Hervey Bay

Woke up this morning with our toes almost frozen off. It must have been about 5°C outside. Wished we had gone to bed with socks on. Since we were not connected to mains electricity we couldn't put on any heating and had to rely on the little heat generated by boiling the kettle and grilling toast! It felt like what the Ice Hotel in Kiruna must be like. Perhaps this is the biggest apparent contrast between the Swedish summer we left behind and the Queensland winter. In Sweden the daytime highs are the same as they are here (indeed a bit better at the moment) but the nighttime lows are much higher - around 15°C. We are also still amazed by the way night comes like the flicking of a switch. Around 5.30pm the sun plummets like a rock and within no time at all everything is pitch black. However the night sky is very beautiful and another thing that makes us feel far from home is the way the constellations are completely foreign. No Ursa Minor or Orion...

After warming up our extremities we did possibly one of our shortest drives, from just north of Childers to Hervey Bay. Originally we were planning to visit Fraser Island or go whale watching, but in the end we decided just to take it easy here on the mainland for a couple of days (and save some money!) The beaches in Hervey Bay are very fine.

(Derek)