Cylinder Beach (Point Lookout), North Stradbroke Island

The weather has not been kind to us since our arrival in Brisbane and then North Stradbroke Island (Straddie). Every day has been wet and windy with constant heavy showers and wild seas. Not good for a holiday on an island, but part of the joys of travelling. However, this place is still beautiful, even if the weather is not noice.

We departed from Cleveland Harbour on the Big Red Cat and headed out to Dunwich:

On the barge...... 

View from the stern of the barge..... 

Arriving at Dunwich barge landing....... 

The view of Cylinder Beach from the entrance of the caravan park

 Our site at Cylinder Beach

The view of the beach from our caravan

Cylinder Beach

 Cylinder Beach from the headland.....that's Maureen and Helen on the beach in the distance.....

Some interesting patterns and shapes on the headland rocks at Cylinder Beach

The washing machine from the entrance to the North Gorge walk 

 : (( The North Gorge walk is closed for major reconstruction

That's it from me for this trip. I hope that you have enjoyed our blog reports and pics.  For those of you who have commented, thank you.  For those who have just followed (or "lurked") in the background, thank you for following us.

Until the next big adventure, hoo roo.

Elliot Heads (Bundaberg)

We arrived at Elliot Heads (EH) on Friday arvo and settled in.

This is such a stunningly beautiful place that I didn't get online straight away and that spelled the end of online communication for our time at EH, as at about 7:30 pm, Michael and Ollie arrived to spend two nights with us. We had a great time together and Ollie decided that he wanted to sleep in a swag outside with Daddy. It was pretty cool (about seven degrees celcius overnight), but he did it and was happy to just be with Daddy. Plus, he loved the swag.

Up early on Saturday and off to the air show with Peter, Michael and Ollie. Lots of sun screen, big hats and drinks and water and we were ready. There were some great aircraft there, a good representation of warbirds, aerobatics, military power, but the grounds were not user friendly and the layout and organisation was pathetic. If you have had the privilege of attending Airventure at Oshkosh, I suppose that it is unfair to compare with a small Australian show. However, at $40.00 a head, it was poor value for money. There were no forums or info sessions, very few ststic displays, almost no static display aircraft, no warbirds close enough for people to appreciate them. A long row of VIP tents took up most of the flightline fence, so you could not see the low level action. In my humble opinion, the Sport Aircraft Association of Australia fly-ins of the 80's and 90's that I attended were much better. But, we still enjoyed ourselves and went home early to avoid the exodus from the bulldust inflicted carpark. If it rains Sunday, they will be in trouble in the carpark, not to mention the venue.

We returned to the caravan park, which is excellent, by the way, to spend some family time strolling the beach, sliding on the slides (well, Ollie did, we watched), snapping pics, flying a kite, collecting shells (again, an Ollie activity) and generally great family time.

Ollie flying the kite

Even Stasha had a go

Ollie had a bike ride along the foreshore

Tickle, tickle, laugh, giggle..............

Back for dinner and then bed for an early departure (well, not too early) this morning. Ollie decided that he wanted to sleep in Nana and Stashas caravan, on a special bed that I manufactured for him in anticipation of just this requirement. He lasted till about 4:00 am, when he decided that he wanted to "sleep with Daddy in his swag", and so he did. He didn't wake until after 8:15 am, when Michael had to wake him. Rapid pack up and depart to make Birkdale in Brisbane before dark.

As I write this now, we are in Birkdale, with cold temps and pouring rain - YUK! Off to North Stradbroke Island on the 10:00 am barge. Until then, hoo roo.

hervey Bay 2

We are back in HB to do a whale watch. The weather was OK today as we were picked up from the Fraser Coast Holiday Park and deposited at the public jetty in the port to board the Mikat for the cruise. The boat was a good size and well maintained, the crew were welcoming, friendly and effective. As we cruised across Hervey Bay, we went through a rain shower. The chop was about a half metre to a metre, but everyone was OK and eyes were peeled for whales. Within the first hour, we saw whales about 500 metres away. As we closed on them and stopped the engines, the whales came over to the boat to check us out. They stayed with us for a few minutes, then went off to find another boat to look at. The whales were juveniles, according to the experts on board. Our next sighting was of adult whales and they came right up to the boat and swam around, close to the bow and right side for some time. I was very busy snapping pics, but thse whales are slippery devils, appearing and disappearing very quickly. I had some great pics of swirling water with dark shapes under them.



On the way out, a little island in Hervey Bay.



The boat had a good turn of speed across the bay.

Fraser Island coastline.



Our first whale sighting

What are looking at??

Here's looking at you, kid

You can all kiss my....errr.....tail!

We had another sighting of whales after about ten minutes motoring to another spot and the whales came right up to the boat and stuck their heads out of the water to get a look at all of us looking at them. It was great! I got a phone call from Nools in the middle of this and it was phone in one hand, camera in the other and leaning on the railing trying not to get dumped on the deck as the boat was rising and falling about a metre at that stage. It was very interesting, to say the least, but I managed to say g'day to my Dad and Nools, so that's a bonus.

We had another few sightings of whales with pectoral fin waving and slapping, tail waving and slapping, but no breaching.

We had a lovely lunch on board and headed back along the western beach of Fraser Island, which is beautiful. We were back in port at around 2:00 pm and back at the caravan park at 2:45 after a very memorable day.

Off to Elliot Heads tomorrow to prepare for a visit to the Bundaberg air show and a visit from Michael and Ollie.

Till then, hoo roo.