Position 20 16.62S  148 45.22E

I underestimated the distance between Mission Beach and Airlie Beach.  We travelled 500km today – at 80 km/hr it was a very long way. Even though we left early, the road was terrible, lots of road works and we arrived knackered late afternoon.  Most of the road is on the fertile coastal plains.  Sugar cane and banana plantations.  Since saying previously that the bananas were grown at higher elevations seen them all over the place interspersed with the sugar cane.  Anyway, the bananas disappeared south of Townsville.  Some seriously flat land.

One of the many sugar cane mills in this area.

Said previously that it takes two years for the sugar cane to grow.  Well I got it wrong.  It’s a 2-year crop in NSW, but here in the tropics of north east Queensland it’s sown and cropped every year.  You often see a corridor ploughed into a large field and that crop is used to plant the new crop.  When the sugarcane is ripe it’s in flower.  Like the straight lines of the recently planted sugar cane.

One of the road bridges we crossed– I liked the design.

Open carriages of sugar cane trains queuing up at a sugar cane factory.

More flat land, this cattle used for cattle grazing.