17th to 23rd January 2000 (Week 3)

The first day of this week we still spent on Fraser Island. We visited the sand cliffs and dunes in the rainbow gorge as well as the red sandstone formations at red canyon. Still during low tide we started driving the 80km long drive back towards the Rainbow Beach ferry. We had to make sure that we would round hook point within 2 hours either side of low tide, any later then that, the beach would become impassable for cars.

Back in Rainbow Beach we thorougly rinsed the saltwater from the car, inflated our tyres back up to the normal pressure and went for a long deserved shower and some clothes washing.

The next day we started driving inland towards the outback towns ofCharleville and Longreach. We basically expected to find very dry and barren country in the middle of the summer. We were astonished to find green juicy grass even as far inland as Longreach. Since they had an extraordinary amount of rain this year and so far pretty low temperatures, the vegetation still was green and lush. In Longreach we visited the Stockmans Hall of Fame Museum. A Museum describing the life of early settlers and paying a tribute to the stockman leading a hard life in these harsh conditions. The exhibits were very interesting covering the history from the aborigines until today. Longreach was as well the founding city for the national airline QANTAS (Queensland and Northern Territory Aireal Services). The QUANTAS founders museum is located as well in Longreach. Here we so far expirienced the warmest day of this vacation at 43 degree celsius.

From here we made our way to the Eungella Nationalpark near MacKay. This park is well known for Platypus spotting. The Broken River meanders through a lush lowland rainforest towards the sea. The Platypus were really putting on quiet a display. The flash and zoom function of the digital camera was sadly insufficient to take pictures. Hopefully the slides should turn out one or the other Platypus. The next day we walked through beautiful Finch Hatton gorge and drove towards Townsville in the afternoon where we would begin the wind down of our vacation.