We are now on our way south again, leaving the Whitsundays after a good few weeks.  We finished our visit with a night in the Marina at Hamilton Island which is a posh resort.  Expensive, but we thought it had to be done – after all we needed new t shirts as the ones we got on previous visit 17 years ago have worn out!  We stopped off in Mackay, hoping to get the diesel genset repaired AGAIN, also to get supplies and wait for a more favourable wind with a northerly slant.  We have done some more exploring here, doing the heritage trail round the old part of the town, and yesterday we hired a car to drive inland through the Pioneer Valley.  Of course the original pioneer was called John Mackay.  You go through acres and acres of sugar cane with narrow gage railway through the fields and occasionally crossing the road, then the road climbs steeply into the hills of the Eungella national park.   At a place called Broken River we were able to view duckbilled platypus and freshwater turtles, also a variety of birds – grey goshawk, kookaburra, Australian bush turkey, and a huge iridescent blue butterfly as big as a bird.  We also did a walk through the rainforest and a visit to Finch-Hatton gorge. Altogether a good day out.

Of course we have been horrified by the news of the bombing on the London Underground and before that Hurricane Irma that laid waste to places in the Caribbean that we visited only last year.