We had a fairly long journey to make and were beetling along when we passed a sign which was advertising a petrol station in Marlborough, about 90 something kilometres away . I looked at the fuel gauge and saw that we still had less than a quarter of a tank and said to Jen, ‘Surely that doesn’t mean that there’s no petrol until then?’ Famous last words; as the kilometres went by and the fuel gauge needle crept closer to ‘E’ we realised that we should have taken it as a warning (it would have helped if it had said something like ‘WARNING, TURN ROUND AND FILL UP BECAUSE THERE’S NO PETROL AVAILABLE FOR NEARLY 100 KM!!!!’ but perhaps that’s asking too much.

Anyway, the fuel warning light had come on and we were expecting this to give us 30 or so km and signs started to appear saying fuel in 15km. The kilometres counted down and I was carefully conserving fuel by reducing speed and driving very smoothly. We finally came to the petrol station but were dismayed to find it chained up with a sign saying closed due to ill health! We had to continue, by this time travelling very sedately, and I noticed a similar campervan behind us who was not taking any opportunities to overtake me . More signs appeared at last for another petrol station and eventually it came into view. We gratefully turned into its forecourt, closely followed by the other campervan. I shared a few comments with the other driver who had also been in exactly the same position as us, both of us very relieved to finally get some fuel!

We broke our journey at Yeppoon, which is a seaside place with huge amounts of development taking place and lots of property for sale. We took a walk along the newly developed seafront but I’m afraid that the place mostly reminded us of Bridlington and did not really match up to the glossy pictures that accompanied all the property adverts. It’s not that the place was scruffy, dirty or anything like that; nowhere in Australia seems to be ever anything other than crisp and clean. It’s just that it seemed a bit gauche and perhaps trying a bit too hard to be what it doesn’t appear to be.

We stopped off at the visitors’ information centre and got rather long-winded answers to simple questions but got away by ‘noticing’ that the building had a shell museum attached to it and going in . However, we went from the frying pan to the fire so to speak as we were immediately assailed by one of the most tedious people we have ever met. Rather than allowing us to just look at the hordes of stuff in display, this woman followed us around talking constantly about specific exhibits. ‘This is something your wife will be particularly interested in’ she said, pointing out a large phallic shaped object. She went on to explain that the tiny creatures that build the structure are effectively trapped by their own construction, although their young are small enough to escape through the latticework. We’re still not sure why this should appeal significantly to Jen (or women in general) as it seems to show a couple forced to stay together and keep having sex while the offspring clear off and pay no attention to their aging parents.

In case you think we were unlucky to meet two such boring people, we also met another member of the shell collectors club who tried to suggest that collecting shells by taking large quantities of living shellfish from the sea is justifiable because cyclones actually do much more damage! The woman explained that these days no-one makes shell ornaments, such as the lovely wedding group in our photo, because they don’t have time . I wonder whether it may be that actually they are incredibly tacky and tasteless? Both the shell collectors bemoaned the fact that the local young people are not interested in joining their club, I wonder why?

Our campsite for the night was Coolwaters Holiday Village at Kinka Beach, set on the road but beside a huge lagoon and opposite the beach and mangrove areas. The site featured background music in the toilets which kept playing right through the night. It was cold that night (start of the colder nights as we head back south?) and both of us woke up and went to the loo around five o‘clock in the morning. The music at that hour was country and western, the usual heartbreak ‘she left me for another’ type of thing, whilst several kookaburras laughed raucously in the trees around us. It’s a strange world…..