Welcome to Cindy and David's 2018 Adventures
09 Emu Park and Clairview
A couple of days before we had to leave H Bay, the Seafood Festival kept us entertained. Each year it seems to become more popular. Annoyingly, although we managed to have a very tasty lunch of salt and pepper squid, when David went off to buy a supply of prawns, they had SOLD OUT. It was midday!
Nothing daunted, he went off around the corner from the festival to the harbourside fish shop and stocked up for our evening meal. However, let's hope next year, the festival will realise the popularity of the prawn at a Seafood Festival and provide accordingly!
The entertainment consisted mainly of Country and Western singers who were quite good and then the serious music arrived with a crash - a brilliant group of young men who knew a crowd who wanted to dance when they saw one!
The saxaphone was the main attraction and was played brilliantly and on the right you will see a young man who seemed to think his instrument was a step ladder (he kept on playing throughout the most ridiculous of antics). With the exception of the drummer, the players took turns in visiting the crowds whilst still playing away. Mad but immense fun. For the final encore, the singer asked if he should sing Queen or Billy Joel - Queen won out and we all joined in loudly and tunelessly. Went home after that - exhausted poor old souls that we are.
Nothing daunted, he went off around the corner from the festival to the harbourside fish shop and stocked up for our evening meal. However, let's hope next year, the festival will realise the popularity of the prawn at a Seafood Festival and provide accordingly!
The entertainment consisted mainly of Country and Western singers who were quite good and then the serious music arrived with a crash - a brilliant group of young men who knew a crowd who wanted to dance when they saw one!
The saxaphone was the main attraction and was played brilliantly and on the right you will see a young man who seemed to think his instrument was a step ladder (he kept on playing throughout the most ridiculous of antics). With the exception of the drummer, the players took turns in visiting the crowds whilst still playing away. Mad but immense fun. For the final encore, the singer asked if he should sing Queen or Billy Joel - Queen won out and we all joined in loudly and tunelessly. Went home after that - exhausted poor old souls that we are.
Having decided we were to go on to Cairns, Mike very kindly agreed to let us store heavy and unwieldy items like bicycles at his place so we caught these kangaroos sampling his plants during our visit to Mike's house.
The windmill was made by Mike for Laura to celebrate her Dutch heritage (or because she just had always wanted one in her garden).
The windmill was made by Mike for Laura to celebrate her Dutch heritage (or because she just had always wanted one in her garden).
We went on to spend a couple of days at Emu Park just east of Rockhampton to catch up with friends Pete and Pam who had just moved into this lovely new home. It was great to see them and we thoroughly enjoyed dinner at the local pub plus trivia (the less said about that the better!) and lunch at their new home.
The train line. Incidentally not only did we listen to freight trains, admittedly not many, but we did witness a weird phenomenon of a huge very noisy train which roared along, stopped, then backed up, roared off again and backed up, all the while throwing out fire and sparks. David decided in the end it was actually grinding the lines! We were a bit concerned about the sparks because we had commented all throughout our trip how appallingly dry the countryside is.
First night after Emu Park we thought we had found a park off the highway hoping for some quiet time. However, it seemed we drove parallel with the highway AND the main freight line so it wasn't so peaceful! However, it was on a magnificent beach called Clairview which David tried out with his fishing rod. I was tempted to have a bit of a paddle but thought better of it when I realised we were nearly in croc country.