Winter 2018, Midge Point, Qld

• This is a quiet, peaceful and friendly little park so good that we decide to extend from the intended 3 nights to 7 nights. We spend a day washing and cleaning. What is it about nice places that make you start cleaning the van? Perhaps it’s some ‘nesting’ hormone that kicks in.
• I pace out a kilometre walk along the beach which is home to a million or more sand bubbler crabs a few thousand soldier crabs and a hell of a lot of coconuts. There is evidence of Cyclone Debbie that battered the Airlie Beach coast in 2017 and uprooted trees line the shore.

• A kookaburra strolls in and quickly gobbles up a big yellow mushroom growing in the garden, they must taste good.

• After lunch the skies clear and small wallabies graze on the lawns. I decide to take the ukulele down to the beach to play without disturbing other campers. I find heaven, then hell when I try to get off the fallen log that I was sitting on. Getting old is a bitch.

• I watch the fishermen retrieving their boats by tractor. The beach is so shallow that they come in close, a bloke jumps overboard, wades to shore, walks the half kilometre up to the high tide mark where the tractor is parked, starts up the old tractor and drives it across the beach, then reverses it into the sea as far as possible. They then float the boat onto the trailer and drag everyone home across the beach. We can only hope that they caught plenty of mackerel.

• Tonight, being Saturday is burger night. We decide to eat in and cook our prized Bacon Chops from Ingham in a ‘Google Sauce’, Dijon mustard, onion, marmalade and chicken stock, which sounds odd but is rather nice. Not only does Mrs. Google do a pretty good job of directing us around the countryside but she has good recipes too. Our caravan park has strict instructions about noise and preserving the tranquillity of this beautiful place, fair enough. No car radios, TV kept to a minimum level etc. yet as I am walking back along the beach, 500 metres from the park (remember the tide here goes out a long way) an unholy racket breaks out. Who would have expected that the park manager would be an Elvis impersonator and on Saturday nights he breaks loose and doesn’t give up until 9:00pm. I’m caught in a trap, yep we’re a captive audience.