Okeefe Blog Version 2

Hello Bloggers

As an interim measure I have created another blog version with the name okeefesandco2, in case the original can be recovered, we can revert to it. The login and pasword are the same as for the previous blog.

Since we last reported we have travelled from Mission Beach to Kinka Beach, near Yepoon on the coast from Rockhampton. We spent some time in Townsville (with high speed broadband woo hoo). Then onto Alva Beach near Ayr, where we caught up with SOK again on his way to Cairns. SOK is well and looking forward to new adventures in a new town, with more to offer than he has had in the last 14 months at Airlie. I am sure we will see a blog from him soon.

After a week at Alva we went to Bowen, 4 nights and Midge point, 2 nights. We arrived here yesterday after spending a night in a freebee at Clairview on the way.

We have had a lot of wind over the last 2 weeks which keeps the sand flies away, but it has stopped now so they are back and so are the bites. It is the only negative I have about Queensland beaches.

We were almost flooded out at Mission Beach after 2 days and nights of non stop rain, with over 100 mm on us and 190mm at Kennedy/Ingham nearby. The Bruce Hwy was cut by landsides and flooding for a couple of days. But we were able to see the Tully Gumboot Festival as it is meant to be, in the rain. We also went to the Ayr "Water Festival" which did not rain but it is good seeing the locals enjoy themselves with street parades, competitions, beauty pageants, carnival rides etc. We also visited Wallaman Falls at 287 meters the highest single drop falls in Australia, they were spectacular after the rain, and we were lucky to see them so clearly as they are often enveloped in FNQ cloud. We went to a little town called Paluma in the hills west of the Bruce Hwy between Ingham and Townsville. At 860 meters above sea level it is like a miniature Katoomba in a tropical rainforest and popular in the summer for Townsville people to cool off. Attached photos of the falls and the flooded road near Ingham that took us one and a half hours to travel 6klm due to the use of one lane only for a flooded section of road.

I hear it is in the 30s in Sydney today which seems odd in that we have a range of about 15 to 24 here at the moment, and I saw London was not much lower than us.

that's all to report for now, Please email the new blog address to those who need it that I have missed, but hopefully someone may be able to find the old one in cyberspace, we cannot have lost all that wisdom and entertainment in Robert's reports.

Love, Sue Chris & Olly