You might be astonished to read that we are in Mackay after all! Well when we left Anakie, our fridge decided to play up again. We had heard many times, that a new caravan is almost as much trouble as a boat can be. 
Passing the small country town of Clermont we saw a replica piano in a tree, where in 1916 after a flood that destroyed the city and killed 65 people, a real piano was found. The railroad put Clermont on the map and was serving the huge mining and farming industry. 
Decommissioned carriages, next to the old railway station have been painted by a local artist Glen Gillard with farming and mining scenes. He repaints the murals every 5 years and his quirk is, to hide somewhere within each painting a little green tree frog, for locals and visitors to find!
We then stopped at Emerald the town of sunflowers, and no, van Gough hasn’t been here. Heading down the Gregory and Peak Downs “Highways", which in Australian terms means simply a straight, tarred road with plenty of potholes and undefined side boarders, we found ourselves back at the rest stop where we had a nana nap 3 days ago. Only this time 5 caravans were stationed there, and a camp fire in progress. Everybody who is someone in Grey-Nomads-terms seems to have a fire pit. We stayed the night and drove into Mackay the next morning.
We had been here about 18 months ago and we like the sugar cane capital with its palm trees and clean streets. An extra bonus is that Austin’s cousin Beverly and her husband Bob live here. We had a lovely get-together at an Italian restaurant with a mile-long menu and delicious home-made gelato. (I had the nutella gelato, yum!)
While the part for our fridge was ordered, we walked along Blue Water Lagoon and visited the harbour and Marina, thinking of our boat, the “Freshwater” with some melancholy.
