FRIDAY 16 AUGUST     FORREST BEACH

Today was quite humid. Big clouds built up through the morning, then there were a few drops of rain at one point in the afternoon. It seemed more pleasant after that.

After breakfast, we did a lovely, long, beach walk with Couey. She cavorted in the shallow pools, rolled lots of times in the damp sand and generally had a good exercise workout. Despite the vigorous sand rolling, her coat is so thick that the sand does not penetrate too far. A brush down with the rubber horse grooming brush gets rid of it all, so we don’t have a problem with sand in Bus.

I washed clothes and our bedding. Then we drove into Ingham to shop.

We were stopped at the Victoria Mill by a long cane train, so I got out to take some photos. On most of the main roads, like this one, crossings have warning lights, but the many crossings one encounters on the back roads, do not. On some of them, the tall cane comes almost right to the road, so there is not much of a line of sight for trains that might be approaching. Fortunately, they trundle along fairly slowly. I was quite taken by a graphic road safety sign we saw a few times, featuring a cane train and a crumpled car, with the caption: YOU’RE FASTER – HE’S HEAVIER.

At Victoria Mill, an overhead conveyor takes the processed sugar from the mill, across the road to tall silo like structures at the train loading facility.

From here, the sugar is loaded into a different type of train, with hoppers instead of open bins; these go to Lucinda and the ship loading facility there. These are still the same narrow gauge trains, though.

 We did a food shop at Woolworths, and because it was well into the afternoon by now, I bought a quiche for lunch. John had a pie.

Back at camp, the neighbour parked two sites up, B, gave us two whiting and a flathead. The couple had returned here after a sojourn further north somewhere. John said he remembered them from when we were first here. Most days, the man does down to the southern creek mouth to fish. His wife drives him as far as one can go by road, to a walkway that goes between the far houses at Cassady Beach, but he walks all the way back when he’s done fishing.

John had to go down to the fish cleaning table to deal with the gift. He was away for ages – talking! He came back with only five fillets of fish, having somehow mislaid one piece of flathead.

I cooked fish and some fries. As the fish fillets were small, John had those and I had a couple of eggs with my chips. He said the fish was delicious. It was certainly fresh.

M phoned to see if John’s medicine had arrived yet. We had a good chat.

The night was hot and humid – not great for sleeping.