City in a Garden

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DAY 348



We’ve got half a million!

Dollars! Yea we wish! But no, with this blog entry today we have achieved half a million words typed on the blog. Wow we think that is amazing!

Today we have just hit just over 500,000 words, so we are quite pleased with my achievement.

Today is no ordinary day, today is my birthday, and Caroline said something puzzling yesterday, she said “sorry your birthday is not going to be very exciting”. Mmmm, lets just consider that, NOT VERY EXCITING, well we have been lucky enough to be able to have a year off work, and we are in a country where we have followed the sun, for nearly that time, a country we absolutely love, spending it in great places with the person that I love, what could be better than that.

Again I was up early, today we really wanted to make progress and get going but we first wanted to welcome back Julie who had been away for the night, make sure the place was clean and tidy, and get ourselves together.

I was beetling about with the trailer, making sure it was all ready to go, and Caroline surfaced, her little smiley face peering over the veranda hand rail asking me if I wanted another cup of tea.

I went up and kissed her good morning, she wished me a happy birthday and we sat discussing the tasks we needed to make sure we completed ready for Julies arrival and our departure from Cairns.

I sat at the breakfast counter and “booted” up the laptop, I looked at my e-mails and saw that I had some electronic birthday cards from my Mum and my Sister back home in the UK and a Skype message to the “Chief Wombat” from the Wallaby Wanderers somewhere in W.A. I flicked back to the blog site just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, when I checked the stats but it still said 500,943 words

We set about loading all our gear that was in the house back in to the truck, our sleeping bags and the clothes that had been washed and just about everything else. With the house cleansed of our stuff we put our backs in to giving it the once over, mopping and sweeping the floors, sweeping the veranda down, emptying the dish washer, now it was all clean and tidy.

It was all done with plenty of time, so the last job to do was both have a shower, put some clean clothes on and get our selves ready for the off.

Julie arrived home at around 12.45, it was great to see her, she thanked us for preparing the house, and we gave her a quick run through of our next move and said that we may see her again next week if we come back to Cairns to see Richard and Elizabeth, she laughed and said that we could stay here if we so wished, providing no one else was staying.

After a round of kisses, we thanked her for being so hospitable and we hit the road, it always feels so different hitched to the trailer for the first time again and resuming our nomadic lifestyle.

We were only heading to Babinda which was about 60k’s away to a little free campsite called The Boulders which we tried to stop at once before but there was no free space when we arrived so had to go some where else.

We figured being Wednesday and outside of the school holidays we stood a chance of getting a spot, and after an uneventful journey, pulled in and found that there was one space left, bearing in mind there are only six spaces anyway, we tuck ourselves to one side, as it is a fairly large site. They do have a restriction of a maximum of 1 tent and 5 people per site, but that would be ridiculous on this particular site.

We set the trailer up, unpacking what had only just been packed away in Cairns, but this is a routine that has to be done everytime we move.

For some reason I feel absolutely shattered and as soon as the bed is made we both lie on the bed, Caroline dives in to her puzzle game on the Ninentdo DSi and I fall asleep.

When I come to we go and grab our cameras and wander down to the “The Boulders” were there is a lovely swimming hole and a walk, there are loads of signs around saying that the water may look safe but there have been quite a few deaths, as the current of the water through the Boulders is quite strong, not to mention the slippery rocks and some deep holes in the rocks. Caroline dips her toe and says that it is to cold anyway and she wouldn’t be going in.

We walk down through the rain forest walk, it is lovely, you get a peek of the rocks through the foliage every now and then, they do look pretty amazing, you finally arrive at a lookout to see more of the Boulders and the path the water has cut over the years, for something that looks so serene here, you can see how nature unleashes her power with the torrent of water to carve this spectacular scenery.

Just before we get back to the trailer it starts to rain, we look at each other and think about doing our dinner outside, I come up with a plan, “Lets drive in to Babinda to see if we can get an evening meal.” So we unhook the truck from the trailer and hop in, its only 10 minutes in to town.

We find a café, called Yum Yum’s café, I really fancied Fish and Chips, whilst Caroline when for Chicken and Chips. Yum Yum’s is quite a big place and has allsorts of artefacts to look at while you wait, including some pretty good pink pigs and green turtles made out of disused gas bottles.

We had a great meal and we didn’t even get wet, we drove back to the trailer and typed the blog and tried to get on line but the signal was to weak, so we would have to do it tomorrow when leaving town.

We talked for a hour or so then hit the sack, after yet another busy day, looking around us, everyone here seems already to have gone to bed, there is silence apart from some heavy snoring coming from a nearby tent, we hear someone say something a few grunts later and the snoring has stopped albeit only temporarily, moments later the snoring starts again.

We are sad to have left Cairns, the City in a garden it is lovely, but we need to move on, we have had a great experience in Cairns with the people we have met and the things we have done, but it seems a city that has been hit by the world economic crisis really hard and there is no work in our field.

So good night all, until tomorrow, should we be spared.

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Photos

The Boulders
By Name and Nature

Babinda Boulder
Camp site, only 6 pitche available

Turtle
A Turtle popped his head up to say G'day

Boulders Swimming Hole
Boy it was cold

Comments

[Helen Sheridan]

Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday Andy with a big lick from Wally, Jack, Trixie, Kimba, Toby and Tiny. Hope you had a lovely day - busy making silage here at the moment and a bit more shearing. Can't ever do one job a day have to have 6 things going at once. Love Helen

[kangaroojack]

Birthday Wishes
Hi Helen, thanks for my birthday wishes, leave me something to do on the farm for when we get back there! Loads of hugs to Wally and the gang! Andy x

[John and Shirley]

Birthday
Happy birthday....hope have a nice day with no rain! We are sitting in the blazing sun at the moment....have read two of your blogs, but it is too hot to stay out here. We are waiting for the shops to open at 12.00. We need to buy our groceries as we only have some bread, tinned corned beef and one of my fruit cakes......hope to try the swimming pool later.