Step 106 Townsville – Bowen

Monday 15th August

Before hitting the highway we stopped off at Woolies for a bit of a shop and ended up chatting to a couple in the car park who had their own MM. Completely different layout inside though, which has given me some ideas for MM Mark II. In fact we ended up chatting for so long we all adjourned to the coffee shop and continued there. A very fortunate misunderstanding, for Di, when I ordered her “large” coffee. She ended up with a VERY large coffee, with 3 shots of espresso. She was certainly more bubbly and wide awake in the afternoon than she has been for awhile.

Heading out of town on the Bruce Highway we soon crossed the mighty Ross River. Home to Ross River fever. I immediately felt unwell, flu like symptoms, dizziness. But as Di pointed out I hadn't actually been outside MM anywhere in the area so I slowly began to feel better. Mind you even hypochondriacs do get sick and as Spike Milligan had carved on his tombstone “See, I told you I was sick”.

Another in the BIG collection
The Big Mango

Our stop for tonight is Bowen, it wasn't goig to be but that's as far as we could get after spending the morning chatting.

We had intended to call in to Bowen as Bowen mangoes always remind Di of her Aunty Jean who loves Bowen mangoes. We were surprised however to discover that Bowen is also famous for tomatoes and seafood. Amazing.

Educational note: Mangoes were introduced to Bowen in the 1800's from their native India. Apparently Australia was exporting horses to India at the time and the horse wranglers from India bought some mangoes over with them for morning tea. Today, the mango is the mostly widely consumed fresh fruit in the world. To be fair to apples, bananas and oranges, any fruit that is native to India is going to have a several billion people head start in the consumption race.

In another sign that this is peek season up here and that people from the South who can, do head North. There is no room at the Inn at the first two caravan parks that we call into. The third takes pity on us and put us on their “emergency site”. This turns out to be the side of the driveway up against the games room. Running our power cable across the driveway to plug into a power point on the outside of one of the apartments. Really should have got a photo of that. Oops.

Here's a photo of Bowen waterfront instead