Day 41: Sun 5 Jun - Yeppoon to Sarina

Day 41: Sun 5 Jun - Yeppoon to Sarina

Towed 340km

18 – 26°. A cloudy day, a bit humid but with daytime temp of 26deg, who can complain - a great day for driving. A morning walk to the beach and back to the van started the day, before packing to leave Yeppoon for the next leg of our trip north. An early call to Rockhampton hospital confirmed that Uncle had no concerning injuries, and subject to a physiotherapist review, would return to his Aged Care home in Yeppoon today - a massive relief. I received a call at about 3:00pm confirming he was back home again. We packed up and hit the road relatively early just after 8:00am. There were a few new sections of the Bruce Highway, and a lot of repairs since last year, but still a very rough road in patches. Thankfully there was very little traffic today though.We had three main stops along the way to Sarina, each place i had driven past previously without stopping. Marlborough was our first stop for morning tea and included a walk around the small township and a visit to the Marlborough Historical Museum. There were some lovely exhibits but the Chrysoprase display stood out. I was unaware the largest Chrysoprase mine in the world is located near Marlborough. With a population of only 150 people, there is not much else to see though, so on we continued. Next stop was St Lawrence - with a slightly higher population of about 235 people, but less to see, so we continued for another 40 km along the highway to the rustic seaside community of Clairview for lunch. Here, we marked the local Barracrab Caravan Park as a potential future stopover. It looks like a nice place to stop for a quiet break, but i expect the mosquitoes and sandflies might be a bit friendly. After about an hour, we continued the remaining 90km drive to our final stop for the day - the Sarina Palms Caravan Park, a very nice and well maintained park in Sarina. It's a large park, and very well laid out with a lot of palms in between the the sites affording more privacy than found in other caravan parks. Our site has a concrete slab in a very large section which we are sharing with a small campervan. We are pleasantly surprised. After setting up, we went for a short walk into town to stretch the legs and buy a few supplies for dinner, returning for sundowners at the Walker's. I made a short call to Uncle, and as expected he sounded very tired but relieved to be back home. I think he might still be in a bit of shock from his fall, but expect he will bounce back as he always does.