Friday 23 August 2013 – Big excursion to Burrum Heads

We had another chilly evening last night and an equally chilly morning this morning, but the day has again been lovely – 24 degrees.  Had a bit of a sleep in (till 8), and hung around till late morning just enjoying the lack of housework and the indulgence of just eating brekky and reading as I enjoyed some extra cuppas. 

Grant has woken up a little bit sore in his hands and shoulder still, but he is focussing on his exercise, heat packing, etc. and trying not to trip over, stumble, step into any hollow, and generally just keep himself upright. 

We decided to go for a drive a bit further up the coast , so we left here at about a quarter to eleven making our way to the thriving metropolis of Burrum Heads about 35 km away.  Though it is on the coast, you don’t see the coastline on the drive there.  The township itself is quite small and very much a fishing village.  Each access point to the water had a boat ramp and there were quite a number of fishing boats in the mouth of the Burrum River – looking more like not-too-large commercial fishing boats than just pleasure ones.  And there were lots of little tinnies coming and going – we couldn’t believe one of them – it was about 2 mtrs long and two men were going out in it.  It would have been a bit dodgy if the breeze had got up much stronger, as it was a little bit choppy as it was!

  

Burrum Heads

The tide was out while we were there, and it goes out quite a long way, so at all the roads we went down to the ocean beach, there was quite a long walk to actually get to the water.  We were there for a while, then headed back towards Hervey Bay, going down every side road on the left (the beach side), invariably going down ‘no through roads’ which all ended up at a sandy turning circle on the foreshore.  There was one other even smaller seaside place we went to, Toogoom and its suburb Toogoom East, both very similar to Burrum Heads, just smaller.

On the drive back into Hervey Bay we saw our first Wicked van of this trip.  They seem to be far less prevalent here in Queensland than they were on last years trip – perhaps because the ‘Up the Centre to Darwin, down to Perth then across the Nullarbor’ trip appeals to as many younger people as older, whereas this part of the world is more regarded as God’s waiting room. 

Back in town by mid-afternoon we first of all found the early voting office, filled in the appropriate paperwork, were given our ballot papers and did our duty to the country – well one of us did, anyway.  The other exercised the right to a protest vote.  From there we went to the supermarket and topped up on a few bits before coming back to the park for a very much needed cuppa.  And that’s today in a nutshell.


A lovely silver palm tree (bismarckia noblis)  we saw in a garden.