A long but surprisingly interesting driving day today (500km) passing through two industry areas – mining and sugar cane.

We turned off the Great Inland Way at Capella and followed a road that had many names east to Middlemount. The road is basically an access road to coal mines. We heard quite a lot of radio ads about how coal mining supports local communities.

Some of the mining names I recognized from when I worked at Orica.

There is obviously a lot of money and a lot of supply chain to those mines. This was reflected at the local servo where the standards were higher than usual:

1. Window washing buckets with fresh soapy water.

2. Really clean toilets.

3. Coffee deals.

4. Frozen drinks for later! What a great idea!

It may have been coincidence but I have not seen this level of service since we left Melbourne. I was quite excited to see the soapy water and coffee deals.

We saw these mountains in the background. I was thinking they looked like pyramids. What do you think Chris saw?

We passed quite a few towns but none had a bakery. As we drove into one town, Nebo, looking for a bakery, we fell in love with the pub. We loved it so much we went inside to have a look. Then we decided to have a drink even though it was only 11.00. Then we thought – should we change our plans and stay the night? We could watch the AFL final there.

We ummed and arghed but in the end decided that by 6pm we would probably be regretting our decision after spending 7 hours in the pub.

Chris has been doing quite well with the hand waving at other caravans, not that there were as many today. He is a little disappointed with the other caravan drivers not waving back though. I’m trying to keep his spirits up each time a driver doesn’t wave back so he doesn’t give up.

Some of the signs today. It must be a high accident area.

All of a sudden after driving past the mines, we hit sugar cane country. We were in the Sarina / Mackay area. OMG I loved the cane fields, and the trains, and tractors, and boy showing off doing a mono in front of us on his motorbike (not that I’m encouraging that). We couldn’t stop for photos (too hard to pull over with caravan) but I did my best out the windscreen. When we come back south I would love to see the sugar cane fields at sunrise and sunset. I would love to meet the farmers and take photos of them farming.

We arrived at Airlie Beach, set up then headed over to the tavern over the road to watch the AFL final and Brisbane sadly beat Geelong.