The Pirates of Penzance

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DAY 323


After being busy for the last couple of days we need to start to focus on getting going again. This Domestic thing was only temporary and we still have some more travelling to do, the thing that is at the forefront of our minds is getting the house all nice and tidy and clean for when Julie gets back on Wednesday.

I appreciate that this is not a mammoth task, I know, but along side presenting the house we need to make sure we have all our gear ready for the onwards journey up to Cape York.

Cape York is basically 1000k’s from where we are at the moment in Cairns and it is the most the most Northerly tip of mainland Australia.

We have been told that October is the “best” month to go, but we are still not sure if we can get up there towing the trailer.

People have told us about “The Old Telegraph Road” and other scary things, but we will do our best and I have said to Caroline that’s all we can do if it gets too difficult or dangerous then the worst that can happen is we will turn round and head South, simple as that really.

What we hope to do is get right up to the Cape and hop on a ferry to Thursday Island which is about 30k’s from the Cape and I don’t know how many kilometres South of Papua New Guinea, we will be travelling through more of Australia’s remotest area’s and feel that our past experience across the Savannah Way and other parts of the trip have put us in good stead, but we will see.

So not only do we want to prepare the house, we also want to prepare our gear, clean it service it and the like, the Patrol has had its service, and is ready to go (apart from the small warranty job being done on Tuesday) but we need just to check everything else.

I was up at 7.00 as an early start was what I wanted, I set to it and loaded the dish washer and set that going, then got everything out of our food box, cleaned it and put it back checking what we needed to replace when we next went shopping.

Next was the tea/lunch kit, this is the kit that we keep in the truck, that allows us to make a sandwich at lunch time, houses our mugs and stuff like that, It was all taken out washed checked and repacked.

The fridge was the next target, it has been under the house since we have been here “off line” and left open, so I brought it in to the Kitchen cleaned it, and powered it back up to get it “down to temperature” so it is ready to receive its frozen food.

We know you lot think we are just dossing about in Australia, getting a tan and avoiding working, but you are all so way off the mark, I never knew the travelling bit was such hard graft, so to try to make things easier we have already cooked up some meals and frozen them in bags, all ready for when we need them which should save us a bit of time, stress and effort.

Caroline has been busy with the washing machine and beetling around tidying up, airing the sleeping bags etc. However the afternoon catches up with us both so we find ourselves having a bit of a rest, well it is hot and we shouldn’t over do things!

However as we have had little good exercise today we choose to do our early evening walk to the top of the road, it is warm again and we both feel the heat despite the sun having already gone from the sky. The walk up feels harder on the muscles again, but we keep going only having one rest before the top.

We talk about how long we have been here and how many times we may have done this walk, yet in the 5 weeks it seems like we have been here for no time at all and I am sure we could work out how many times we have done this walk if we read the blog.

I see a news item in the papers about a bush fire in Queensland just south of Cairns, it would appear that a camper did not put their camp fire out before vacating their site and it took hold again, we have seen for ourselves how easy that is. It seems that Queensland is on high fire alert and in many places fires are banned, so that also may mean that we are unable to have campfires once we get underway again.

Andy Types the blog for “Mummy’s House, and its takes quite a while as it’s a fairly full blog, and just as he completes loading the photo’s they crash and are lost and have to be all done again, his lordship was not happy.

After an easy dinner we settle down to watch a film, which happens to be “Pretty Woman” tonight with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, I have seen that film so often I virtually know the script by heart. There is something very heart warming about this film, ok fairy tale really but it is a great film no matter how many times I have watched it. So if you have any knowledge of this film then you will understand the relevance of today’s blog title “Pirates of Penzance”.

The film finished fairly late so it was time for bed, we wanted to be up in good time in the morning as we plan to go out and walk early.

Until another day tomorrow!

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Comments

[Darryl and Sarah]

The whole fairytale ending
You'll be back on the road in no time at all and there is no better adventure than one which will take you to the 'top of the world'! We've heard some great stories from people who have done it in the last two months, they had a great time what with walking all the river crossings and trips into the different communities up there. It's one of those seeing is believing trips and it's one which we will most definately be back to undertake in a couple of years. Safe travels to all of you from all of us x x