A day on the Bruce Highway

The Bruce Highway runs south from Cairns and is a single lane road with lanes for overtaking every so often. Max speed is usually 100km/hr but through small villages can drop to 60. There is no need to start early, traffic is light and it's better to take a walk in the early morning and sit in the air conned car at midday. Your start might be delayed a couple of minutes if you wake up with a sheep tic (faesting) attached to your body. However if your fellow traveller has a little tool for sorting this out (as well as everything else except the kitchen sink, of which there is one in the van)then you will soon be on your way. Do you need to shop? Then just look out for a Coles or Woolworths sign, pull in, make a cup of tea and then sort your shopping out. Petrol is no problem, costs 1.2 dollars a litre but if you overfill the tank, there is a bit of a panic, three husky Aussies will push your van to the side and point out that you have a leak and you can't drive on without having it checked. The man over the road will check it but not without authorisation from the van hire firm. This is sorted in a minute, he drives his car over the road, looks under the van, says it's ok, and he's just earned 88 dollars. If you want to take a longer break you can leave Bruce for a while and cool it on the beach at, for instance, Clairview. You may be attacked by parrots but they will apologise by sitting on your open van door so you can take photos. It's easy to lose concentration on Bruce but be careful, all of a sudden police will come racing towards you forcing you into the ditch. They are escorting an extra wide lorry. So lots of things can happen in a day on Bruce. After that day we parked on a free camping site at St Lawrence where the kangaroos were jumping about in the next field. The birdlife there was the best ever, to see all the birds feeding at 6 in the mornig was worth a lot. I think I could identify: brolga, euroasian coot, black swan, some sort of grebe (dopping), spoonbill, black winged stilt, heron, maybe a crane and there were loads more. We are now in the town of 1770 and taking a trip out to the reef tomorrow. Family only: we are in touch with Kath and will meet up on Tuesday, we have not bothered about mobile phones, so text anything on our usual numbers, and we can access our mails but sometimes it's a few days between each computor. FINALLY, the lady at the captain Cook campsite where we are says she doesn't get many Swedes here. Strange because it is a lovely place, we walked down to the beach, which was yellow sand, big waves, warm water and deserted, in 10 minutes from the camp. Ok maybe blue bottles are horse flies, Thanks Breda.