NO DAM

We saw an article on 60 minutes last week about the 500 families that will lose their home and land when the Mary Valley is dammed to supposedly ensure Brisbane’s water supply. The project is being pushed by the Premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie, even though many experts believe the site will produce a dam that is far too shallow to be effective. We happened to drive through the area on the way to Rainbow Beach, a very beautiful part of the world, we started to pass signs made from old sheets, corrugated iron, any material that could be found really, with various messages hand painted on, such as: No Dam ; Dam Peter not Mary ; No Dam way, etc… There was an absolute classic I saw which stated, “My horse can’t waterski, don’t build the dam”. Ha!! We have started to watch the Chasers War on everything, 9.40 pm Friday nights on the ABC, it is one of the funniest shows I have ever seen. Last week when they took a horse around and into city shops, restaurants, cafes and even a betting agency, I was rolling on the floor laughing and it was hurting. So we made it to Inskip Point which is just past Rainbow Beach, a sandy finger of land, the ocean on one side and a sheltered body of water on our side, great for the kids to play in the shallows. We pumped some yabbies at low tide in preparation for our next days fishing in the boat. Crammed into our little boat the next morning, along with all the necessary gear and motored off in search of fish, Tal caught a little bream to start us off before Rennie brought in the catch of the day, a decent sized flathead. I dropped Helen and the kids back to shore and headed out by myself to try and catch us a feed. During the afternoon drifting around the bay I had a dolphin swimming next to me for a while, and after hearing a whooshing sound behind me, I turned around to see a giant turtle come up for air and I caught enough fish to feed us for dinner. Yum! Tal and I went out again the next morning and we could not catch a thing. We met some nice people who were camping near us including Troy, Tracy, Khia (pronounced just like your name Kaiya!), Braeden and Leyton; Steve and Vicki and Tjanna; Dave and Scott. It is a funny thing meeting people while travelling, it is easy to get to know people you have never seen before, yet we lived the same distance from people for six years in Cash Grove who we never spoke to. From Rainbow to Boonooroo, which I reckon sounds like a Scottish person who is upset there are no Kangaroos about, not much there to write home about, or to the blog either for that matter. Our plan was to go to Hervey Bay from there so we phoned ahead to try and find somewhere to stay. Every caravan park was full so we came here to Howard instead and will drive into Hervey Bay for a day or two instead.