Monday 11th July Rollingstone

  Another cool and early start to the day. We left Charters Towers reasonably early because we were heading to Townsville as we’d managed to book in for our second Covid booster. We booked into a Terry White Chemist and I was pretty sure it was in the middle of the city so we wanted to leave plenty of time to find a park (with the van) and walk to the chemist. We made very good time but as we approached the main part of Townsville we were stopped by a police officer. He was pulling over people towing caravans. We saw a flashing sign which mentioned something about weights. Rob immediately thought that we along with the vehicle and caravan were going to be weighed. The police officer offered no more information. There was a turning area for people with vans and another police officer was holding the oncoming traffic up so we could turn. He said “turn around” and Rob asked where should we go? He said just go back the on the road you came in on. Rob and I were very puzzled as we’d not seen any weighing areas or stations on our way in. After driving around in circles for a while, google maps took us into the city via a different road. It was quite a way out of our original way. On this road I read a sign that said that an old bridge that led into the city was not available for vehicles over a certain weight. Now it all made sense! If only the police officer had explained!!!! Anyway we successfully negotiated our way into the city and found a parking area about 1km from the chemist. If you know Townsville, it is extremely hilly. Our park was at the top of a very steep hill. The motel opposite our parking spot, was called The Summit. The walk down to town was very easy but then google (on both phones) had real trouble finding the chemist and kept taking us to the incorrect street. Luckily we had plenty of time and stopped at a café for a coffee and asked the young woman serving us for directions. She gave us reasonable directions but we again had difficulty with google but finally found the chemist. The vaccinations took very little time and we were soon making the long climb up the steep hill to our vehicle and van. We needed to do a restock of groceries so headed out to a large shopping centre, north of Townsville. Here it was easy to park the van and complete the shopping. From here we had a 30 minute drive to our beautiful accommodation at Rollingstone. This is a huge and luxurious park with both lagoons, a pool and the ocean. We have a lovely outlook to the lagoon. The lagoon is full of large fish and many of the kids are fishing. It is a catch and release lagoon and barbless hooks are used. Down on the beach however we saw quite a few keen fishermen trying their luck in the ocean.