July 12th: Proserpine to Calen – 78 km
Day 272
According to the map, the destination for today – St. Helen’s Gardens Caravan Park was only 60 km or so away. We had a leisurely morning, also because the temperature dropped to the lowest since we started in Australia. It was only 1 degree this morning. A caravaner greeted us with “aren’t’ you cold in your little tent?” Luckily, we were more prepared than he could imagine. Out little flimsy tent did a good job at keeping in our body heat, and our down sleeping bags and ground mats ensure that we can stay warm in below zero weather. We also have down jackets, wool long underwear and shirts, winter hats, gloves and thick wool socks. So Chopper proudly (probably too proudly) announced that we were quite warm and cozy in this temperature. Who needs to tow a house around to keep warm these days? It was just a waste of energy and fuel.
But we did get out of bed a bit later this morning, waiting for the sun to heat up a little bit. Thanks to the possum raid, we have no lunch and had to stop at Proserpine 10 km away to get grocery. Our budget has long exceeded the 20 dollar per day limit, and we also realized cycling with a minimum amount of poor quality food was not fun at all, so we are fairly generous to give in to our cravings from time to time. We felt like royalty to be able to have a cup of wine at the end of the day.
The weather was cool and the distance was relatively short, so we took our time to enjoy slow traveling. We found a great lunch spot on top of a hill, overlooking miles of blossoming sugar cane fields. By then, we realized that it would be a long day.
The flat terrain turned into gentle hills, which stretched out the distance between the two points. Our map only gives us distances as the crow flies so it was 78 km instead of 60 km that we set up camp at St. Helen’s Gardens Caravan Park. We were overjoyed to find a very functional and clean camp kitchen, which has always been a deciding factor for where we take our rest days. Our new chains were also overdue for a thorough cleaning.