Left a chilly Cania Gorge without any real destination in mind just to head north to get warm! We decided to travel via Rockhampton (240kms north east) to restock on groceries and if tired would spend the night. On the way we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn. Rockhampton is known as the beef capital of Australia and is a big regional town with a population of 77,000 and as we prefer to stay in quieter areas decided after a quick grocery stop to drive on another 100 odd kms to a small town called Marlborough. (This is also the name of the suburb John was born in, in Rhodesia!) Rockhampton and the surrounds is known as the beef centre of Qld and 30% of beef produced in Australia comes from a 500km radius of Rockhampton. We drove past the stock saleyards and there was plenty of action going on there and plenty of smell!. We left early the following morning (Sat) for Mackay another 230kms north and again may or may not stay. Mackay is also in line with Karratha so expecting some warm weather – yay! We are looking for a nice beachfront caravan park that takes dogs (not easy to find) so we can spend a few days relaxing and absorbing the sun! so decided to drop into the visitor centre in Mackay. BIG mistake! as the volunteer there was not very helpful at all (particularly compared to many other centres we have been too) getting accurate info was like trying to extract teeth! so we decided to do our own research and found a place called Midge Point 100kms further north which has a park in a rainforest on the beach edge – sounds perfect. So we start our trek and were about 22kms out of Mackay staying to the left in a slightly uphill stretch of road with an overtaking lane when a 4wd overtook us doing about 100ks/hr. Which happens all the time except this one had two serious looking mountain bikes perched on the roof and just as they were about 50m ahead of us one broke loose from its mountings and bounced down the road towards us! John braked hard whilst moving our car in the opposite direction of the where he thought the bike was going to go and then to the other side while trying to keep the van and the car on all wheels! the bike bounced off the road and into our windscreen on John’s side of the car. The windscreen shattered and we eventually came to a stop. John had a sliver of glass in his eye which he managed to wash out with water thank goodness and we checked the damage. Luckily the windscreen was the only damage it could have been a lot worse – there was no damage to the car or van. In the meantime the driver of the 4wd realised what had happened and came running down the road to make sure we were OK and his mate retrieved the remains of the bike. They were travelling to Townsville to compete in a bike race – well that came to an abrupt end. After we had stopped shaking I called Windscreens O’Brien to get a new windscreen and John got the drivers details who accepted liability immediately although he is driving a company car so could be a long winded process to get reimbursed the $580 replacement windscreen. As you would guess Windscreens O’Brien had closed half an hour earlier and we were now in after hours charge time. Ordinarily it would cost $408! We had to drive back to Mackay, after putting some cloth tape on the hole to stop more splinters falling out, to get the windscreen replaced which took over two hours. Once done we dusted ourselves off and continued onto Midge Point and got there about 5.30pm, so much for our early start. We had called the reception there to advise them what had happened and they were very concerned and made allowance for us to come into the park after hours. Our site is amongst the trees and the beach is 200m walk. I took Coco for a quick walk along the beach and whilst the ocean is way out and the sand is brown and hard, it is palm tree lined and will suit us just fine for a couple of days. There is lots of walking that can be done and relaxing as there is nothing else here – hooray! We do have internet again after being without it for 4 days.
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