Wanderung 20

Australian Walkabout

May - June 2009

Friday, June 12th, Driving from Brisbane to Hervey Harbour.

Bob:

After breakfast and packing, I composed an email about our walk in Brisbane while Monika picked appropriate pictures and condensed them so that they were small enough to email. We were picked up by a polite Europcar representative right after we checked out at 10:00 a.m., and he drove us down Turbot Street to their office about six blocks away. We signed the paperwork and then I drove off carefully hewing to the left side of the road. Monika guided us over to the M1 motorway (expressway) which we took North until it joined A1, also known as the Bruce Highway, that runs from Brisbane to Cairns on the northern tip of Queensland.

The Bruce Highway, like most major intercity roads in Australia, is a paved two-lane highway with frequent passing lanes. Australian drivers seemed to be rather better than Americans about observing the speed limits although some folks drove 9 or 10 kph (about 6 mph) over the posted limit. Speed cameras are frequent, usually in posted areas, but they are supplemented by unmarked radar guns in police cars or vans parked by the side of the road. A bus driver said that there was no standard "leniency" for speed enforcement, so I just relaxed and drove the posted limit and stayed to the left in the passing areas so that faster traffic could pass me easily. Staying to the left is enforced in Australia, apparently, by both a sizable fine and demerit points on the driver's license. I observed that there was none of the "dawdling along in the high-speed lane" that is so common (and frustrating!) in America; all the Australian drivers pulled over to the outside lane quite religiously when we hit those passing zones. Fortunately the passing zones were spaced rather frequently and always marked by signs that informed us about how many kilometers it would be to the next such passing zone. Knowing how far it is to the next passing zone helps keep down the level of frustration when one is caught behind a slow-moving vehicle on a two-lane highway, I think.

Monika:

We were picked up by Europcar around 10 which gave me plenty of time to re-pack, warm weather clothes on top and cold weather clothes at the bottom. Our car was a little Kia, with automatic shifting. We got our directions to get on the motorway north and off we went. Bob got used to driving on the left quickly and luckily there were no roundabouts on this stretch. It was all four lane highway with traffic lights. The entrance to the motorway was also clearly marked and so we did get out of Brisbane with little trouble.

After about 100 KM of motorway the Bruce Highway turned into a typical Australian "major" two lane road, which means usually but not always there is a shoulder and ever so often there is an "overtaking" lane. The landscape was rolling hills and reminded us of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. But the land was much more sparsely settled than in Virginia and seemed to be used mainly used for cattle grazing.

Bob:

In the strictly two-lane portions of the highway, passing zones were also marked with the usual dashed line rather than a solid line on our side of the road. Once or twice I had to resort to the old fashioned method of speeding up and using those passing zones, but I much preferred waiting for the multi-lane passing zones as I was driving a Kia Rio that I nicknamed the "Gutless Wonder".

The Rio was a solidly-built but painfully slow subcompact car driven by a 1.6 liter engine operating through a constantly variable transmission. Passing was not that car's strong point, to put it mildly. In fact, I was hard pressed to even get up hills without dropping down well below the speed limit. The engine would rev up and buzz like crazy, but somehow all that effort just disappeared in the amazingly slushy transmission and we slowed down to 90 or even 80 kph despite my best efforts to keep up the pace.

One time in desperation I tried pushing the accelerator all the way to the floor, a tactic that in most cars equipped with an automatic transmission will elicit a downshift and strong acceleration. But in the Rio my attempt elicited only a loud "Bang!" from the transmission coupled with wild rpms and a buzzing like a swarm of bees from the engine compartment, but still no acceleration! Not wanting to hurt the car, of course, I philosophically accepted its design limits but made a mental note never to purchase one as it really wasn't powerful enough to cope with hilly two-lane highways. Fortunately we only had to drive a few hours on the Bruce Highway that day up to Hervey Harbor (pronounced "Harvey Harbor"). There we signed in to the Windmill Caravan campground about a block from the beach that had nice cabins to rent for overnight stays.

Monika:

After a couple of hours of driving we stopped at a truck stop and had lunch. Since there also was an attendant at a travel information booth, we started talking to her. Frommers had recommended Fraser Island, an ancient island made up entirely of sand but with a tropical rainforest and fresh water lakes in the middle of the island, and that sounded interesting. Day tours started at a ferry dock near Hervey Beach, but the tour guide would even pick us up from our motel. We booked the tour and also a cabin for two nights at the Windmill Caravan Park near Hervey Beach.

Bob:

We went for a nice walk on the beach just as the sun was going down. The beach ran East-West at that point and the sun was setting right along the beach. The tide was ebbing and the wet, rippled sands reflected the orange light of the setting sun in a scintillating fashion. Very pretty.

After our walk we drove the Gutless Wonder slowly and carefully (slowly, because that was the only way it moved, and carefully, because I was driving on the left side of the road!) over to a local bakery to pick up some rolls to supplement our dinner. Our cabin had a full kitchenette and all the assorted pots, pans, and dishes, so fixing our own meals was a cinch for once.

Monika:

So now we were all set for the night and the next day. The cabin turned out to be well appointed with a little kitchenette and a living room, a queen sized bed but also two bunk beds. So it would also be well suited for a family. After resting a while, we decided to take a walk on the beach. It was getting on towards sundown and we got some lovely pictures of the large fishing pier, the beach, and Fraser Island. And then there were of course sunset pictures to be taken. What great fun.

We kept walking to the tip of the peninsula and then turned inland again. At the beginning of our street was a shopping center with a Woolworth. We thought of walking there, shopping and walking back to the caravan park. But we were a little farther from our abode than I had thought and were getting tired, so we walked directly to our cabin and retrieved the car to got shopping.

After dinner we just flopped into bed.

Copyright 2009 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Prolog Map of Australian Walkabout Epilog

May 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31
June 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30

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