Maunie stops traffic

The temptation to stop the traffic on the main east coast Pacific Highway was just too much for us.so yesterday we motored up the mighty Clarence River and through the Harwood lifting bridge.

Known as 'The Big River', the Clarence is navigable for about 40 km up to the city of Grafton for masted vessels and for quite a long way further for motorboats.

The river is very tidal so we had nearly two knots of flood tide helping us upstream and, surprisingly, dolphins alongside us

Organising the bridge to be lifted involved a phone call 24 hours in advance to the contractor who travels some 80km to perform the magic. 3 boats anchored just downstream and motored through in convoy whilst a satisfyingly large tail-back of traffic formed on the highway.

Taranui (whom we first met in Vanuatu) anchored whilst the traffic thunders over the bridge

The lift begins

The green light shows and we're off. The traffic is held back off the bridge

We anchored off the little town of Maclean; known as 'the Scottish Town', all the lamp-post bases are painted in tartan colours. 

Oh, readers of the last update will be interested to know that the severe thunderstorms forecast for Thursday night missed us, just. The Gold Coast that we left  took a bit of a battering, though, over the past few days - these photos from Facebook:

The other risk of severe storms in these parts - giant hailstones!

The forecast for the next few days looks ok for us, though a trifle warm!