggled to lower the inside temperature so we adjourned for a late afternoon swim in the pool which was, thankfully, cooler than we had expected.
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| Apostlebird, hoping for a hand out on the cabin deck. |
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| Laughing Kookaburra |
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| One of many Rainbow Lorikeets on the railing of the deck. |
There were lots of birds around and at one stage 10 rainbow lorikeets landed on the verandah at once - quite a sight. Before we left, we drove down to the lake front to have a look around - it looks like a nice spot and one for a future, longer visit.
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