Stage 4 started on August 25th when we decided how and when we would be home.

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Tuesday 25th August. Coolum. What a great place. We frequently walk as far as you can see along this huge, clean beach of beautiful, soft, fine sand (lower left). The caravan site (lower right) is less than 100 meters from the shops and even closer to the surf - which is just as well because we have record August temperatures (about 33degrees C). Last nights dinner was at the bowling club and they let me down. I had to return my Chinese meal and ask them to heat it up - Connie has started calling me "Gordon", which doesn't  worry me - but Connie banned ice cream today, and THAT worried me.

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Sunday 30th August 2009. Gold Coast. The "Gold Coast Caravan Park" at Helensvale on the Gold coast is a lovely place with some great places to stroll around (lower left). The caravan park also runs a motel and we are going to the restaurant in the morning to pretend we are customers and see if we get a free breakfast ☺. The taps in the loo are strange - they are supposed to assist in saving water but instead they can only be fully ON or fully OFF and the end result is water spraying everywhere ... After lunch today, we dropped in to visit Connie's relatives [Peter & Paula] in their brand new house. The spinach and ricotta pasties were beaut!

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Monday 31st August 2009. Gold Coast. A strange noise on the roof of the caravan woke us this morning and a quick look outside reminded us what RAIN was. This is the first rain we have seen since we stayed at Mildura.  The "Gold Coast Caravan Park" at Helensvale is a very friendly place (lower left) - especially the restaurant. We served our own continental breakfast and even left a tip ☺ .  We have noticed that the "banana benders" are VERY keen on "fast food" (lower right) and they keep the drive-through going at full speed. We discovered a "SOUVLAKI" ? ! ? shop and quizzed the waitress. It is Greek food and she gave us a small sample tasting of lamb and beef - wow,,, tasty!  This will do us for dinner tonight.

Later that night -
Wouldn't you know it - they conned me. The "Souvlaki Lamb and Beef with Greek Salad" turned out to be a plate full of cucumber with a spoonful of cold meat on top (and a slice of tomato) ...... what a RIP-OFF. Never again!

Wednesday 3rd September. Woolgoolga. A surprise - we have stopped here before but had forgotten how nice it was. The beach is one of the best we have seen and a stroll to the north will bring you to the remains of the "Wreck of the Busker" (lower left). You may be able to make out the shape of the old wooden hull that is being eroded by the sea and wind. The caravan park in the town centre is definitely on our agenda for the next time we pass through here. The shops are literally across the street and the beach is a stones throw the other way. Unfortunately we had booked in at Sunset caravan park (which was very nice but expensive).

Thursday 4th September. Home. Yes, we left Woolgoolga with every intention of stopping another one or two nights along the last few hundred kilometers. For some reason I simply kept going. The rain started as we passed by the Gosford turnoff and continued until I pulled into the driveway.

And, if you are interested, we travelled 9604 kilometers. We used 1911 litres, and spent $2300 on diesel.
Our average cost (for diesel) to travel 1000 kilometers while towing the caravan was $259.
Our average cost (for diesel) to travel 1000 kilometers while NOT towing the caravan was $199.

Big factors behind these figures include:
The gross weight of the caravan is a little over 3000 kilo
I rarely drive at anything less than the legal speed limit (I get on really well with truckies).

Cheers