In the middle of the night I woke up and could smell smoke. It didn’t seem close to us, so I went back to sleep. I was warm and had to have my swag open for a while, but Nick said it was a cold night. Go figure.

I got up about 6.30 – first time before Nick! Breakfast, and pack up, and we were on the road about 8.30. It was overcast, and nice and cool. No sunscreen yet! Our first stop was just a 5 minute drive from our campground, down at the harbour:

The town of Bowen was actually used as Darwin for the movie “Australia”, which was interesting to learn. But we had a bit of distance to travel today, and are staying at a free camp, so we need to get there at a decent hour (and still do more stops, of course). So we pushed on.

It wasn’t very far out of town that Pete was feeling a bit sleepy, so we pulled over and I did some driving for him to rest. It was only about 10 minutes up the road to our first stop though…

There was a food stall there, so we bought some fruit, and also a big barramundi fillet, which we thought we could have for dinner tonight.

Another 30 minutes or so up the road, and we stopped again.

Our next stop was another 50 minutes up the road. It was a bit tricky finding this big turtle, and we needed to walk a bit, but we got him! And the big python was at the other end of the stop area.

We stopped in the town of Ayr for Pete to get some after-mosquito-bite ointment, and I got a sandwich. They filled it with lots of ham and cheese, but the bread was stale, so I only really ate the inside.

Another 15 minutes up the road was the cheapest diesel in the area, so we stopped there to fill up, even though we still had about 150km left in the tank. And then another 25 minutes it was our next stop.

Pete took over driving, as we were close to Townsville, and he was feeling refreshed. So we found a Liquorland to stock up supplies, and continued on to Tomulla Campsite.

This was a free camp, and no reserved spots, so we just had to drive around and find an area. Once we found something, we set up, and went for a wander. No swimming again, unfortunately. High chance of rain, so we set up the awnings tonight.

We cooked dinner on the free BBQ – the barra wasn’t going to be defrosted enough, so we had the last of our steaks. It started raining just after we got back, so it was perfect timing. Pete fell asleep in his chair – which he hasn’t done when we’ve been camping together for a long time! Lucky I had driven for a bit as it’s all caught up to him. Nick and I sat up having a few more drinks, and moved my swag under the awning when we went to bed.