Entry 12 – 26th Oct. to 6th Nov., Proserpine to Mackay and Sarina, Queensland.
With one night at Proserpine we managed to catch up on all our electronic stuff, including a video chat with our Canada based family, then continued south, down the road towards the next major town of Mackay.
We were now travelling through those more populated locations in Australia (coastal regions) with an increase of restrictions imposed by authorities (due to the human element) impeding our preferred nomadic lifestyle.
It was a stretch of about 125 kilometres from the populated towns of Proserpine to Mackay. We had previously experienced the inland highlights for this region and thought it to be an opportune time to view the coastal offerings.
The coastline was covered with plenty of mangrove areas with the current denominator from provided information showing there was an abundance of biting insects feeding on any humans who chance to enter these locations. There seemed to be an absence of walking trails or scenic locations of interest to us. We decided to set camp at a scout property about 15 kilometres shy of Mackay and spent the rest of the day investigating various locations without the hinderance of a caravan in tow.
The area around Seaforth with only caravan park type camping options in a green mangrove type environment looked ok but the lack of other scenic choices didn’t register any temptation for us to stay. Cape Hillsborough National Park, Smalley’s campground did look inviting with acceptable access for our caravan into nearly all the allocated camp sites but the overhead tree canopy obstructed our required solar needs. The below pictures show one of the small beach areas in the national park and an interesting road side, house door bell.
Mackay was a large town with a population of around 80,000. We went out of our way to visit the Mackay visitor information centre, hopeful of obtaining some points of interest for visiting. Sadly, the visitor information centre was closed, no longer in use, even though their web site was showing it to be current. Disappointed, we felt Mackay had failed to entice us to stay.
About 35 kilometres down the road we stopped at the visitor information centre at Sarina. We obtained some information of interest to us though the information centre representative heavily promoted various local caravan parks and tried to scare us away from our preferred locations with some horrible tales about free camping and negatives of visiting the nearby national park.
We did ignore their tactics and at around 45 kilometres down the road, entered the location of a free camp of interest to us. The below photo shows the setting before us when we arrived at our target location of Notch Point.
We were most happy to have ignored the scare tactics of the information centre. There was another couple in the information centre at the same time as us, enquiring about almost identical information. Sadly, they decided not to travel to Notch Point due to the misrepresentation of actual facts provided by the information centre, trying to deflect us to stay at a caravan park.
Notch Point had similarities to Horseshoe Bay at Bowen, a location we had experienced about a week previously, with the open ocean on one side and an inland bay to the other side.
On the ocean side there was a beautiful looking, large open grassed camping area but it was buffeted by a constant strong ocean breeze. The below picture of this camp area with the strength of the wind displayed by the palm tree canopy. We decided to set camp on the bay side with protection from the strong wind provided by a ridge of land. Setting camp was a little bit of a challenge with the sloping surface but it did provide a heightened view of the ocean setting below.
Each time we ventured into the ocean side open grassed area during our walks, it was a struggle to keep our hats on with the strong wind. From our camp location, we had a great view of the landscape from our elevated position, enjoying watching the tidal movement of the ocean waters with 5 metres difference between high and low tide.
We walked about on the sand surface of the bay with the outgoing tide finding it to be a struggle at times, sinking into the soft wet sand. Other days the sand surface felt firm. We enjoyed daily walks along various tracks around Notch Point with constant bird activity in the surrounding tree canopy.
We spent one afternoon watching some thunderstorm activity on the other side of our bay. Unfortunately, our pictures didn’t capture the fabulous stratosphere activity we thoroughly enjoyed viewing over a couple of hours. It did provide a great sunset kaleidoscope of colours.
Another morning we woke with the landscape around us enveloped by a sea fog, providing a different setting again.
The Notch Point scenery provided views, tantalising all our happy vibes we didn’t seem to tire of. It was a most fabulous ocean setting, with its constant changing vista, complements to the 5-metre tidal movement. Then Notch Point cranked up another notch with enthralling early morning bird life activity providing thrilling viewing.
A lovely couple we met whilst at Lake Proserpine (Ian and Kathy) arrived at Notch Point and we continued on from where we had left off, with delightful chatter and walking time together.
Ian and Steve put their thinking caps on and got down to business, attending to a bit of caravan maintenance fixing activity on their caravan undercarriage.
For a few days we even had three Bushtracker Caravans, “with us in the middle,” parked up in a row, enjoying the scenic vista provided by Notch Point.
One evening we decided to light our first fire for this trip since departing Adelaide in July. It was the 1st November with incentive provided by the cooler temperatures and the attraction for the thought of a freshly cooked camp fire damper. Though the daily maximum temperatures were hovering around the 29 to 31 degrees, with morning minimums around 21 to 23 degrees. A very acceptable temperature range. Mary produced a damper half savoury and half sweet. Sharing an evening fire creates a good atmosphere, enhanced by adding a camp fire cooked damper. There was not much room left for our planned evening meals!
The below picture of our caravan sums up our thoughts for Notch Point with this special picture captured by Ian of our camp.
It was time to continue south towards our target location near Brisbane where our caravan had an appointment with its manufacturer to receive some maintenance attention.
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