We were joined by another three lots of people at  St Lawrence on Tuesday night  but didn’t get the chance to talk to them.

Wednesday morning we were packed up and on the road just after nine.  Our first stop was Mackay where we wanted to get another USB hub and also a replacement shower hose so we navigated our way round to find first Supercheap then Bunnings with a stop for fuel in the middle.  We stopped at a rest stop a bit out of Mackay and rustled up some sandwiches for lunch.  We’d been watching the weather up north and got chatting to some people from Innisfail heading south who said it had been very wet.  Sharon also messaged to say that Townsville was copping it too. However we had it dry right through to Proserpine then out to Lake Proserpine – Peter Faust Dam which is abut 30km inland.  

This is a totally free camp maintained by the council and I think may be relatively new – the toilets and showers are certainly very new.  There’s of course no power and only non potable water, but we still had a tankful from St Lawrence which we’d hardly touched.   We got ourselves a beautiful spot right down by the lakes edge.  Only one drawback to that – its  a long hike back to the toilets.  I counted this morning on my Fitbit – 1000 steps there and back! 

We were set up quick smart and enjoying our set up beer by 4pm.  We enjoyed one of my stash of curries from the freezer for dinner, a glass or two of wine and were probably in bed  reading by about 8.30pm.  Big days. But the sky at sunset was spectacular  and though I’ve included a few pics they don’t do it justice.

This morning  - I did my morning toilet walk around 6am and the sky was a bright crimson red in one direction with a complete rainbow in the other and the rain was just starting to sprinkle.

We’d breakfast and drove into Proserpine as I needed a few groceries.  We carried on into Airlie Beach and had a walk around then lunch at The Pub at the Airlie Beach Hotel – so glad we decided to share a pizza.  It was absolutely delicious.  Im not a big pizza fan but this was one of the best I’ve ever had.  We’d a drive out to Shute Harbour and then headed back to camp.  By this time it was raining pretty steadily and now I’m sitting out under the awning and its still raining pretty heavily.  I can foresee another early night.  We’ve no signal here so internet surfing is off the menu.  But I’ve plenty of downloaded books in the Kindle app on my tablet so thatll keep me entertained.

So for the rest of yesterday it rained pretty steadily but we were nice and dry under our awning and had a couple of plastic buckets which we positioned under the run off on the awning and captured 10 litres of water - bargain.

Since we'd had such a whopping big lunch - and then then the ice-cream from the NZ Ice-cream shop - didn't I mention them - we just had a few nibbles with our wines and that did us.  Another fairly early night and still wet and quite cool but we were snug as bugs in our little house.

This morning it was still wet when we got up but we're now in Prospering at the bakery enjoying a coffee and its dry at the moment though the forecast is for plenty more rain (I've left the buckets out again!)  We think we'll take a drive to Bowen today.  Tomorrow we'll be packing up and heading to Sharon's in Townsville - can't wait for that catch up.  Its been a long while between drinks!

Some of you may have got a strange email from me regarding email issues with a link which didn't work - that was my anal housekeeping.  What's been happening is that although I have 85 people on my distribution/subscription group - the system is only sending out between 50 and 60 emails.  Some of that could be because people don't have that email anymore or have unsubscribed.  But I know of at least two people whose email is correct but they're not receiving updates.  I'm going to try and recreate my TravelArk distribution list in Gmail so that I send the emails from Gmail rather than TravelArk sending them.  Wish me luck.