The drive south from Townsville is through sugarcane, mango plantations and small towns with sugar mills puffing away in the distance. We drove through Bowen and stopped for lunch – the Flagstaff Hill visitor centre was worth the short drive out of town to see the expansive views across the Whitsundays.
The centre and café were closed as the hilltop location saw them get smashed by Cyclone Debbie – the damage was evident in the bent ceiling fans on the verandah!
Down on the foreshore we found yet another free waterpark which – being a school day – was empty. A great place for lunch and some energy release.
We kept driving towards Proserpine and decided to see if there was camping in the state forest around the Proserpine Dam. A bit of a drive around proved to be fruitless and it was very windy around the exposed shoreline of the dam so we decided to stop in at a campground a few hundred metres back from the dam wall. We thought it would be a quiet little spot but instead there was a barra fishing comp on and it was full of people.
Fortunately the fisher-folk were staying in the cabin accommodation and the nice couple running the show found us a nice grassy spot down the back near the river. The highlight was the endangered Proserpine Rock Wallabies which emerged from the scrub out in front of our tent at 5.30pm every evening. People would feed them vegetable leftovers and scraps which they grabbed before the bush turkeys came along.
JALC-OZ-2018 