Above: Kurrimine Beach.
Continuing north
We left Airlie Beach about 0810 for Kurrimine Beach. We had wanted to overnight at Mission Beach as a substitute for Townsville which was now in lockdown due to Covid-19. But due to accommodation reasons, we ended up booking for Kurrimine.
The driving time was meant to be 6h. The big difference in today’s drive was that we saw mango orchards in addition to the primarily sugar-cane plantations and the odd cattle farms. We narrowly cheated death when two panels of aluminium flew off a truck and missed the A-pillar on the driver’s side of our car by mere inches.
We took a delicious lunch in Ayr where we also stocked up on some groceries.
Avoiding Townsville
We had been worried about our routing, whether we’d have any hassles travelling close to Townsville along the edges of the city. As it turned out, there appeared to be no controls. The shopping malls on the edge of town were busy with fast food and florists in operation, in addition to essential services like supermarkets.
A very prominent feature of our passage through Townsville was the huge military camp. It hugged the left hand side of the motorway for several kilometres.
We had heard along the way that Townsville would be coming out from lockdown this evening at 1800. That’s a promising sign for Queensland’s recovery which should open the way for our return back to New Zealand.
I did the last bit of driving and we arrived into Kurrimine around 1545 at King Reef Resort. This was a motel complex with a pub, pool and adjoining caravan park. After settling in, we took a walk on the golden sandy beach. The water wasn’t too inviting as it was a little brownish probably from the stirred-up sand.
We had a simple dinner of canned soup with Turkish bread filled with avocado, tomatoes and cheese.