Froggles Travels: Hervey Bay 16-03-2016 to 23-03-2016

Hervey Bay here we come.

Hervey Bay is a moderately large city (declared a city in 1984) and has a town centre roughly the size of Alberton in South Africa. It has all the modern facilities and shops that you would find in a larger city as well as a beautiful coast line. The population is approximately 49 000 and is the gateway to Fraser Islands West coast. Although Captain Cook discovered Hervey Bay in 1770, he did not realize that Hervey bay and Frazer Island were separated due to its shallow waters. These waters are home to large turtles, dugongs and an abundance of fish found in Queensland as well as the hump back whales during their migrating season in winter.

We arrived at Hervey Bay on the 16th of March 2016 and booked into the Big 4 Point Vernon Caravan Park, the facilities were great and we were tucked away in the corner with big trees and palm trees around us.

How our setup looks at night, starting to get organised, may we say.

After settling in we started to explore Hervey Bay, and must say we were very impressed. They have a beautiful esplanade that caters for everyone, plenty of tables and lots of trees for shade as well as many caravan parks right on the waterfront. We came across the Urangan Pier and that was a nice find. We decided to walk this pier early on the Saturday after visiting their markets, not realising just how long this pier was. We started off full of energy with no water on hand and as the temperature rose so did the humidity. After walking on the 800meter long pier in the blazing sun, we had to help Brandy as she kept trying to head for shade from the rails, and even poor Whiskey was running for the shade when he could find it, we were all heading for heat stroke.


Information on the pier

View from end of pier looking back to land.


Our Kaput babies

Although we spent most of the time in Hervey bay, we also took day drives to towns and beaches in the vicinity. On our expeditions we discovered a place called Bamboo land, we stopped there to have a look at the beautiful gardens with an enormous range of bamboo trees.

The best beach by far on this trip was at Woodgate and the other (which was not as nice) is situated at Burrum Head. Woodgate has a beautiful beach and is dotted along the coast line with caravan parks. If you would ever imagine camping 300km out of Brisbane, this would certainly be a top spot. The water is crystal clear, the beach sand is powder white and because the beach is in a bay, the surf is not big. This makes it ideal for small kids and to relax in the water with a cold beer.

A panoramic view of Woodgate Beach

Our travels took us from Hervey Bay to Torbanlea, Howard, Childers, Biggenden, Gayndah, Mundubbera, Eidsvold all the way through to Gin Gin then meeting up with the Bruce Highway back down to Hervey Bay.

An Absolute highlight from these towns was Childers, which we found so quaint and full of history. There is a memorial for 15 backpackers who perished at a backpacker’s lodge that was set ablaze by a deranged man who had a grudge against backpackers. He received a 20 year sentence for his deeds for the murder of only two of the backpackers who were Australian twin sisters that perished in the fire that dreadful night. The state prosecutors at the time decided to proceed in their charges of murder against the twin girls only, so that in the event that the judgement was deemed unfair, they would lay charges on 13 other counts. This man is still in jail to this day.

Information obtained on this tragedy

The main street of Childers, and below an Old Pharmacy museum so fascinating.

All the other places that we travelled through over the weekend, have since made us realise that travelling to small towns over weekends is a no go. 99.9% of the towns are closed, and nothing is going on. So needless to say, that Sunday fuses were short even old Brandy had had enough of being in the car for over 8 hours.

Positive on this, the scenery was very beautiful.