Day 51 2/9/2019, Maryborough, Qld to Chinderah, NSW, 28 degrees

It’s a bright sunny morning with only a few tweety birds to wake us. We had hoped to catch up with our mate the One Fish Wonder and his missus but they’ve gone fishing. One Fish Wonder? You may ask. Well, he thought he’d catch more fish if he bought a boat. A nice shiny new boat but thus far it’s attracted only one fish. At the rate of one fish per winter and judging by the size of the boat it’s going to be a long time before he reaches break-even point.

 We worry about the people who may not pay for their stay at showgrounds like this one. There are two options to pay, online or at the office when it is open. The lady at the office tells Woody not to worry. That they actually have a chap who records all of the registration plates in the middle of the night and with access to registration details if the cheeky buggers don’t pay they will be caught or is that court.

 We set off at 9:00 heading for Cooroy but quickly revise our plans when we realise that we’d be there at 10:30. After Gympie it’s good freeway all the way south now so we bite the bullet and aim for the border. Sorry Queensland we love you but we’re off.

Still in search of pineapple jam and in need of a break we exit at Nambour and visit the Big Pineapple. Oh, dear! It’s been closed for years, probably since the freeway bypassed it, and is currently under refurbishment. We do manage to get a couple of jars of jam from the small kiosk that is operational and snatch a few memories. We once slept in this car park decades ago but that’s a story for another day.

We roll on down the freeway towards Brisbane, grab a coffee and KFC at one of those dreaded highway servo’s and climb the Gateway Bridge as we count down the kilometres, suddenly the engine temperature starts to rise. We pull off the motorway and check the car. All is well so we hit the road again, this time counting down the exit numbers until we cross the border. Exhausted, we pull into Ingenia Kingscliff at Chinderah. That was a big drive for us. The traffic noise from the nearby highway is loud and so too is the aircraft noise from the flight path above as planes approach Coolangatta airport. Each time a plane goes over the TV does a bit of a jitterbug. Ah, the joy of being back in the city but we’re only here ‘cos we’re buggered. Unlike our neighbor who greets us with “Welcome to paradise!” We think he is serious and wonder where he is from.

“Slow down you move too fast” says Toothless on the phone. We’re getting too far ahead of them.

Summary 366kms, power, water, toilets, showers, accom $36, planes!