Dear Family and Friends

Hope everyone is well. Just a brief update so that you know we are well.

We continue to relax here at Inskip point and enjoy the final days as we have decided that even though it is as lovely as it is we will move on after 1st Sept.

We have spent a lot of time socialising and have met some very nice people. We seem to do our own thing in the morning and mid afternoon come together for a coffee and chat. We seem to spend this time moving around to each van. Yesterday we had afternoon tea here at our van. (see picture). With us are Gary and Pat, Mike and Kath, Bob and Jan, Arnold and Cathy have already gone. We spend a lot of time laughing. Today we had afternoon tea over at Kath and Mike's van. Mike had done scones in their cast iron oven and they were delicious. Tonight we are all having tea with Kath and Mike as well. He is doing a chicken stew in the camp oven and as everyone is leaving at various days in the week ahead, we have made it as our last night together.

We have needed to get more water every other day and on our way home a couple of days ago we decided to check out what was further down the road. What we found was even more camping sites. It 's as busy as can be here now and this weekend seems to be even busier than last weekend. So we travelled down the road and as we did we realised that this was the road that leads to where you get on the barge to cross onto Fraser Island. The road became sand all too quickly and we realised that we were about to become bogged. Thankfully we were already driving in the tracks of other vehicles so Ken kept going forward hoping to eventually gain traction, and he did, until he tried to turn to early and too quickly. People are good, before we knew it we had someone beside us to help. After digging a bit of sand out from around the tyres and letting them down a bit the strap was connected and in no time Ken was pulled out and on solid ground. Next time we will be sure to let the tyres down before we actually get on the sand.

I have no idea where the two lots of people came from to help us Because we thought that the only ones about at the time were us and the chaps on the barges. I'm sure they have seen this many times before and were probably laughing themselves silly. I didn't look at them even once

to give them the satisfaction of seeing them laugh.

Next Morning......... We had a really lovely evening last night. We each took our own chairs, drinks, bowls and cutlery and we sat at the back of Mike and Kath's van overlooking the rising tide less than 30 long strides to the waters edge. It was a balmy night, perhaps one of the best nights that we have had since we arrived. we sat under palm trees and if you looked up it was as though you were looking up on lots of little flashing lights like you get when you decorate a tree for Christmas. We saw another really beautiful sunset with colours varying from pinks to purples.yellows through to reds and blues of every hue. We saw yet again dolphins frolicking in the water, a possum that ran right through our campsite and up the nearest tree and lastly the tail end of the fisher men as they made it home from the days fishing.

This morning we have run out of gas and this means we will have to do a run into town. The one bottle has lasted only two weeks and so we've switched over to our little spare but we aren't certain how much is in it.

The day is lovely, and temperatures have been between 23 and 28. I've been doing a walk along the beach each day and I can see the freckles coming out on my arms, and that only happens in the middle to late summer at home.

Time for me to go, ken has made me a cuppa and so I shall join him outside in our own little paradise

with love to all

Ken and Lyn

Dear Family and Friends. Today the temperature has reached 24 degrees and I hope that makes you feel jealous. Life can be hard and as I have heard Ken say someone has to do it. All jokes aside this is a really lovely place and you can see in the pictures just how close we are to the water.





Thursday, we drove up to Maryborough to have a look around and do some shopping and voted. Friday, we drove south again to Gympie as Ken was getting air bags fitted to the car to lift the back end a bit to improve towing. Tomorrow, we are going into Rainbow Beach to see the sands as we have been told that they are very colourful and thus the name Rainbow Beach.



We had a good weekend and spent the couple of days looking out at the activity both on and off the water. The barges went across to the Island non stop and there has been a continual stream of cars on the beach opposite on the island as the 4 X 4 's line up to come back. We have also watched dolphins out in the water playing around as they swim along.



We have had great neighbours. On one side of is Joe and Lyn, they have a motor home and Joe has this little step through bike which he takes into town when he needs water or supplies. Near us are our friends from Orange, Mike and Kath, near them are friends of theirs Bob and Jan, who are really nice. We spent some time with them this morning chatting about travelling experiences, the good , the bad and the funny. Our other close neighbour is Bob whose wife Pat just arrived late this afternoon so we had a quick introduction and no doubt we will see her more tomorrow.



We've had our fire going each night, as do most people and we have sat outside watching the sunset. You are not allowed to use wood off the beach or from inside the camping area so you either have to buy it or go somewhere else to get it.



Today has been washing day and we decided to use the washing machine to see just how much the machine uses per load. It used exactly 40 litres and as we had a spare 40 litres in the car still we were able to put it straight into the tanks, knowing that tomorrow we will be able to refill the containers and have them as spare again.



We have used the Gennie each day around tea time for meal preparation and when ever we needed to top the batteriesup. It's still going at the moment and it's time we turned it off so

thats it for now.

Love Lyn & Ken

Sunset at Inskip Point just half way between Gympie and Maryborough. The colours and the effect are hard to describe.

Six Mile Creek Rest Area

Dear Family and Friends

A few days ago we had a phone call from some friends of ours wondering where we were. They are also in QLD at Inskip Point which for those who don't know Inskip Point is near Rainbow Beach which is where you get the barge across to Fraser Island. We decided to change course and join them for a while.

It has taken us three days to get here as we stopped at a free camp called Six Mile Creek rest area. There were three rest areas fairly close to one another and each one was packed. Six Mile Creek was pretty full when we arrived late in the morning so we considered ourselves lucky to have found a spot. I lost count of the number of vans that came in and left because there was no room left.

We decided to stay put over the weekend so we set up and made ourselves comfortable. I drove into town to do some shopping and Ken went into town a couple of times but other than that we had a good three night stopover. We met some people who have been on the road since 2004 and they are still happy travelling.

This morning we packed up, filled up with water and travelled the 70 -80 klm to Tin Can Bay where we have decided to stay the night. We are in a caravan park tonight so we can catch up with washing and tomorrow we will go on the next 50 odd klm to get to Inskip Point.

We have had to purchase a permit to camp there and a ranger comes around each day to check that you have a current permit. The charge is just $10 a night. Where we will camp is less than 30 metres to the ocean. So as you can imagine it should be lovely. We have had rain since late yesterday but it is predicted to clear up by later tomorrow.

I probably won't blog again till we leave there as reception isn't the best.

That's it from us for now.

With love to all

Ken and Lyn

Dear Family and Friends

Our second night was spent at Narrabri and we left their mid morning travelling on to a place called Millmeran Weir for another overnight stop which lengthened to two nights and would've been longer except water was low. On our first night at the Weir there was about eight of us at all. The others all belonged to a club and they were doing a trip around Queensland.

After a slow start to the day we headed to Toowoomba where we needed to fill up with water.

NSW roads have been atrocious. Qld have been marginally better. Hope they improve as we get further into OLD.

The weather has begun to warm up already and we are going sleeveless during the day. As we were travelling through Toowoomba, Ken in shorts and T shirt, me with my cardigan off , we stopped at traffic lights and standing at a corner were two women rugged up in winter coats, scarves and gloves. They were obviously locals. Later I was standing outside the information center and overheard someone on the phone saying it was bitterely cold. I had to smile, its all a matter of perspective and what you are used too. When we went inside to find out where we could fill up from, the volunteer said "you must be from down south" He also said it's not hard to pick us by the clothes we wear.

There have been lots and lots of caravans on the road each day, perhaps as many as 50 or 60. A few people at our stops have said they are on their way home. Evidently there will be quite an exodus of people leaving here soon as people begin to head home.

Toowoomba is situated well above sea level and so when you leave Toowooba and are heading north there is a very steep decine (very much like Lithgow in NSW, or Braidwood in Victoria) and by the time we got to the base and were back on level ground it was quite late and we hadn't as yet had lunch. So once we decided to pull in to the next layby for lunch. It happened to be a night camping spot so we decided to stay. There were five others staying the night so it was very pleasant.

We ran into some people that were at our Millmerrin stop. They were planning to have a fire later and said we were welcome to join them for happy hour, which we did. A roaring fire, a few drinks, Ken on Pepsi, me with lemonade everyone else on wine or beer, everyone was soon laughing and enjoying ourselves. It got too cold for me and by 6.30 I said goodbye, knowing that if I didn't go I would be too stiff and sore. By the time Ken came back I had tea ready. A good sleep and we we were off again by 9.30.

We got hopelessly lost trying to find a place called Laidly, a small RV friendly town which had a dump point we needed to use. Tom was most unreliable and thus had to take the scenic route which was quite nice. Eventually we got there, no thanks to Tom, so having found the dump point we decided to take a walk up one side of the main street and down the other.

After Laidly we put our trust back in Tom and set off this time to find a little town called Marburg . We are at the Showground park and will be staying here for at least two nights. This afternoon there were people practising for for the trots which are on over the weekend. They were lovely to watch. The horses looked so regal and pranced as they passed by.

Our neighbours tonight are Charlie and Fay who gave us all sorts of information about where was good and where wasn't so good to stay. They were a lovely couple and we had a very enjoyable afternoon with them.

Almost time for me to hit the sack.

So for now goodbye and love to all.

Ken and Lyn