Aug 19-20 Carmila Beach (Mackay)

Back to the coast again, we drove in to Mackay. Maybe Mackay had more to offer than we allowed it the chance to show us. But somehow we managed to drive right into the building works for a new shopping centre. That together with traffic lights, speed humps and skinny round-abouts in the main streets discouraged us from stopping and exploring. We continued south and found a camping ground that was right on the foreshore of a beach - Carmila Beach. In the words of a famous song, "I was thinking to myself, this could heaven or this could be hell." Heaven, because it was so close to the beach with lovely sunrise views over the water. Hell, because it was such soft and dirty sand that you had to drive through to get to the camping spots.

We didn't get bogged, but we did see one poor old bugger the following day become hopelessly trapped in the dry quick sand close by. Hopefully, the RACQ that he had waited on for a few hours were able to rescue him after we left.

The first night was good, apart from the annoying background rumble of generators until 9pm. We decided that we stay a second night. We had pleasant neighbours - Leon and Pam from Port Lincoln - but they decided to move on the next morning. That was a pity, because later the following day we came back to our site after a walk to find that a group of toothless boguns were setting up a small city of tents in the neighbouring spot to us. Hmmm, Saturday night; bunch of yobbos already drinking beer at 2pm... a quick decision was made and within half an hour we were out of there and looking for another place to spend the night.

Lovely spot on the foreshore of Carmila beach

Carmila beach at sunrise

First sunlight on the beach

Looking at our van from the beach

Sunrise over the low tide

After a late decision to move out of Carmila Beach, we needed to find a place for the night fairly quickly. We drove for longer than we wanted to but found a campsite at the back of a pub in Marlborough. Very basic facilities, but very cheap. We bought a serve of chips and gravy from the pub (take-away) to go with our tea of leftovers from the previous night. Marlborough is a very quiet little town. It may not be there for much longer...