Campervan Diaries Day 3 – Rockhampton to Bundaberg via Agnes Water (347km plus approx. 347km detour)

We slept much better in the campsite than on the side of the motorway, believe it or not, and we even allowed ourselves the luxury of sleeping in until 06:30 and leaving at 08:00. We had planned to head to Agnes Water for our stop off, which was a two and a half hour drive away and an hour round trip away from the Bruce Highway. The day started well, we made good time from Rockhampton and were nearing Miriam Vale, the turn off town towards Agnes Water, by 10:00. Nicola and I swapped driving duties and Nicola drove from Bororen, a town near Miriam Vale, to Agnes Water. We saw some more road signs, the classic Australian kangaroo sign and also a koala road sign.

We arrived in Agnes Water and parked up, walking across a little bridge to get to the beach. The beach reminded both Nicola and I of Llangennith, a beach in the Gower. I honestly think that if Swansea had the weather, people would flock to the beaches as the Gower coast is so beautiful, Agnes Water really did look just like Llangennith but hotter. The water was warm too, 24 degrees according to the life guards. We dipped our toes in and it felt like a bath; it was amazing. We had a quick walk along the beach and as we were getting back onto the dry sand we started to feel the ground beneath us heat up – the sand got so hot we were running towards the shade; I think my feet would have blistered if we had stayed on the sand any longer.  

  

  

We then drove a few kilometres (or clicks) north, to the town of 1770. The town marks the spot where Captain James Cook (then Lieutenant Cook) first set anchor and came ashore in Queensland (then called something else I’d imagine, or called nothing at all) in 1770. The town was not really a town, just a few houses, a cairn marking the spot (or near enough) where Captain Cook landed and a campsite. We took some photos, had some lunch and headed back on the way.

  

We made it back to Miriam Vale and headed south along the Bruce Highway where after around 50km we came to a stop at road works. There are roadworks all along the Bruce Highway, it seems as if they are completing all the repair work that needs to be completed all at once; it really is a pain. There was quite a wait and a few cars started turning around and driving back north, we waited but we started to fear that there had been an accident. Around 20 minutes after first getting there a road worker spoke to us and explained that there had been an accident. A campervan had ignored his stop sign and carried on driving and as the lane was one lane due to the roadwork the campervan drove straight into oncoming traffic. The bloke said we could either turn around and go back the way we came and loop south near Agnes Water and take the back road down to a place called Lowmead and then head back onto the Bruce Highway from there or wait it out as he didn’t know how long it would take to clear the road after the accident. He said going via Lowmead would take around an hour and we’d be 10 minutes further down the road than we were now. We decided to wait, our fuel was near quarter empty and we didn’t want to go back on ourselves and use up that fuel to just go an extra 10 minutes. However, we soon saw police cars, fire engines, ambulances and air ambulances go past and we started to fear that the accident was pretty serious. Sure enough, after an hour of waiting another road worker came to us and said the road was going to be closed for another six hours, so in the end we had no choice but to go back on ourselves.

We made it to Miriam Vale and turned east towards Agnes Water, our fuel was running low but we came to a cross roads and thought we’d take the road to Bundaberg instead of back to Agnes Water and refuel at a gas station on the road. Up to this point gas stations had been every 35km or so…not on this road. We started getting towards Bundaberg but after around 80km of driving (including up from the Bruce Highway) we hadn’t come across a gas station and our fuel light had come on. We started to worry, we were in the middle of nowhere (by this point we were driving past farms and nothing else) and it was getting to around 16:00 and we had driven around 10 -15km already with the fuel light on. We came to a crossroads and one sign said “Bundaberg 64km” and another said “Lowmead 15km”. We could see Lowmead on the map and figured it must have a petrol station so we headed there. A nervous 15km ensued as we drove through country lanes passing farm after farm until we finally arrived t Lowmead…only to discover that Lowmead consisted of a school, a hotel and a church. No gas station. We estimated we had been driving for about 30km with the fuel light on, maybe more. We didn’t know how much farther we could travel so we stopped and asked a local at the hotel where the nearest gas station was…back towards Agnes Water the way we had come but a shorter way was along a gravel track. He said the gas station at Rosedale (which was 13km along the road to Bundaberg from the crossroads where we headed for Lowmead) was shut and the only gas station nearby was at Fingerboard near Agnes Water.

Seriously starting to worry about being stuck in the middle of nowhere we headed off along a gravel track following the guy’s instructions. Each hill we came to left us more pale and ashen as we prayed the campervan would make it up the hill and not run out of fuel. We came to another crossroads where the guy said to turn right, however, when we got there we thought turning right was heading in the wrong direction so we turned left. We were lucky we stuck to our guns because after around 5km (and about 20-25km from Lowmead) we came across the gas station. We rolled into the gas station on nothing but fumes and will power and were mightily relieved to refuel. The problem out here is that there are hill billy farmers around and we didn’t fancy walking onto their property complaining of a broken down campervan; not meaning to be judgemental but I reckon we’d have seen the last of our camper and our freedom had we headed onto their land! We’d have ended up like Chinese or Romanian people who have been promised a passport only to arrive in the UK and be forced into prostitution and/or drug production factories in Port Talbot – by that I mean we’d have become slaves to hill billy farmers. Also, if we had to walk to the nearest gas station we would have been walking for miles, we were not even sure how far along the road the station was. In the heat, and on the narrow back roads it would be a death trap waiting to happen.

When we arrived at the gas station we learned more details about the accident; one person had died and four were seriously and potentially fatally injured and all aged between 19 and 27. A sobering reminder of the dangers of the road.

We refuelled and I took over driving and headed towards Bundaberg, again. Nicola had been at the wheel for around five hours (I’m a monster I know) and our progress by the map was minimal, we had gone around 50km…extremely demoralising especially as Nicola had driven along the same stretch of road four times! We were feeling tired and drained so we opted to camp at Bundaberg instead of travelling any further. We had planned originally to drive to Gympie, about 2 -3 hours down the road but due to the delays we wanted to rest up. We were glad we had not listened to the man at Lowmead and turned right at the crossroads because there was not a gas station for 70km…we would never have made it.

On the drive to Bundaberg our spirits were lifted as we saw a kangaroo hopping across the road in front of us – don’t worry, I didn’t go all Aussie and run it over. It hopped safely to the other side which made us happy that at least one kangaroo between Cairns and Bundaberg didn’t get smashed into oblivion by a truckie (Aussie slang for trucker). We arrived at Bundaberg exactly three weeks to the day that we last left, even driving in on the same road that we drove into from the dairy farm. We had done so much in the last three weeks that the dairy farm seems a lifetime ago. We made it to a campsite at 18:30 and reception and check in shut at 18:00. We were gutted. However, there was an emergency only afterhours number which we thought screw it let’s call anyway and a lovely old chap turned up and after some joking around let us stay on the site and pay in the morning; an absolute lifesaver, a lovely man at Cane Village Holiday Park on the outskirts of Bundaberg. We parked up and whilst filling our water tank got chatting to an older man in a campervan next to us who told us tales of his and his late partner’s camping travels around Canada and the USA – drives that made our 1700km Cairns to Brisbane feel like Swansea to Cardiff!

After a long and exhausting day, we finally made it to bed and fell asleep to the noise of flying foxes and other exotic animal making a racket outside our van.