Brisbane to the Tropic of Capricorn

This part of the trip took us from Brisbane to the Tropic of Capricorn via the Sunshine and Gold Coasts of Queensland. There is only one photograph of the populist Sunshine and Gold Coasts, not that it was not scenic just that it was not our type of territory - too many people, too many high rise apartments and not RV friendly.



This was the Sunshine Coast at Maroochydore.

The local inhabitants may think it is heaven on earth but this was not our thoughts.



It was at Maryborough that we started to feel at home again, a well maintained town that had guarded it's past. However the images below reflected a more modern view


The day we arrived the town had organised, for us no doubt a challenge to the Guinness Book of records for the most people to participate ( including drinking at a least 13 pubs ) in a pub crawl.


This was one of the Gayer personalities that Katherine befriended??








This was another local celebrity,a participant in the Australian television version of "The Biggest Loser". Allegedly a winner!

Subsequent to his TV exploits you can see a fair amount of the weight is back on.


More normal were these young ladies who tried to entice us into joining the pub crawl.



No - we had planed a special lunch at the best restaurant in town for our 45th wedding anniversary which was on that day. To those of you who know us well you can guess what happened.


Restaurant closed for the day due to the pub crawl.
Mike cannot recall how many times that has happened to one of his bookings for a special event,

Therefore off we went to look at the sights instead.

These are some of the colourful bollards on the old wharf.

Another quaint acquaintance of the town was this statue of "Mary Poppins"of Walt Disney fame. The statue was to commemorate the writer who was born in the town.
This surprised us we thought the writer was American.

Well obviously Katherine thinks she's quaint.




Now here is a special tree.

The size is awesome

The history of the tree is shown below.

Well worth enlarging and reading.

This is "The Palace Hotel" in Childers site site of a fire that had some notoriety a few years ago.

It became "The Childers Backpackers fire in the Australian press.

16 backpackers from all over the world died during the fire.

The whole internal part of the building was gutted leaving only the external walls.The internal structure has been renovated to make an art gallery.

Within the art gallery a wall of remembrance has been created from family pictures supplied by the victims family, tastefully and artistically appropriate.

From there we crossed into the Tropic of Capricorn at Gladstone.

Distance travelled from Perth = 13120 Kms

Distance from Perth = 4535 Kms

Number of days on the road = 217

The Fijian Diversion

Well before we start this excursion a short explanation of why we went is perhaps appropriate.

Being in Brisbane and some 4,000 kms closer to Fiji than Perth, if we ever were to go, surely now is the time. The objective was the revisit old haunts of the 70's when we lived in Fiji and hopefully meet up with Asantha the lady who helped in the house at Suva. Mike's view of that was pie in the sky - we knew her name and originally came from a village near Nandi.

The images below show that in the main all of our aims were met, except that there was no Fiji holiday in the normal sense.

The first major success was the revisiting of our old house. Old being the operative term, in our eyes it was a place of joy and happiness, since our time in Fiji certainly gave us that experience.

However now our lovely house on the hill with 2 acres of orderly wild Fijian bush has been transformed to a plot accommodating 6 new large houses all with walls and gates and our house sits atop the hill in a state of disrepair waiting to be demolished and replaced with another modern dwelling.

This is progress but we were glad to have made the pilgrimage.

There were many more photographs taken but this tells the current story, the past is long gone.

The weather during our stay was not all sunshine and tropical warmth, no in true Fiji style we experienced the full gamut of sunshine rain and storm.

This view was taken at 0800

This was 0810

But by 0820 normality had returned.

This is a picture taken from outside the local prison and demonstrates that prison life is not one any sane person aspires to.

The front wall extends some 100 meters alongside the main road from Suva to Nandi

It was when this image was taken that a strange event occurred.





Katherine was determined to have record of this wall so that we had a record of the artwork and ancient nature of the prison. Twice before we had tried to stop and take the photographs but either traffic or weather intervened.

This time whilst Katherine was taking the photographs a Fijian lady stopped and basically passed the time of day with Katherine and during the conversation it emerged that Katherine was looking for Asantha. The Lady was a little startled to say that this lady was her Auntie living near Singatoka.

Telephone calls later we met up with Asantha in Singatoka on our way to Nandi - Any explanation of the event would be welcomed??

The nature of our visit was to see Fiji as well as the nostalgia reasons, to this end when we arrived at Nandi it was pick up a car and turn left and keep going until we reached Nandi again.

This was the real Fiji not the expensive hotels or Suva commercial area. Just water, tropical trees and grass.





The next images are from the Suva Commercial area.

Fortunately or unfortunately it was a Sunday, all the other days we were there it rained nearly continuously.

Therefore the hustle and bustle is absent.

High rise is new

The gives a little more insight into the weather across the harbour.

Anther image of the Harbour with a Library boat moored to the dock.

This is a boat with over 60,000 books on board that travels around the world offering books for sale and promoting the word of the Lord.

Difficult to rationalise this on a financial and moral point of view.

This shows how one can enjoy the Pacific Islands in a very laid back style.

We visited the Suva Yacht Club that we were members of in the 70's. It was the same but different, still full of expat's but had changed from a sailing fraternity to a power boat type club.

Interesting conversations with the members though.

Again this shows the South Seas in it's rough state.

The view from the Crows Nest Hotel outside Singatoka was taken just before we dinned with the Fijian national rugby team.

Huge appetites but only drank soft drinks, they were in training for an upcoming international game, we were told after the game things would be different.

We cannot leave the impression it was all wind and rain this was poolside at Rakiraki, a tough Sunday breakfast here.

Finally our last drink in Fiji was poolside in Nandi.


Like the pool - reflections was the order of the day at this poolside.

Definitely glad we went since the reminiscences and joy of the Fijians gave us a great deal of pleasure.

The Brisbane Stop

This was to be a City visit and so it proved to be, the week we were in Brisbane was spent in the City with all it's commercial life and preparing for the Fiji excursion.
Understandably the impression of Brisbane was skewed by the time limitations and the housekeeping necessary to the Van, so that we could leave it for a week.
Generally our impression of the city was good, but not good enough to want to live there. The outstanding plus was the Cultural Centre, by far the best we have seen to date. Art Gallery, Museum and Modern Art Gallery set a standard many cities could copy. Whilst we only managed to fit in a play at the small theatre - the whole ambiance of the centre was impressive.
The following photographs show some the Brisbane delights and in our view the negatives.



The first photograph is the entrance to the library area for students of which there were hundreds many of which like Perth, were Asians. This was taken on a holiday and the advertised aboriginal display was closed.





Another bad timing on our part was the Picasso exhibition, scheduled for the week after we left, as you can see the building to house the exhibition was itself impressive.





This is a view of the start of the bus underground. The first time we have seen such a solution to city travel, it was just like a rail underground except buses are speeding underground. Above ground chaos reigns supreme.The cost must be extortionate.

Maybe we are being simplistic but the Perth system that has rial North/South and East with buses oscillating to the rail stations.


This shows the bus emerging from the tunnel system.


This shows the unfortunate part of Brisbane, a wonderful river frontage spoilt by a road system cantilevered over the water .Perth has and is doing it the right way albeit very slowly.

More of the same

We took a river trip from the Cultural Centre to the University on the river and this shows that high rise living is alive and well on the banks of the river.

A long shot view of the Brisbane skyline, typical modern City??

Brisbane was definitely too rushed and deserved a longer stay to fully appreciate all it's virtues.

Distance Travelled to date = 12,291

Distance from Perth = 4355 Kms

Number of days on the trip = 203