Lake Maraboon Emerald

Lake Maraboon is 18ks from Emerald, the park is located on the shoreline on the North East side, the entire shoreline is 247k's and the capacity is 3 times that of Sydney harbour. The dam is famous for Red Claw so we are going to try our luck over the next few days.
The park is run by a couple of gay guys who do a great job, Monday night is free sausage sizzle and entertainment by the boys. They accept gold coin donations to assist Angelflight and have raised $40k in the last 5 years. Mick was a little concerned though as there are so many people older than us and the staff all wear yellow t shirts and encourage you to join in, he thinks it's like training for the nursing home!

Calliope Rocky Duaringa & Bedford Weir

After leaving 1770 we planned a few days free camping till we could get into our next booking, Calliope has a great free camp on the river bank, it's just a little west of Gladstone, very pretty.

The next night was spent at Duaringa which is 70k's north of Rockhampton.

Duaringa is probably the smallest town I have seen in a long time, the free camp is heavily used though and has plenty of flat ground, even if it is red dirt.

The next day we headed to Bedford Weir, this is 27k's from Blackwater, a couple stay there as caretakers for a coin donation, the facilities are good with big hot showers, the Weir  is quite large an the evidence of the last floods can be seen.

We have come across these birds over the last few days, they have the most amazing blue around their eye's and their backs are a shiny olive green I have to get that Australian Bird Book so I can put a name to these new sightings.

Last Lunch before the road.

We had been driving past The Tree at 1770 every day thinking how good it looked so decided to stop and have a drink on out last day, a drink turned into a bottle and lunch, but just have a look at the view, could you blame us?

CRABS!

We have crabs! Lots of crabs!
Seriously we really had a great day today, we set 4 crab pots the day before and had to wait for the right tide to go and check them, nice surprise, plenty of crabs.
Mick got excited when we pulled up the 2nd pot and it had 5 crabs in it, so excited he managed to cover my back and ponytail with mangrove mud, he is forgiven tough because the final result was well worth it.
We caught 9 crabs in total, 2 Jennies and 7 bucks, we put the Jennies and 3 bucks back as they may have been legal but how many can 2 people eat.

That's Mick's phone on the left, just so you can get an idea of the size of the crabs.

Tides & Sunsets

1770 unlike NSW has huge tidal changes and like most parts up here it can be a trap if you are not planning your boating trip around the tides, also there are so many sand bars you really have to go out the first time on the low tide so you get an idea of where they are.

Everyone in the park heads down to the foreshore with their drinks just before sunset, it's quite a show.

Seventeen Seventy 1770

We arrived in 1770 mid morning having booked site for 5 days as it's school holidays here at the end of the week and we want to be somewhere they are not by then.
1770, so names after Captain Cook landed here in that year, is a quaint little town with very little in the way of shops etc but is big on fishing, relaxing and beautiful sunsets.

This is the view from the lookout back towards our park.

This is where Cpt Cook landed, a bit scary when you look at the rocks, it's called Busted Bay, after the bird, not what might have happened to them!

Free Camp

Saturday morning we were packed and ready to head on from Maroochydore after meeting some very nice people and having a great time.
We decided to stay in one of the many free roadside camps Queensland has to offer. Luckily we found a great camp just south of Bundaberg where we could have a fire and test all our battery and gas operated gear as we had been playing it easy in the caravan parks. Thankfully everything worked well and it's times like these you are so glad you have a shower in the van, brilliant!

Comments are working

Hi Guys, we are now getting your comments, hope to have some more interestimng stuff for you next week as we will head off on Saturday to Bundy and surrounds.
Cheers
Suellen

North and South of us.

Even though we have never really been fans of Noosa we thought as we were this close we should take a look to see if anything has changed, No, only someone wants to have topless barmaids to boost his business and this is making headline news here.

Still too many people and not a great beach!

Headed down to the south of us, much better, Alexander Headland & Mooloolaba

Sunshine and blue water Maroochydore

Leaving Iluka was a great decision, we made it to Maroochydore a bit after lunch on Tuesday. We have booked into Cotton Tree Caravan Park which is great, we are virtually 150mtrs from the sand of the bay which feeds straight out into the sea.

The town has grown quite a lot since we were last in the area about 8 years ago but this little sections is away from the hustle and you can walk to everything you need.

Believe it or not you can catch fish in this water so close to a city, our neighbours caught a 40cm bream! My turn next.

Sunshine state

As you would all be aware NSW and in particular Iluka/Yamba has had a bit of rain. We were joined by Mal, Cog, Josh, Luke, Cindy, Megan and our Joel over the long weekend which was all good until about 2pm on the Saturday, we all braved the weather on Saturday night to help Josh celebrate his 30th Birthday but Mal, Cog and the crew decided home was a much more comfortable place to be and packed up in the rain.

Joel decided to tough it out and stay at least another night, after all, being the only tent left in the camping ground was no indication packing up would have been a better idea!

At 6am Sunday morning Joel knocked on our door to help him pack up his tent as he was floating on his swag. Joel made it home safely after a very ,long, slow and wet drive.

Michael and I decided we would start packing the boat and trailer up as we only had another 2 nights booked. That night we had another torrential downpour totalling 11 inches of rain in 48 hours, the decision to move on was not too hard,  we were half packed anyway, Queensland here we come.

Fishing at Iluka

Mick and I had a good day on the water at Iluka, we had put in crab pots the day before and caught one very nice buck, also very tasty!

The day before we were sitting in our 3.45mt tinnie when this big monster came past with the aid of two tug boats, apparently they take supplies to Lord Howe Island via the port up the river from Iluka.
Made us feel very tiny in our tinnie.

COMMENTS COMMENTS COMMENTS!!!!!!!!!!

Hi Guys
I know some of you are having trouble commenting, I have read a thousand pages of help which did not help so thought I would make a comment to see how I went.
It worked!
This is what I did.

Type comments
Comment as : Select anonymous

This should work

Please put your name to the comments so we know who it is.

Good luck

Anchorage Park Iluka

Our caravan park is situated right across the road from the water with it's own boat ramp and jetty. The tree's out the front are turning beautiful autumn tones and the sunsets across the water are stunning, the pelicans kiow when fish are being cleaned and arrive for the free food.

Woody Head and 10 Mile Beach

On the way into Iluka you come past 10 Mile Beach & Woody Head national park camping ground. This is a great camp right on the bay with open fires permitted and wood supplied!

Sorry all the photo's seem to include beaches and oceans, I promise I will get some inland photo's eventually! 

Finally Fishing

After a few days of organising the boat and trailer we launched the "ss minnow" (formally known as the garden gnome for the last few years) and headed out onto the waterways here at Iluka. We caught a few small bream and a couple of flathead for dinner.
The day was beautiful and sunny and the water just sparkled!
Sitting in the boat you can look back to Iluka and Yamba and be amazed just how close they are over the water.

That's Iluka on the left and Yamba on the right.