Gone From Queensland

After 3 months making our way slowly down the Queensland coast, we've finished in Queensland and headed south to NSW. We covered nearly 2,000 kilometres from the northern tropics to the state's south east, staying at or near most major population centres and experiencing most of the tourist delights on offer. The best known attraction of the northern Queensland coast is of course the Great Barrier Reef, the only living thing that can be seen from space. We visited Green Island and Magnetic Island and went snorkelling at the Low Isles near Port Douglas, we could have visited any number of other islands and had lots of other boat, snorkelling or diving trips, but we figured that after a while all coral starts to look the same.

We did quite a bit of walking at various national parks, although not much of it was wildly memorable - it seems that the western parts of this country offer much more spectacular experiences. Still, various waterfalls, gorges and coastal views have kept us sufficiently interested.

The countryside is remarkably similar all down the coast. Sugar cane fields stretch from north of Cairns down to Bundaberg, and the ubiquitous Australian scrub fills up many of the spaces in between. You can tell the local rainfall level by the colour of the landscape, vibrant green around Cairns and Tully, a lot browner around Townsville.

One thing that sets the Queensland coast apart from the west coast of Australia is the number of large towns, even cities. Our longest journey between stops was less than 400km, several times we had not much more than 100km, or even less, between places to stay. And in between the places we chose to stay at there were always innumerable villages and towns. Contrast this with the northern half of Western Australia, where you can do journeys of 700km without passing through a single settlement!

Having got as far south as Bundaberg we decided we really couldn't face the huge conurbation that is the Sunshine Coast/Brisbane/Gold Coast megalopolis, so travelled for 2 days down to Coffs Harbour, on the NSW mid-north coast. We'll now sit back for a few weeks and think about where our journey will take us next year.