Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Afternoon all.

We're currently enjoying life in our caravan just north of Cairns, where it is currently warm and sunny if a bit windy. Making plans to head south down the coast at a very leisurely place as we're not big fans of humidity. Normally we don't plan too far ahead but as it's likely that our proposed trip back to the UK at Christmas will get cancelled, we need to think about where to aim for at Christmas. Already (and I appreciate that it is hardly a surprise), most caravan parks within a couple of days drive of Brisbane seem to be fully booked.

Not having been around coastal Queensland after the end of August before, we're not quite sure when and how far north it gets uncomfortably hot and sticky. Again I appreciate "uncomfortably" varies from person to person. Some people even this far north say Christmas is fine, others say not.

I'm interested in people's opinions of where it starts getting not so pleasant and when e.g Rockhampton is sticky from mid-December, Brisbane is lovely until mid-January, avoid Noosa at Christmas or whatever.

Thanks :-)

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Those who live up there will have better information on where is good but we spent Christmas a few years ago in Port Douglas, and it poured down almost every day. We knew to expect it but were meeting The Niece, who had backpacked up the coast from Sydney, and it wasn't great for her.

We also spent part of our wedding/honeymoon trip many years ago based in Palm Cove, with similar weather for half of January.

I'd be tempted to go south of Brisbane. I worked a conference a couple of years back at Alexandra Headland, small town kind of place, quite liked it, stayed at an OK park - not that I've stayed at any others to compare - had some decent cafes and restaurants.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Wet season, cyclone season, can be an "interesting" time t be in the Far Nrth.......

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

FNQ is designed for winter :)
Wet weather and lots of nasty things in the Ocean.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

If I do Queenland, and I avoid it at all costs because it's one of the most over rated places on the planet, I do it in winter. At all other times it's too wet and too humid and the beaches, except for a few around Noosa, and generally nothing special.

Hope this helps.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Good point on the nasty things - Palm Cove beach was closed the whole time we were there, early Jan.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

A couple of years ago we did Cairns for New Year followed by Brisbane the week after. My general gauge for as hot as I like to go used to be the weather in Florida in June (went there quite a bit from our base in Canada) which is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea but just fine for me.

Over Christmas and New year I found Cairns to be more uncomfortable than Florida was, and too much. Brisbane was a few degrees cooler and just about right. It’s where I live now and I’m really enjoying it. Even down here though it can easily be a top of 30-34 and overnight lows in the low 20s.

If you want cooler than that I’d consider NSW south of maybe Coffs Harbour.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

:goodpost:

Nambucca Heads is a good place, we were there a week or so ago. Some fantastic walks, amazing beaches and views and a very good Indian restaurant there too. But in peak summer the further south down the NSW coast you can go the better. A favourite of ours on the NSW south coast is Eden. Some great caravan parks there. The one we stayed at people could pick plentiful fresh mussels at low tide.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Everyone feels humidity and temperatures differently. QLD/NSW border area has the perfect climate for me but others hate it. I imagine you'll be hard pressed to find a park with available space over christmas on the GC but I could be wrong, last time I was in a caravan I was 13 but since our 'bubble' is getting bigger, people will be booking with fingers crossed.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Just did a quick check and there is plenty of Gold Coast accommodation available for Xmas. Either the tackiness of the place has reached the masses or the Queensland border fiasco is really starting to bite.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Thanks for all your comments. We're still near Cairns (Port Douglas at the mo), still expecting the trip to the UK to be cancelled and still hoping to get far enough south to be comfortable at Christmas. We have hit a snag though in that our caravan needs some work (water ingress issues) and finding someone to do it is proving almost impossible. All the caravan repair places are too busy this year to help for about 1,000km in any direction! Maybe a place in Bundaberg otherwise it's Brisbane area.

Anyway, really it is humidity I struggle with. We coped OK, just about, with mid 40's in Longreach and surrounds a few years ago. But humidity just sucks the energy out of you. On the other hand, maybe we just suck it up and stay north as at least finding somewhere to stay at Christmas/New Year/early Jan is not so difficult. We've checked out probably 100 caravan parks in the south of Queensland/north NSW (including Alexandra Headland, Gold Coast and Noosa areas) without any success whatsoever! I presume that you weren't looking at caravan parks Beoz? If you were, perhaps you could PM me details of any with availability.

How about inland? Would Warwick or Toowoomba be nice in Dec/Jan?

I hear those of you who say to go further south, but we've "done" south of Sydney, but not yet between Brisbane and Sydney on the coast and are planning to do that between Christmas and next June, so don't want to go that far south yet.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

I wouldn't want to be in Warwick or Toowoomba any time really but certainly not in Dec/Jan. Way too hot, unless you have really good aircon in the caravan. Beoz may or may not have actually checked, he has a weird issue with QLD so any excuse to make a sarcy comment about the State, he'll take it.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

I hear Gold Coast is infested with crime, drug and bogan problems.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Most of QLD is humid and sticky in high summer.
You get around it by staying indoors in the heat in AC during the worst - and getting up sooner and going to bed later - in that AC.

You also learn to use the beach, pool, and take advantage of onshore breezes.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Also you need to watch out for sand flies around some of the beaches. Get bitten by them and you'll know all about it! :eek:

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

It would appear that people who don't live in the state have greater experience of the place. Weird that their experience bears no resemblance to the place I live in but as I said previously, everyone has a different perspective on heat and humidity. Hope you find somewhere to park the van Louie.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Its OK. If you live there the justification for being proud is understandable. From a tourist perspective it ain't much chop. Just balancing out the Queensland tourism marketing machine with reality.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Proud? What am I proud about? I live where I live because I want to, it's just a place I like. You don't but presumably you like where you live. Are you proud of your area? If so, why? :confused:. Obviously not a tourist but if it ain't much chop there's one hell of a lot of tourists in the State week in week out (not at the moment obviously).

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Same here. I've been to Queensland as a visitor several times. For business as well as on holiday and those were my observations and experience. But I can understand why MP might be a bit prickly about it.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

"Most" people are generally proud of where they live, otherwise "most" would move on, however some may be stuck for whatever reason. However the thread is about touring and climate rather than living

Yep, as I mentioned the Queensland marketing machine is one hell of a machine. Lots of tourists, thats for sure. I just don't see what is promoted actually existing for the most part. What's the slogan "Beautiful one day, perfect the next" - well that's drawing a long bow. The Gold Coast has about 1500mm of rainfall annually whereas Melbourne gets about 500mm.

I got dragged to Far North Queensland last year in winter thinking this would be an ideal time. Dry season, little humidity, what could go wrong. The bloody water temperature at the reef and in the hotel pools (sorry no swimmable beaches in FNQ) - thats what went wrong. It was bloody freezing. I thought going right to the outer reef where the continental shelf ends would lend itself to a better looking, more vibrant reef. Nup ..... its bleached and dull out there too.

Every time I do Queensland, aside from Noosa, it just leaves me disappointed.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I traveled as far north as we could at the time - going as far as Tweed Heads. Funny going as far as the roundabout in the middle of tweed heads with the "Welcome to Queensland sign and next thing you know your return the way you came (because all the turn offs were blocked) back to the "Welcome to New South Wales" sign! We stayed most of the time at a nice AirBNB in New Brighton - at beautiful place there - loved it. We stayed also at Nambucca Heads, and visited several of the great seaside towns along the way. A walk around the lighthouse at Byron Bay was excellent, great views and some gorgeous beaches about. Found a few really good pieces of paradise to chill out all to ourselves. On the way back we took an inland route mostly because my wife likes to see all the quaint country towns. Stopped off at Tamworth for a night and had a good look around Newcastle - what an amazing place. Love all the colonial architecture. Then we sat by the heads and watched an oil tanker being shepherded in by a posse of tugs. I loved that especially, because my grandfather worked on the Cardiff and Barry tugs years ago. He would have loved that awesome spectacle. A nice trip.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

I'm proud of good things I've done, of what my kids and friends have done. I like living where I do, if I didn't, I'd move. Your understanding of 'proud' differs from mine. Yours makes no sense to me.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Sounds like a great drive. Great time to not be distracted by far and away places and explore local. There's some great untapped spots.

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Another highlight was stopping off at a small village in the middle of no-where along the way for a toilet break where we encountered a general store selling freshly picked blueberries @ $9 a kilo. A real bargain and they were delicious!

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

The average humidity around Christmas-time in QLD does drop off somewhat from North to South, along the coast. On average, the differences between, say Cairns, and Mackay, and Gladstone, and the Gold Coast (roughly 500km jumps in each case), are noticeable if you're really looking for them, but not dramatic overall. Moving south gives you a different, slightly more comfortable point on a spectrum for humidity, rather than a step-change.

The wild-card is greater Brisbane (incl. roughly 50 km in any direction from the CBD), where the 6 - 8 weeks from late November to early January is just a crapshoot, year to year, and even week to week within any given year. Around Christmas, in some years, Brisbane sometimes attracts the most intense electrical storms I've seen anywhere on the planet, or hailstorms, or brief localised bursts of intense rain and wind comparable to a cyclone. Or, in other years, it's typically "29 and fine", and can stay that way pretty much throughout the Christmas period. (Personally, I enjoyed the intense weather episodes as much as the "29 and fine" ones, when I lived there.)

From a pure climate perspective, it sounds like your best bets are in the Gold Coast / Sunshine Coast, or their hinterlands. But you've commented that those are all booked up, from a caravan perspective (which I know nothing about). Perhaps look around someplace like Beaudesert, which has passable local services without being too touristy, and is 1 - 2 hours from most South East Queensland attractions, including Brisbane. Or, if northern NSW is left to next year, in your master plan, and SEQ is all booked up, then the area from Gympie north to Rockhampton is your next best hunting ground.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

And yet, Toowoomba is by no means as hot as Longreach (which the OP seemed to find preferable to a high-humidity locale), is a quite pleasant small city in its own right (e.g. has the sorts of shops, restaurants, services, etc., that one would expect for a ~100K-ish population regional city), and is roughly 2 hours by road from the coast.

If the OP can find caravan space there, and can't anywhere else in SEQ, it should be a reasonable if slightly more distant alternative to other areas he was looking at.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Except for the wind that sounds a lot like Johannesburg in summertime.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

From pure curiousity, I googled around for stats on the topic, but it was difficult to find fully comparable ones. However, in aggregrate terms (lightning strikes per km2 per year), neither Brisbane nor Johannesburg really ranks highly at all on a global scale; apparently, there are areas in Venezuela, Congo, and Pakistan with dramatically higher annual figures.

But in those areas, lightning activity is described as intense but relative steady for long seasonal stretches. My experience of Brisbane's lightning is that Energex would often report 10s of 1000s of strikes per storm (including 60,000 to 80,000 per storm in one particularly spectacular fortnight in late 2008) during the six week season, then we'd experience next to nothing for the rest of the year. (Not sure how this compares to Johannesburg; I've never been there.)

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

In Johannesburg, the typical mid summertime cycle would be a day of hot but not humid heat until mid afternoon when the clouds would begin to coalesce, culminating in a cracker of an electric storm between 4 and 5pm, dropping enormous quantities of rain and would last for 20 mins or so before disappearing as suddenly as it arrived. Then the roads and everything would turn all steamy and half an hour later you would be hard pressed to see that the storm actually happened at all. Occasionally there would be heavy storms at night too which was when we best able to see the most awesome lightning shows. Used to love driving to Johannesburg from Pretoria late afternoon and about 40kms away from the city I could see the sweeping plain in front of me with the most amazing vista. And within that view I'd could see maybe 10 to 15 different storms ahead - each with the thick rain beneath them and their own collection of lightning bolts. It's an absolutely awesome sight to see. :cool: Storm season is in the summer. Wintertime is completely different, when pretty much every day is clear blue skies, not a drop of rain in sight ...and bloody cold! :lol:

Check out some of the images that came up doing a google search. Some of them are insane - but just as I remember them! :eek:

https://www.google.com/search?q=joha...w=1920&bih=937

I searched for photos of the multiple storms across the plain view but unfortunately I couldn't find any. This link of three pages is pretty good for photos in that region where you can get an appreciation of the wide and often rugged landscapes. Some stormy photos there too:

https://www.gettyimages.com.au/photo...rt=mostpopular

...Thinking about all of that has made me wish if I could go back there for another trip.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Sounds to me you are confusing pride with achievement and not location as I believe what was being referred to.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

I confess to noticing how humid Sydney is compared to Melbourne. So it will be interesting to venture back to a QLD summer one day. Haven't managed it in 16 years though!

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Yep, I understood it the same way you do. Kind of similar to a person being house proud.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Yep. You may not have the best house on the street but you are proud of what it is.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Being house proud is still a long way different from being proud of where you live in terms of location.

I get being house proud, I get being proud of achievements (of which house proud would most likely also fit) - but not proud of a location so I think I'm with MP.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

I'm with Paulry and for a rare instance, troubadour. Most people are proud of their house and its location.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Not so fast. We remain, as per usual; on very different pages. Sounds like you are reading from a different book altogether.
I do not get the concept of pride in location nor particularly in a house. I can like where I live but take pride if that is the term you prefer to use, in personal accomplishments,
not in location or material possession. Like and pride are very different. Probably more a sense of ambiguity would replace pride in the context you use it in.
There are always far better houses in much more dynamic locations .

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

OK. Of course. You don't like where you live. However I do agree with what you said in post 30

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Do you not see that there is a difference between liking where you live, and being proud of it?

I like where I live for sure, I chose the area because I like it, but I'm not proud of it. There are plenty of other nice areas I could have chosen, and I'm equally not ashamed of those areas because I did not choose to buy a house there.

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Would you defend it if its qualities were questioned?

Re: Some Queensland coast climate advice please
 

Remind me, what was the argument about again? :lol: