The Trip Home - Returning from the Whitsundays

We spent the day after retrieving (9th Sept) at the caravan park cleaning Kismet, shopping (including a new grease gun), greasing the bearing buddies and relaxing a little.

We left next morning at around 09:24 and decided to go home largely via the coast rather than inland.
Ready to roll...

Our trip home was via these overnight stays:

• Rockhampton 10th
• Hervey Bay 11th
• Beachmere (near Bribie island) 12th
• Ballina 13th
• Forster 14th
• Goulburn 15th 
• Chiltern 16th
• Melbourne (Home) 17th mid afternoon.

The trip was uneventful but interesting as we got to visit a few places we hadn't been before.

We intended to stop at Gympie for lunch on the 12th but we could not find anywhere to park the car and trailer. We ended up in narrow streets that I found quite dangerous so we left town. Not an "RV friendly town". We rang the local council offices to explain the issue - just to give them a heads-up. We stopped in Cooroy just inland of Noosa for lunch that day instead.

Plenty of RV parking in Cooroy - and sign posted too. A short walk to lots of shops and cafes.

The low-light of the trip was the caravan park we stayed at in Goulburn. The Thai restaurant we found to eat at was nice though.

Ballina was one of our favourite stops. We lashed out and had breakfast Lighthouse Beach Cafe overlooking the bay and saw a whale slapping its tail in the distance. We watched in bemusement as a whale watching boat headed for it, but the whale had stopped it's antics before it got very close. The cafe was great.

At a lunch stop at Coffs Harbour we parked next to another trailer sailor in a large dusty car park -  a burgundy monohull called Mistral. We had lunch and left before they got back to their vehicle. They overtook us an hour or two later on the highway.

Victoria has opened up many truck weigh bridges to the public so we did the required double-U-turn to use the one just past Broadford (heading north). (Google "weigh bridge seymour" - it's the Vicroads weigh bridge.)
I was surprised just how much the trailer and boat weighed. I didn't disconnect but checked the ball weight when we got home (not quite accurate as I had partially unpacked the boat).
Car with 2 occupants: 2140kg
Trailer & boat: 1140kg
Ball weight: 110kg
It helped explain the fuel economy being worse than when towing our Avan (that and the parachute effect of the boat).
We got around 12 to 13 litres per 100km coming back - way better than the trip up but then we were into a headwind most of the way.

We arrived how mid-afternoon on the 17th September.
I spent the next day after we got home unpacking and cleaning up Kismet.