Day 43 - Agnes Water

Another horrible start to the day………simply perfect.

No time for a real Brekky as a beach day had been planned.

Thank goodness for IGAs, they’re the same design across Australia. Cold chooks, some buns, cheese, tomatoes and that’s lunch sorted.

In the chariots once again.

Until the night before, although the journey, as the crow flies to Rules Beach was 34 kms, planning by Waze and Apple Maps (I’m boycotting Google maps because of their kowtowing to Trump and renaming Lake Ontario) showed a distance of 64 kms by road of roughly 45 minutes.

But wait…….Graham was having a chat with a group of people the night before who were admiring our (or should I say Grahams) pizza making ability. They were so inspired they chose to replicate our (his) efforts of sustenance, albeit on purchased bases.

In his discussion on the success of their efforts he uncovered a short cut for our journey to Rules Beach. Of course he did. This shortcut would obviously relate to that crow. A bit of satellite and map research showed it would be about 40 kms knowing we were on some goat tracks……brilliant, our first bushbashing effort.

Well, roughly two and a half hours later we arrived. We traversed every kind of surface….bitumen, gravel, stone, sand, you name it. Up hill, down hill. Tyres down, tyres up, tyres down. But it was enjoyable. We even drove through varying forms of vegetation. Australian bush, tropical, farm land and at one stage wetlands that resembled eerie scenes out of the movie Deliverance.

We arrived at the beach and once again let the tyres down. Rumour has it Queenslanders are very reluctant to undertake this onerous yet extremely necessary task, which could be the reason many funny videos are made of travellers getting themselves completely bogged in this part of the world.

I wouldn’t say this beach was any better than ours, but we were here now and you could see the anticipation in the dogs eyes.

For some time now Anne, Gail and Julie were in somewhat of a desperate need for a pee (I mean pit) stop. The roller coaster ride to get there played havoc with their plumbing. So, we stopped….. they swam (so did the dogs), then we moved on to a more sheltered location near the entry to Baffle Creek.

Awning and chairs out, dogs in the water and having a ball, we sat, ate and admired the view. None of us ventured into the water though.

Just before we arrived here the path became very narrow between the vegetation and the edge of the track. It was only a few feet down to the lower part of the beach, but somewhat nerve racking.

Upon departure I’d forgotten about this so proceeded the same way much to Gail’s horror. The others found an alternative path. Well, I can honestly say (and you might hear it in my voice in one of the videos) I was a tad freaked out. There is a saying that refers to the appearance of a turtle head in such situations. That very well nearly occurred.

Once safely past this point, off the beach and tyres back to normality, it was the bitumen version of the return home.

Naps, showers, knitting and a BBQ to end the evening.

Oh, Graham, Peter and I had calls from our off spring in celebration of Father’s Day as well as the ladies handing us appropriately themed shirts as gifts.Read more