(Written by Nancy – updated 17 May 2011)

Today we had a full day of the Bruce Hwy to look forward to – the plan was to try to get to Mt Larcom so we could then get into Rockhampton the following day. I was a bit leery of what we would face, given all the trucks I heard zooming by overnight. We had a bailout option at Gladstone, which was 32k south of Mt Larcom if we needed it, but it would make reaching Rockhampton on Sunday a bit harder.

View from Bruce Hwy

The Sunday traffic on the Bruce Hwy was not too bad – we lucked out with the timing on the big B-double trucks, and we politely (and safely) got off the road when we had a couple of super wide loads (with police escorts and all) come up behind us. The shoulder wasn’t too bad relative to other places on the highway.

Wide Load Bruce Hwy

Another wide load on Bruce Hwy

We stopped at a historical village near Calliope for lunch. It was a collection of old buildings moved to the site and operated by a historical group. Quite a funny group of senior citizens manning the store that day – we finally wrestled some toasted cheese, ham and tomato sandwiches out of them and sat and watched the birds while we ate. One of the ladies there finally told us the name of the bird we had first seen in our campsite in 1770 – it is a blue-eyed honey eater. There were several watching us closely for a bit of scraps as we ate.

Blue-eyed honey eater

From lunch it was another 30k or so to Mt Larcom. We arrived a bit after one and stopped at what looked like the only store in town to see what we could salvage for dinner. Of course we couldn’t go by the fresh apple pie and curry pie as a snack to tide us over until dinner – which we ate sitting out front while drinking our litre of milk. We’ve realised we can get a litre of regular milk for about half the price of 500ml of chocolate milk so that is now the beverage of choice when we stop. We get some funny looks but oh well, at least we are getting our calcium! We picked up some pasta sauce as well to use with the tortellini we have been carrying for several days.

Boyne River

We made one more stop at the local news agent, who also carried some groceries, to see what they might have. A can of chickpeas to add to the pasta and a paper, and we were off to the caravan park. Odd little park, not really set up for tents as they had no camp kitchen but did have a picnic table and what they called a BBQ – but not sure if it had been used in the last few years – I wouldn’t be game to turn it on! Ah well, it was only $10 per person and we got two free pens as well!?! We were allocated a nice little grassy area right next to the toilet block – hmm, this should be interesting.

We got set up, took our showers and made dinner before it got too dark to see. The tortellini with the chickpeas and tomato sauce didn’t turn out half bad – sometimes it is better to eat in the dark…. I expected the park to get a bit noisy as it seemed to be filled with construction workers staying in the cabins and it was a Saturday night but by 7:30 our light was out and we were both dead to the world so either they were pretty quiet or we were just pretty tired. I think I must have slept harder that night than any other night on the trip so far.

We came up with a new term while we were sitting in the tent tonight – ‘tentiquette’ – to describe the proper way of behaving while in or around the tent. Many things to work on to have proper tentiquette, I think. Perhaps we will have to work on a list…. (Dave is laughing out loud, as you can imagine…)