Leaving Ingham 12th June 2009

Leaving Bowen for INGHAM Friday 12th June
7/8/9 that’s our departure set up times. We were all showered, breakfasted, trailer packed up and pulling out just after 9.10am Not Bad.
Another great day though it was quite windy last night with the palm tree leaves brushing the top of the canvas all night. Still managed to sleep though. The stars were great, very bright with the Southern Cross clearly visible. Didn’t really get to meet too many people where we stayed as everyone kept to themselves. At around 9.30pm its dark and the place is like a morgue. Not a soul stirring and oh so quiet. I did venture off to the front of the caravan parks sea wall and started chatting to a guy who was hanging on to the end of a fishing line. He hadn’t had much luck and thought the fish probably thought he was there just to feed them. He was from Erith (?) North Kent and had been out here since 1992. He and his wife had had enough of the old country and they wanted to start a new life. He went on to say he was 51 now and they were buying a motel just north of Bowen. Just 12 rooms which they thought they could handle and would be a great way to live up here and have another change. He was still very English and laughed a lot. I hoped it would all work out for them and was in bed by 10pm myself!
Leaving Bowen on the A1 cane fields again on both sides. Many fields with tomatoes plants which were being picked by hordes of no doubt back packers extending their visas and earning some good money. Great irrigation arms watering the growing areas with all the water being pumped up the water table below. At last we saw vast areas where the cane had been cut and was now being eaten up by the cane cutting machines and dumping it into to the cane trains which were running all over the place and criss crossing the roads. Signs saying give way to cane trains, red lights flashing etc. I don’t think we would want to argue with them.
We stopped at Home Hill for our morning coffee at a comfort stop as they call it. Everything provided, clean toilets and showers and places you can park and stay overnight for a maximum of 20 hours. On then to Ayr, a very Italian town, with many Italian business names prominent throughout the town. This is the Burdekin Valley and we saw the Pioneer Sugar mills belching smoke stacks refining all the cane being brought in. Then on to Townsville which we skirted around on the new motorway that we hadn’t seen before, decided we had been there previously a couple of times a few years ago so we kept going. Many new roads and huge housing estates being built or being prepared for the houses to be built. This area is really progressing with many new roads and much work being done on the existing ones and all well signposted. Quite a few new shopping centres being built or just completed. Woolworths, Coles etc.
Disaster just as we drove through Rollingstone 110 klms out of Townsville when an overtaking 12 wheeler truck flicked up a loose stone and cracked our windscreen. It started just a small bullet hole hit and then we watched it progressively start cracking in a spider like fashion. My first thought was it going to disintegrate and land in our laps. Pushed on to Ingham where we stopped for petrol and directions to the windscreen repairers. No problem we were told. He wouldn’t recommend replacing the screen for that crack. Wait till it goes all over the place and then get it done in Cairns! No problem with safety as it was laminated. So we pressed on to an overnight rest just behind the Kennedy store on the Bruce Highway 12 Klms north of Cardwell. Set up using the gas to run the fridge and carrying our own water and running lights on the batteries we were all set up. Joined by three other overnighters we were all OK fir the night. It’s just that we were right beside the main train line to Cairns from Brisbane. Since arriving at 4 pm three trains have been through! Oh well we are staying here for free!