Days 16 - 22

Firstly, thank you to all of those who have commented on our blog - we really look forward to reading comments when we turn on the computer each week so thank you all for your time and effort. For some reason, we cannot answer the comments on the blog so if you drop us your email address with your comment, we shall try and get back to you.

Now, onto our week. Again, it has been mayhem but we have seen yet more fantastic places and met some extremely kind and generous people.

We went over to Great Keppel Island at the beginning of the week for 2 nights, 3 days. We stayed in a lovely place just off the beach in a "luxury" 2 man tent. This meant that we didn't have to put up the camper when we arrived at the place which was bliss! It was like a mini honeymoon away from the Battered Fish and the Barnacle (a name that we have given to our camper trailer after how much veg oil it consumed on fraser island)! Great Keppel itself is very quiet but nice, with great bush walks and snorkeling just off the beach. We saw fish, turtles and sting rays. Yet again, the beautiful sandy beaches were practically deserted and we sat each night having sundowners on the beach watching the sunset over the mainland. Perfect! However, the one down side to the island is the Birds - my word they were noisy. We had a crow "sqwarking" from about 5 in the morning, followed by another crow "sqwarking" in reply, then a kookaburra "laughing" again and again and again! It went something like "sqwark", "sqwark", "sqwark". "sqwark", "hhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeee", "sqwark", "sqwark" etc etc. I wondered, listening to the crows sqwarking, if this is where the Australian expression "stone the flaming crows" came from?

We left Great Keppel and stayed back in Yeppoon where we collected 40 litres of WVO - thank you! Yet again we came across numerous fish and chip shops that already had a contract with someone or they had emptied their drums just the day before we arrived. Extremely frustrating but it is all part of our experiment. We drove inland to our next destination, Sapphire (about 400kms West of Yeppoon) and stopped at a town just before Sapphire called Emerald (if you haven't worked it out yet, they are both major fossicking places where you can dig for gems). Yet again, we got rejected in the fish and chip shops in Emerald which meant we would need to fill up with diesel. Before we did fill up with diesel, we pulled to the side of the road and did some roadside WVO refueling! A car that was passing stopped and asked if we needed any help as we must have looked a fairly strange sight with a drill, hose and invertor in our hands! We left the roadside, minus the new drill which we had purchased earlier that week for the filtering ( I am solely blaming Gerard - it definitely wasn't me!!!) and headed to Sapphire. We quickly noticed a difference between the roads inland and the roads on the coast. We started seeing Road Trains for the first time (huge trucks carrying 3-4 carriages behind them full of cattle or coal), cattle grazing on the side of the roads with no fences, and the straightness of the roads for miles and miles.

The reason we were going to Sapphire was to get a HF Radio fitted to the car. A HF radio is a high frequency radio that you can use in an emergency (you are connected to the Royal Flying Doctors) or just to chat to people all over Australia. The guy that was fitting the radio, Bob, and his partner Denise, welcomed us to their place and we set up the Barnacle in the garden. At exactly 4.30, Bob pulled out a "cold one", then his mate Les arrived at the house and even before he had swung his feet out of the 4WD door, he had opened a cold one too! We decided it was time to go to the off license to get some beers of our own as it might be a long night! We asked where the nearest off license was as we had only seen a general store and a RSL (a pub) in the town. Bob told us and we headed there. We arrived and it was just a tin shed with stacks of beer in. It was aptly named "the Tin Shed", well, that's what it was, why waste words? We spent 3 fantastic days with Bob and Denise in Sapphire. They had travelled around Australia in a bus so stories and photos were swapped over a lot of alcohol. During the day, Bob had a workshop and helped Gerard connect the solar panel, fit the driving lights (the ones that we needed in Fraser Island but found they didn't work!!) and mend the fridge and fridge slide. All things that we had needed to do for weeks but just had not had time. I took out all the equipment in the trailer and the car, replanned the distances of our trip as I have come to realise that the distances that we thought we could do in a day is just not possible, tried out the sunroom which fits to the Barnacle to give it an extension! and completely repacked everything. All in all, it was a very productive time.

We left Sapphire and headed back to the coast. The morning we left, it had absolutely pelted it down all night and we quickly learnt why they say the camper is "water resistant", not "waterproof". Leaks were springing in everywhere and we decided it was time to leave to go back to the coast for some better weather. We are still staying in a fantastic little place called "Seaforth", which is about 40kms North of Mackay, right on the seafront. We could wake up each morning with the sea at our front door. I say "could" as we do not have this view as we put the camper trailer around the wrong way on the first night we set up camp as you guessed it, it was dark when we set up! People keep on coming up to us and asking why we are facing around the wrong way. I am blaming it on the wind from the sea at night but now feel embarrassed about changing it round!

We also managed to get a further 150 litres of WVO from various fish and chip shops in Mackay so a massive thank you to everyone who gave us this as we desperately needed it. Gerard is busy filtering now.

Over the next week, we will slowly make our way up to Cairns and prepare ourselves for Cape York.

Please keep your messages and comments coming, it is really great to hear from everyone. I have added some photos of Great Keppel, all our recovery gear when we took it out of the Battered Fish, Bob and Denise, the Tin Shed and Gerard refuelling on the side of the road.

Take care

Rach and Ged x