Seventeen-Seventy or 1770?  For reasons undiscovered, it’s lettered out in some official signs and numbered out in others – locals told us it should be in letters and then those same locals put up signs in numbers?  In any event, we discovered that this area is also called Round Hill Head.  Mardi’s sister Lesly’s family (keep up) had a shack here many years ago when it must have been one of a very small handful, but the only thing I can remember about it was the opinion that it was “much too far away”.  Mum told me that she and Dad flew over once in their light plane and saw Steve and Les fishing.  She said she waved but received no response from the beach – seemed surprised, maybe even affronted!  Nonetheless, the outlook from the Head is beautiful.

They have a great camping ground right on the beach and we secured a spot just one vehicle back from the front and most of the time had a view through to the water.  Whilst the campground was chock-a-block with campers of all sorts, there was a sandy, grassy verge where a few clever people, including us, plonked their chairs down and watched the world go by – being inside the point, it faced west so the sun set confusingly in the water.

This tiny town gets its name from a visit by the then Lt Cook and, incredibly, it’s claimed that this was only his second landfall on the voyage-of-discovery up the east coast.  Even then, it was mostly because he needed safe harbour for repairs.  How is it possible that he didn’t stop even once between Botany Bay and here?  In a persistent theme, relations with the locals were fraught.  There’s a pile of rocks in his memory up on the point, looking out over a spectacular, sheltered place to stop.

We took a long and hot and boring walk into Agnes Waters where there was lots of resort style accommodation but we felt glad that we’d found 1770.  We did get an ice cream though!

A few days here was all we could get, and we were heading for Yeppoon where there are heaps of caravan parks, some near the beach.  A few phone calls revealed that they were all full, of course.  “You shoulda booked months ago” was another persistent theme.  But, cheerfully, stopping only for a roadside hot cinnamon donut, we found a perfectly acceptable farm-stay HipCamp about 10km out of town and settled down there, amongst assorted chooks, alpacas, pigs and one very friendly white horse.

Yeppon was famous, when we were much younger, for the development of the Capricorn Resort by Japanese businessman Yohachiro Iwasake.  Joh Bjelke-Petersen (you’re wrong son, he’s good for Queensland, my father used to say) had met with Iwasake, said, “How much land do you want?” and had virtually given it away.  In my memory, this was a sign that the inscrutable and devious Japanese were going to take over the entire nation – that wasn’t correct either.  In any event, when Iwasake died, his son had zero interest in the resort or in Australia in general.  It’s in full-tilt decay now and the only thing left that’s any good is one of the golf courses.  We didn’t even visit.  However, Yeppoon itself is now a thriving beachside town with a remarkable lagoon cum swimming pool development on the foreshore and and is currently building a fancy, new, government-funded Keppel Bay Sailing Club – possibly a sports-rort?

Also good fun was coffee and cake with Linda Francis’s dad, John Boreham, at Rockhampton’s Art Gallery.  Great company and a long term Rocky resident, he regaled us with stories of the sorry Iwasakes, crocodile escapes during floods and pointed us towards the war memorial at Emu Park, 20km south of Yeppoon.  Pausing only to look at Tim Storrier’s terrific “The Voyager” sculpture on the footpath, we dutifully drove there and the memorial is indeed wonderful – beautifully sited and executed.  We liked tiny Emu Park so much that we’ll probably stop there on our way back south in a month or so.  Hmmm – better book, eh?

One of the never-ending challenges of caravanning, especially when you’re off-grid, is water supply.  We carry 240l in our tanks which is plenty for a judicious-use week but we still have to fill those tanks from time to time and there are less places to fill with “good” water than one might expect.  All of which found us at a communal tap on Rocky’s outskirts, filling up.  I met a charming couple from Victoria who were doing the same and as we chatted they told me they’d just had five days in paradise – their annual favourite camp at BarraCrab caravan park at Clairview.  This was wonderful news because that was our next stop!  He then delivered the leveller.  “Powered or unpowered”, he asked and when I told him powered, he simply said, “Mistake!”.

And so it proved to be but the weather had turned awful and power seemed like a good choice when we eventually set up at BarraCrab.  Packed in like sardines in a flooded campsite with decrepit facilities, conditions were described by a fellow traveller as, “like a Rawandan refugee camp”, which was a bit harsh on the refugee camp.    

The bad weather (and our mistake with it) was mercifully short-lived and we moved speedily to the unpowered area, finally setting up on the actual beachfront, overlooking the water on a very generous, grassy space.  Campfires every night, excellent neighbours, walks out on the rocks and glorious weather made us feel that this really might be paradise.  We stayed for a week and did very little of anything.

Continuing to head north, we paused in Sarina – more good water but only available to those who have a magic tap (we do).  I was keen to visit the Sugar Shack (OK, it’s actually called the Sugar Shed, but it shouldn’t be) to have coffee and, more importantly, learn all about the sugar industry and the endless fields of cane that we were continually driving through. Saner heads prevailed so we passed it up in favour of getting to our next spot, Smalleys Beach in Cape Hillsborough NP just north of Mackay.

Another delightful beach front site which came with its own problems – some self-inflicted.  We planned four nights here but, due to stuff being booked out, had to move sites for one of those nights.  Hoping to convince whoever turned up on that particular day to swap sites to avoid that move, we carefully set up only to discover that we’d set up in the wrong one anyway.  One more unnecessary move later, we had a beautiful shaded area which we cheerfully shared with kookaburras and (less cheerfully) goannas.

Total shade did, however, become a problem for power (no gennies in National Parks, quite rightly).  Consequently, having seen the lovely, and “generators allowed” Seaforth campground, we decamped a day early and thus avoided any kerfuffle with incoming campers.  There appears to be no way to cancel a campsite with Queensland National Parks – as a result, their website often says a campsite is booked but no-one turns up.  Who cares about a refund – it’d just be nice for others to be able to camp in my unoccupied space.  A friendly ranger didn’t have the answers either but did tell us that he was supervising controlled burns in the not-very-close area.

The next day, when we were at Seaforth, we looked back to approximately where we’d just been camped and got a glimpse of what could possibly go wrong!