Sleepy Cod

Mick and I have been doing some fresh water fishing, how relaxed is that, sitting on the bank waiting for something to swim past. We have caught a few "Sleepy Cod" they look like a catfish without the whiskers, the biggest so far was 42cm, the fishing hole looks good thought.

It's hard to believe but in the floods the water was 4 metres bove the Burdekin Bridge you can see the bridge in the background, aqpparently our campsite was also under water, it must have been massive.

As mentioned this place is fairly social, happy hour goes from 4-6pm each evening where they light this big fire and sometimes cook damper and someone pulls out a guitar and sings.

Charters Towers Gold City

Charters Towers was established and thrived after Gold was discovered, the town boasted it's own Stock Exchange and had around 60 pubs at the peak of the gold rush. Some of the building are quite beautiful, and a living history of our architecture, here are a few.

Bivouac Junction, Charters Towers

We have been told about this caravan park by a few people so decided to give it a go, Bivouac Junction is the name, it's situated on the junction of the Burdekin & Fanning Rivers, 22ks East of Charters Towers, set on about 50 acres, peace and quiet abounds and campfires are permitted and plenty of fishing. All this for $90 per week for a powered site, amazing.

 Loving having a fire!

This is Percy, we think he loves us as our van is the same colour and him, there are probably 5 peacocks which roam free and are very tame, they will even eat from your hand.

This is the view from our camp site, just beautiful.

The People You Run Into!

Who would believe we would be in Townsville the same weekend as the boys!! It was an amazing coincidence. Mick enjoyed a day at the races with them all.

Townsville

The forshore at Townsville is really beautiful and has been developed so well, they call the walk from one end to the other "The Strand", the swimming pool is fabulous, I sure would like one in my back yard! That's Magnetic Island in the background.

Townsville is a contrast of ocean and mountain, the mountain seems to follow you around the city and suddenly appears in front of you.

The day was magic with sunshine and no wind, beautiful sparkling water! We have always gone past Townsville but it really is a lovely city, plenty of shops and places of interest, but still easy to get around.

Bugger

We left Lucinda at 9am Sunday morning to go to Townsville for a few days before heading over to the west coast, we were about half way there and needed to stop, Mick checked the tyres as you do and one of the van tyres was red hot, thank God for the NRMA, we made the call and 3 hours later this was the end result!
As we are premium care members the tow was included in our membership, otherwise it would have cost us over $500!!

It is really sad to be driving along and see your van through the front windscreen, we got he van put off the truck about 150 mtrs away from our Caravan Park and got it on site. We were lucky a mobile mechanic came and looked at it on Monday, the bearing was non existant, even thought we had all this checked before leaving home and asked for all the bearing to be replaced!
We ended up having all the wheel bearings changed and one had to get the brake drum replaced as well as it was cracked!! Guess we were lucky it happened here and not half way across the middle of Australia.

More Lovely Lucinda

I have had this cast net for a few years, Mick & Joel bought it for me for Mothers Day,  I used to know how to cast it but had forgotted, thankfully John Holmes from Terrigal was nearby to give me a refresher, after about 10 throws I was sort of there!

We headed out the next morning early for a fish as the tides were finally right, it's such a beautiful place fishing in the channel between the mainland and Hinchinbrook Island, you would swear you were in the middle of an ad for New Zealand, stunning.