Day 89-90: Train Rides North, Hervey Bay, Australia Day, Headed to Yeppoon

At least for the short term, we are doing a little splitting up.  Molly and I managed to get a great "hop on, hop off" train ticket to Cairns, where we will go see the Great Barrier Reef, and Mary and Monroe will spend a bit more time in Brisbane and other parts of the Queensland coast before flying there.

Molly and I first stopped in Hervey Bay, about a 4 hour train ride north of Brisbane.  It's a nice beach town, and we stayed with a great family we found on AirBnb.  The husband is a homebrewer, and so Molly and I got to taste some of his beer.  At the time, he had Obama's Honey Ale on tap, and had done the beer quite well.  

The night we spent there was uneventful, and the family invited us to join them the following day for Australia Day, the 26th of January.  Eager to share in some local culture, we said yes.

What do you do on Australia Day?  Well, in Hervey Bay, you go to the beach and kayak:

And fish:

Enjoy the pier:

Fish some more:

These are essentially one clawed freshwater lobster, what we would call crawfish or crawdads, but not the Aussies.  Theses are yabbies.  And they make great bait.  (Crawfish are something different to the Aussies, but I'm not quite sure what)

Molly baiting a hook for the first time in her life.

Oh yeah, you also dress up in ridiculous outfits on Australia day.

And spend as much time on the beach, or in the water as possible.

Well, except me.  I like just sitting on the beach and watching Molly have a great time on a borrowed Stand Up Paddleboard.

But we couldn't stay too long.  We had decided that our next stop would be the Great Keppel Island.  Remember the card from the last post?

Yeah, that one.  Jason from our BNB in Brisbane said to check it out.  So back on the train we went.

As night fell, we saw fireworks.  We were staying in a very cheap AirBnb that night, and planned on catching a ferry to the Great Keppel Island early the next day.  A decision we would not every regret, as you will see in further posts.