This year’s adventure started off very socially.  In fact, the first week was all about visiting friends as we jouneyed up to Queensland. On night one we enjoyed a good catchup over dinner with Anne and Mick in Port Macquarie.  The next day was lunch with Sue Jamieson near Coffs Harbor and an overnight stop at Black Rocks campground on the northern NSW coast.  Being creatures of habit we stayed in exactly the same campsite we had a year ago when we drove the van home from Brisbane.  We spent a night in Pamela and Rod’s driveway in Noosa before enjoying a lovely lunch with them in one of Noosa’s top restaurants. That night we slept in Alan’s driveway in Mooloolaba and enjoyed dinner out with Alan and Barbara.  We journeyed back to Brisbane to get the van serviced and managed a catchup dinner with Fiona in Brisbane.  Then we got to Noosa Shores campground north of Noosa and spent two nights in the campground we had also visited in 2016 when we first got the van.  By this time we needed a break and a catchup on unfinished jobs from Sydney; and we were so engrossed that we forgot it was our anniversary until FB and Amy and later Esther congratulated us on our five year anniversary.

Our first beach driving was a trip up the Cooloola coast, a 60 k stretch of beach from Noosa to Rainbow Beach.  I was a bit apprehensive about the sand driving but Dick assures me he knows what he’s doing, so we’ll see.  We camped right on the beach, explored Red Canyon and then had a restful afternoon in the van as it was raining.  I finished a book that I’d picked up the day before.  We woke to sunshine but it was short lived and we had a squally, rainy day as we drove up the beach and then did 15 k’s on a single lane 4WD track through the rainforest.   I started driving up the beach and my best decision of the day was to swap drivers before we left the beach. We couldn’t do any of this without a 4WD vehicle.  We got supplies in Rainbow Beach and took the barge/ferry over to Fraser Island for the next leg of our jouney.