Hervey Bay

We slept in fairly late, even though there were five in and on the bed by the time morning came around. Us three and the dogs that is, in case you're getting any inappropriate ideas, though I grant that some might think that that five would be inappropriate but notwithstanding that it was a bit of a squeeze, and the discomfort was only added to by the fact that the air mattress appeared to have leaked through the night so that when I moved, Nicole would find herself basically on the hard ground and vice versa.

Nicky and Eloise were getting on admirably as the morning went on, and we sat outside the tent coming to terms with our surroundings under the hot sun whilst Nicole fixed some breakfast, thence for a fairly late dog walk over on the West side of Torquay. Which, as it turned out, given the parlous state of our maps, was an absolute bummer to find.

When we got there the beach was actually a bit disappointing with a gravelly consistency, not the perfect beaches of the Sunshine Coast we're used to by a long chalk. And soon under quite a hot sun, Eloise was flagging.

The dogs were having a great time exploring the mangroves and the sea was lapping gently on the shore, the swell taken out by the channel between the mainland and Fraser Island.

We got back and flaked out. I napped for a couple of hours. We relaxed in the afternoon and didn't go very far.

In the evening Chris and Nicky went to look for Whalewatching opportunities and Nicole, Eloise and I headed out East to Toogoom to see what the beaches up there had to offer. We stopped at a nice beach with much superior sand but it was windy and quite chilly and the seaweed at the tide line stunk to high heaven. The sunset was nice though, and we played hide and seek with Eloise in the brush at the back of the beach.