(written by Nancy)

It was very quiet overnight and we slept well, at least until we had an interesting visitor about 4:30am this morning.  I woke up to a funny sound – at first I thought Dave had rolled into the side of the tent, and then I thought it was a bird landing on the tent several times.  Eventually Dave woke up and said ‘what the heck?’  I opened the tent door and there stood a red fox, peering at me very close to the tent door.  I couldn’t believe it – he was chewing on the front guy line and that was the kind of popping noise we heard.  I got a picture of him, and then had to get almost all of the way out of the tent and shine my headtorch on him before he moved away.  Pretty weird!  He did a pretty good job on the guy wire – we had to tie a knot to prevent it from breaking completely.

Early morning visitor

We made a pretty early departure from the campground and stopped in the town center to get some groceries to resupply.  I think we finally headed out of town about 9:00.  We went through more farmland today – lots of tomatoes and sugar cane.  We stopped early on at a farm stand and picked up a package of bananas.  There were also watermelons and rockmelons but we couldn’t figure out how to tie them on to the back of the bikes…  I saw some sweet potatoes being loaded into some big storage containers, and then sure enough Dave spotted one in the road so of course he stopped to pick it up.

Banana stop

The roads today were not great – quite a bit of traffic and generally very little shoulder.  The roads were also in very bad condition – lots of broken pavement.  We had lots of ups and downs (undulating, as they say…) and classic Queensland construction with lots of blind spots where there were crests which you could not see over.  All a bit nerve wracking. 

Sugar cane

Working in the fields

We made it to Rosedale about 12:30 – at that point we had about 63k and were seriously considering calling it a day.  When we had left Bundaberg the road sign said 136 to Agnes Waters (the town nearby to Seventeen Seventy) so I really didn’t think we had a chance of making it all the way to Seventeen Seventy.  The only place to camp at Rosedale was behind the pub – it wasn’t all that welcoming and they were charging $25 for a powered site.  We debated a bit while we had an egg and bacon burger, and then thought, what the heck let’s try for Seventeen Seventy.

We left Rosedale about 1:15 and had another 75k or so to go – we knew we had to keep up the pace as the sun sets around here now about 5:30 or so.  The first 40k was on the same road so it was a bit tough with the trucks and the bad road.  I was really hoping we had not made a mistake trying to do it all in one day.  Thankfully we got to the turn to Agnes Waters/Seventeen Seventy and several trucks turned to head the other way toward Mirian Vale – yeah!  There was a little store/gas station right there so we stopped to have a chocolate milk refresher and top up the water bottles.

From that turnoff the road got much better – better shoulder, better condition and a lot less traffic.  It also evened out a bit so felt a bit easier.  We were focused on getting here in time so didn’t stop for any pictures – we only stopped once so I could take some aspirin for the reoccurrence of my Achilles tendon problem.  We were both getting pretty tired and switched positions at the front frequently – there was not a huge amount of wind but it was nice to get a mental break from being at the front.

We were so glad to finally get to Agnes Waters – this is the bigger township that is just before you get to Seventeen Seventy.  We stopped at the grocery store to pick up some things and attracted a local welcoming committee of school kids.  We had another 6k to ride to Seventeen Seventy – this is the place that several people have recommended to us.  Thankfully they were easy kilometers.  We passed one caravan park along the way but wanted to check out another one that we had heard was right on the beach.  We headed that way and looked at it but it was pretty packed and did not really look very inviting.  So, we headed back to the Captain Cook Caravan Park and booked in for two nights – we need a rest after today!  We call this a double day, as we feel like we rode two days in one – 138k is a pretty long day on a loaded touring bike but it gives us a good feeling for those days ahead when we hit the outback and have to do some long days.

Agnes Waters Welcoming Committee

Seventeen Seventy is named after the year that Captain Cook landed right here – it was apparently his second landing in Australia on the HMS Bark Endeavor.  Tomorrow we will try to go check out the little township and look at the beaches.  That is, assuming we can actually get up tomorrow…  This is an out-and-back location – we will have to backtrack 35k on Friday to head toward Mirian Vale but we will not think about that right now.