Road trip to Eumundi

Early morning .. leaving 'Southern Belle' to rest in her berth in this very crowded boat city.

The sun gets up early here in Queensland.

Well its actually a simultaneous thing all over but we just register it as early.  The reason - for my friends in other places - is Queensland does not have daylight saving time which means the time here is one hour earlier than our Sydney time.  Being a primarily rural thinking and voting state the constituents believe daylight saving time "fades the curtains" (honestly, we had someone say that to us during this trip) and "confuses the cows" (yes, another actual statement).  So with every attempt to bring DS to the more commercial/urbane end of town the voters give it a resounding NO.

Back to the sun.  So, at 4:45 every day the glorious sun starts to light up the beautiful Queensland sky and by 5:30 its blazing in its true glory - and making sleep difficult.  That's how we found ourselves awake early, cup of tea and toast made, boat tidied, showered and on the road by 7:10am!  A whole lot earlier than I had anticipated for our little road trip north but, as it turned out, a good thing.

Just one more thing.  We had to find our way from the little hamlet of Manly to the freeway and then 140 some kilometres north to Eumundi.  Now this may seem odd - ridiculous even for two people that found their way from Sydney to Cairns and then the Louisiades Archipelago out in the Coral Sea - but neither George nor me can seem to program a car GPS.  I had "googled" the directions and, without a printer on board, had written down word by word how to get there.  But, the 'Captain' insisted on working out the GPS.  Eventually, with only a small delay and a few frustrated words, WE DID IT!  Our trip was punctuated regularly by a very proper sounding English woman ... and we found the little market town of Eumundi easily.

Main street Eumundi just after 8:30am. 

It turned out to be a very good thing that we arrived so early.  By 10:00 you could not move on the main street - by car or, in some cases even on foot.  The market is HUGE.  Stalls were packed in to almost every conceivable nook up stairs, down culverts and in new pavilions specially made in a field out the back of town.   As usual there was the heady mixture of organic food, hand made goods, spiritualist and enticing junk all over the place interspersed with some actual really good stuff.  I didn't buy much  but had a great time gawking at everything possible.  George was forced to give up and sit on a bench with continuing swelling and pain in his slowly getting better tendon.

Here's some of the sights ...

Neither one of us had seen anything like this little show - and from the crowd he pulled I don't think anybody else had either!  One guy - with a pretty good voice - was singing and playing guitar behind the black screen while - at the same time - he operated the puppets in the front to dance and perform.  It was jaw dropping .. and he had a good pile of money in his case for his efforts.

This guy was rocking out on his didgeridoo and he was really good.  He only had a mike with a speaker behind him but he was playing loud and very well.  His case was healthy too.



But then we went to another section of market stalls and this guy had it all!  4 didgeridoos!  An Assistant selling his cassettes, a major poster behind him and a full on sound system!  Wow.  He was good too but we didn't drop any coins for him - a bit too pretentious we thought. 

On the way home we stopped along the way on the Sunshine Coast in the town of Mooloolaba.  As coastal towns go its on its way to being another megalopolis like the Gold Coast but the high rise hotels are still only 15 stories high and they haven't taken over the whole beach area yet.  George stopped in here on his way up - this is where Keith joined the trip as well - and he liked the marina area.  We walked along the water front park and had fish and chips for lunch.  I didn't take any other pictures since if you've seen one Miami like place you've really seen them all.

We had a great trip.