Day 34-37 Recovery + 282 kms Townsville to Airlie Beach

After Magnetic island the preferred plan was to push on to Airlie Beach. However, I needed some time to get my back right. So we spent a couple more days in Townsville, lots of back stretches and more physio. We spent the first night back from Magnetic in a hotel watching movies and eating room service. Next day we moved the van out of storage and into a two night stay at a caravan park. I was super proud of the Q team who managed to hitch and un- hitch the van without any muscle provided by dad - just guidance and light duties from me. The team now realise Dad could be redundant.




















Our camp in Townsville was across from this pool (below), one of the best we've been in so far... and we've been in plenty. We counted close to 20 pools so far on this trip.

Check out the inflatable donut Tom is carrying up the stairs. With a smirk on his face, Tom told me it's gluten free and safe to use... Tom scored 5 points for cracking me up with a celiac related Dad joke 😆













Airlie beach is a 3 hour drive from Townsville. So we hitched the brick and spent most of the day travelling and taking plenty of stops to stretch.

Along this stretch of the Bruce highway we  crossed the Burdekin Bridge. I was drawn to the design with these steel beams forming a truss over the highway. I had to google the bridge. Turns out it spans 1.1 kms and is one of Australia's longest multi span bridges in Australia. Its huge 4000 tonne foundations were sunk into the sand after the wet season. There is no natural bedrock to support the foundations and divers were often used to detect issues as crews meticulously attempted to sink the foundations evenly into the sand. Australian engineers were sent to India to research similar bridge constructions. Burdekin took 10 years to construct and began around 1947. This impressive bridge, was recognized in 2010 as a National Engineering Heritage landmark (I'm thinking where's the doco? Surely plenty of tales to tell for this project)

Arriving in Airlie Beach we immediately plunged into the man made lagoon.















Later that night we went out for dinner. Josh challenged me to game of chess, he and his brother had been playing on oversized boards during the trip and on school PCs. I've played a lot of chess in my time but I did not sweep Josh away easily. He surprised me with some clever defensive play and I looking forward to more chess.

We spotted this impressive 3 story climbing park in central Airlie. The kids encouraged me to climb it, I did, and felt very old.












Here's Josh working on his maths homework. Both boys have recently begun regular sessions on Ipads to exercise their math minds.

Here is some camp pics and some short videos.

Too bad I cant include the whole video - this kid is a natural.











After yesterdays night excursion, Tom was super keen to get back to the climbing playground. This time lapse shows us travelling back to the playground and Tom climbing the spider net..

Em just returned from a trip down the street. She returned very excited as she just booked us in a for 2 night Whitsunday cruise on a 100 year old square rigger yacht. We leave tomorrow... cant wait.