25th July 2025: had a slow start to the day but in the afternoon Mark drove us all to Guyatt Park and then we caught a City Cat to Riverside Terminal. Each ride only costs 50 cents. We walked via the Botanic Gardens along a walk path beside the river, with mangroves on one side and then on to redeveloped land underneath the roads inappropriately running beside the river, and now converted to pleasant useable sites. We reached Star casino and went up to the Dkydeck for a drink after circumnavigating the deck to look at the wonderful view of Brisbane below.
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24th July 2026: Packed up camp and headed for the M1, where2 lanes in each direction made it an easier drive than further north. Stopped for a coffee to left of highway at “Wild Horses cafe” -had a wonderful coffee brewed on site and a delicious huge oat cake cooked on site! We made our way to Greenacres caravan park to the south of Brisbane. We unhitched the caravan and filled up our tanks with water. We arrived at Helen and Mark’s in Taringa mid afternoon. They made us very welcome. We chatted on their delightful deck and Helen had then had to go to work. Mark cooked us a delicious seafood chowder which we ate on Helen’s return, with much after dinner discussion.
July 23rd 2024: Awoke to blue skies, if not warmth! Pip and Rosie arrived early to join us for out Everglades tour. We had biscuits and cheese with a cuppa for Nic and me, at the van sitting outside on our elective selection of chairs, too low for our guests to easily get up from unfortunately! After a lot of waiting around we finally left on our cruise at 2 pm. We motored to where the Noosa River enters Lake Coolaba at the Kinaba Visitors Information Centre where we walked to on Tuesday. It was interesting to see it from the Lake and to see how far we in fact walked! We glided slowly into the Noosa river, admiring cypruses, paperbark melaleuca, cabbage palms and lots of banksias, all superbly reflected in the tea-tree stained water. A highlight was spotting an azure kingfisher on a branch just above water level. Waterlilies were on the stiller reaches of the river. We were offered Prosecco, locally brewed beer, orange juice and water After about an hour an...
22rd July 2026: Cold this morning but not quite so wet! I washed our sheets and towels and got them on the line, with bed made up with our second set of sheets! We then set off for Rainbow Beach- quite a trek really as we had to go a fair way inland down a very hilly windy road to get there! We had a coffee and toastie at Little Parliament, Rainbow Beach, and strolled along the shop fronts, noting grass things, Rainbow Beach style. The actual beach was deserted including between the flags. The sand was yellow and black rather than the anticipated rainbow sands! We then set off for Tin Can Bay, which we reached far too late in the day for any dolphin feeding! People were fishing and boating in the brisk air! We decided to go home via Gympie and Google gave us a tortuous route to the centre of town. Finally we reached Mary Street where the majority of the gold-rush buildings of the 1890’s remain intact. We got home, had a lovely What’s app talk with Ros & Paul in Lon...
21st July 2026:Still raining intermittently but we decided to walk to the Kinaba Visitor Information Centre- a 12 km return walk. It was a lovely walk initially through blue gums and cabbage palms which quite abruptly gave way to melaleucas-paperbarks. I heard birds overhead loudly calling- some definitely sounding like a whip! ? A whip bird? They remained elusive except for a red browed finch and a rufous fantail. We finally reached the Visitor information centre on the shore of Lake Cootharaba near the entrance of the Noosa River, a mangrove swamp with tea tre stained dark brown water. There were some interesting posters displayed - see one of the time line of sand dune progression. The visitors centre was full of Students from St Paul’s school in Hong Kong who had just kayaked there from Elanda point where we started from. We did a side boardwalk over the mangroves to see many waterlines, and another walk to the shore of the Lake. We then returned home with an extra...