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