Thinking Allowed: OK Coral

We've spent the past three weeks staying at Coral Cove, five hours north of Brisbane. If you look at a map of Australia, the 2,000 km of coastline from Brisbane down to Sydney and around to Melbourne is dotted with hundreds of towns. But the 2,000 km of coastline north from Brisbane towards Cairns is ... kinda empty? There are a few towns like Mackay and Gladstone which nobody ever talks about (in Canberra, anyway) but I get the sense it's like Saskatchewan if every wheat field were replaced with a spectacular deserted white sand beach.

Anyway, we didn't even reach our new home before the first detour hit. Tamar swerved and braked violently as the sign appeared: "LICHEES". We meandered down a rutted road lined with sugarcane, then into an empty farm. Finally a weathered guy brought me into his barn lined with crocodile skulls and indigenous shields, and sold us two kilos of the juiciest, tastiest lychees you've ever tasted for twenty bucks. It turns out that the fruit is awesome up here. The next day Tamar bought 10 huge mangoes for $9, and life quickly became a steady flow of dragonfruit, pineapple, passionfruit (7 for $2!) and other sweet goodies.

We stayed at the Coral Cove Resort, an eerily quiet golf resort with almost nobody around. The only sound was the surf crashing on the rocks a hundred feet away. We had a tennis court and swimming pool literally outside our back door, and the girls swam every day. There were lots of rock pools and beaches within reach, although we ended up isolated for a few days so didn't explore as much of the area as we wanted to.

We did make it to Mon Repos for a nighttime turtle encounter, which was the highlight of the trip for me. Tamar dropped us off as the sun set, and within the hour we were making our way down the beach under the stars with a couple of park rangers. They led us to a small depression in the sand, which turned out to be absolutely teeming with about a hundred loggerhead hatchlings, all furiously clambering out of their 60-cm deep nest and making for the water. A few lucky visitors (including Sophia) made a line of flashlights to guide the turtles down to the water, and I won't soon forget the little critters wading into the surf in the silver moonlight to begin their 20,000-km, 30-year voyage to Peru and back.

Otherwise our time on the Coral Coast was pretty low-key. The girls did a ton of research about turtles (obviously) and sugar (including a field trip to the Bundaberg Barrel, where we tasted fourteen different fizzy drinks and the girls all got high). Tamar did a great evening session about turtles in art and mythology, and I did one about Caribbean music and Mardi Gras. We barbecued night after night (haloumi, veggie dogs, falafel, corn) and Tamar made a delicious cornbread despite not having an oven.

And now we're already into our next chapter, three hours south on the Sunshine Coast. It's much more built-up and lively here, we're a kilometer farther from the coast, but have a nice big villa, Sophia's already joined a gymnastics squad less than 24 hours after arriving, and we're looking forward to more adventures in this beautiful part of the world.