Mackay

Friday, 26 June 2015

Sugar cane

Perfumed orchid

Creamy white orchid

Orchid with measles

Green and white orchid

Lady with white orchid

Dancers - or spiders???

I'm looking at you ...

Queen's Garden/Park

Monument to Lord Baden Powell

Lady in park

Monument to Rats of Tobruk

Enough said!

White bird walking on lily pads

Us with Margaret and Milton

Wow, less than six months to Christmas!

Thursday saw us up relatively bright and early, with hopes of leaving by 8.30 am for the much longer drive to Mackay.  The countryside was mainly scrub, with some grass, but very dry.  Again, we encountered a lot of traffic heading both ways but the truckies today weren’t as voluble with their comments.  We had a brief stop at Marlborough for a break and driver change before continuing north, with another stop about Camila.  As we neared Sarina, the country changed, with sugar cane filling the view; cutting is well underway.  We had intended to stop at Sarina for a bought lunch (a bit of a treat) but with no where suitable to stop with a caravan, we continued to the next roadhouse and joined the truckies.  We arrived at Mackay shortly before 2.00 pm.

We are staying at the Top Tourist caravan park, simply known as The Park.  It is a very neat and well maintained park – again only about half full, like the majority of caravan parks we have stayed in.  All went well until about 7.00 pm when a rather unpleasant smell was detected.  A quick check of shoe soles showed no problem there, Himself assured me he hadn’t had an accident (not that I thought he would have had one) and Cat became quite huffy when we looked at him!  Then the big mistake – I opened the door to look outside and the smell was unbelievable!!!  The hatches and windows were very quickly secured.

This morning, when I again opened the door to check, the air had a distinct odour of baby powder/air freshener.  Hope it doesn’t happen again tonight.  The overnight rain had cleared by sunrise and we have had clear blue skies all day, with the temperature around 24 degrees.  We paid a visit to the Orchid House at Queen’s Gardens (lots of orchid photos!) and a look at the monuments before moving on to the Botanic Gardens for a wander (not sure about the signage, though).  It was a bit of a surprise to discover a funeral happening in the carpark of the gardens, though - complete with hearse, coffin, mourners and Harley Davidson motorcycles.  We then met up with my cousin, Milton and his wife, Margaret, for a very enjoyable lunch on the verandah of the café at the gardens.