Chapter 1: Sunshine Coast to Capricorn Caves

It was a bright morning when we were finally ready to roll out of our driveway.

It just happened to be June 1^st and the first day of winter, which felt a bit ominous, and I wanted to make a whole range of Game of Thrones jokes, but seeing “winter is coming” was already redundant, I didn’t bother. We headed first for coffee of course, to our favorite Moffat Beach local – The Pocket – even though it was in the opposite direction. I thought it would be nice to give the kids something nice to snack on as well. So I told them they could have the sorbet from Coco Loco Club that Ahvie had been craving for 2 weeks. But June 1^st also turned out to be Maleny Show Day and a holiday for an undefined southern section of the Sunshine Coast and Coco Loco Club was closed – Thanks Em and Dave. There was upset of course, but I didn’t hear it because I was busy ordering coffee and the upset was a few 100 meters away in the closest parking spot that would fit the caravan. But I got the phone call and bought them lemonade at 10:30 am just to keep the sunshine rolling – go Raddest homeschool ever.

So, after that we actually left – north up the Bruce Highway with lunch near Gympie. It was halfway thought my pie that I decided that Iron Ridge Park, near Childers & a little south of Bundaberg, would be our first camp. We rocked on in at about 3:30 pm; set up camp; collected wood; lit a fire; and almost froze.

The next morning, we packed up and were back on the road. We were headed for Agnes Waters and 1770, but stopped in Bundaberg for coffee and ice-cream, because we were still acting like we were just on holiday and, apparently, I still owed them ice-cream. It also gave me a chance to work out where the hell we were camping that night. We settled on Horizons Kangaroo Sanctuary 5 minutes outside of Agnes Waters, because everything else we looked at was either National Park with a sandy track in (which we couldn’t be bothered with just yet) or an over-priced caravan park parking lot. We arrived just in time to feed the roos their afternoon tea of sweet potato. All of them had been rescued and raised at the Sanctuary. They were super cute and Jonah and Ahvie and I decided that they definitely liked us 3 the best.

The next day was spent meeting up with friends that moved from the Sunshine Coast to the area 12 months (or something) earlier, and other friends that are doing a similar trip to us, at a similar time, and happened to be in the same 100 meters as us at 10:25 am on a Sunday morning. This was followed by another night with the roos, and a day of exploring the sights. We finally had a chance to take the drone out for a spin. Captain Neil still has himself in learner mode, so he can’t fly higher than 30 meters, but its fun, and I can’t wait until he’s good enough to be bossed around.

After a third night with the Roos, and a cheeky mama roo who came looking for snacks, we were packed up and off early. And after accidentally travelling south for half an hour, we were back on the Bruce Highway and headed for Rockhampton for lunch and fuel, then onto Capricorn Caves. We did the fossil tour of course, because that’s what you do if you have a 9-year-old that’s mad keen on dinosaurs. Apparently, the other tour has a cathedral cave, with blow your mind acoustics. And they turn off the lights and play Leonard Cohen’s Halleluiah and it’s all amazeballs and goosebumpy. But we saw hundreds of tiny bones, brought into the caves via Jurassic owl vomit, and floors made from compacted bat droppings, and a sink hole that’s means there is probably another whole big hole under our feet – so you know, acoustics, whatever. Actually, we did see cool tiny Bent Wing bats, all chittering and massed together on the cave ceiling, that went totally quiet when the torch touched them – and I know our friend Batgirl Nat will think that is completely totally Rad AS.

Now we head inland, to hunt dinosaurs, gemstones & dust.

Until then, Adios