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Published: August 3rd 2009
Starting mileage
Or it that kilometerage?I grabbed a quick morning swim before breakfast and then we headed out to pick up the campervan we had booked to allow us to drive down the East Coast to Adelaide. It had not been a good few days for Lisa - she had been having a terrible time trying to get through to various credit card companies to arrange replacements (lost her wallet in NZ) - in typical 'big-company-take-your-money-now-speak-to-a-machine' wanker style. I hate big companies' customer 'service' - don't get me started... So while we waited for the campervan to be ready Lisa tried (in vain) to get her cards sorted.
We finally picked up campervan 'Armageddon' - 'spelt incorrectly' Lisa tells me. She was also not too impressed that most Wicked vans are funny or arty - ours was just offensive ('Bullshit' on the side) - see photos. We did some food shopping, stopped for a quick swim in the fantastic Cairns public pool (with free BBQ, live music & sandy shore) - makes up for the fact that the beach is shit and no one swims there for fear of sharks and stingers.
We then headed up north Port Douglas where
we stayed in a paid ($26AUD) campsite and had a quick swim in their pool. We hadn't been able to get any gas, so we had sandwiches for dinner. It had been really hot and sweaty since we had arrived and our first night in the campervan was dreadful. Our model van only had a meshed window on one side (others had one on both) so we couldn't get a breeze passing through (unless we opened a normal window for the mozzies to come through!). We hardly slept in our ‘mobile oven’ and was fully awoken early by the
local birds.
Saturday 13th January 2007 We left at 6.30am to drive up to Cape Tribulation to make sure we got there in time to a do a dive on the Great Barrier Reef. It was an hour on the catamarans to Mackay Reef. It was very calm water - so flat it was almost eerie (see the
video). We did two 40 minute dives (SEE LOG) and had a really nice lunch on the boat. We also had a good snorkel session and met up with a
turtle.But I made a pretty major mistake. I demonstrated to Lisa how you
could use your BC jacket inflator as an emergency air source - taking in a breath from my buoyancy jacket. The dive master told me that they contained shit loads of bad bacteria (hot, damp, dark climate) and that people had died a few days later of respiratory diseases doing similar & that I should go to a doctor :-( So that put a bit of a downer on my day...
I called a health advice number who told me to come in if I had any breathing related issues. It was going to be a tense few days... Idiot!
We headed back to down towards Cairns.
We stopped and spent the night at the War Memorial Park. Very dark and quiet - only ones there until a car pulled up... It was the ranger to check we weren't being naughty... See the
video of it in the daytime.
Sunday 14th January 2007 We stopped off for me to have a quick look round a war museum (Lisa didn't come in..)
We then drove to Kurunda, got online, made food and ate in a carpark and then drove on to Palm Cove. There we
looked at the nice beach - but couldn’t swim due to stingers.
We drove back to Cairns (Lisa went tried to go the wrong way round two round abouts - Yanks! ) and parked outside the Tropical Oasis hostel and paid $2 to use their showers. We also used the kitchen and the great pool.
Monday 15th January 2007 We were awoke by a tap on the window by the owner of the hostel. Apparently we had misunderstood - we couldn't park there and had to move before the next-door neighbours called the police and get us $2000 fine for camping on the roadside... People are so much more laid back and nicer in NZ!
We got our blue gas bottle refilled at a DIY store. We had stopped at service stations the past few days but they all used the white bottles - which you just swap for a full one. And after a food stop, we then left Cairns and headed South down the coast.
We stopped off at Insifial and I noticed a couple of fridges, turned off full of drinks with a sign saying "Do not drink". I asked about them
and was told they were owned by a cafe that was shut down by the cyclone. She then showed me the devastation that hit the area when a huge cyclone ripped through the town. I had no idea! She said that it was the season again and they hadn't had one yet and were overdue...
We carried on south and stopped at Cardwell to swim in 5 Mile Creek watering hole (a rare creek that didn't have crocs). Although it did have stonefish that put a poisonous spine in your foot if you stand on them... We interrupted a couple skinny dipping with what looked like the girl's mother too! How very open minded :-)
We drove on to Townsville and stayed the night in a BP service station truck stop.
Tuesday 16th January 2007 Lisa managed to sweet talk us a free shower at the BP service station - which was great. It is so hot and sweaty up in Queenstown, and it is even worse living and sleeping in the van!
We spent the day in Townsville - Lisa got a haircut and we spent a lot of time online.
That night we
Tropical Oasis Pool
Spent a lot of time in that pool! drove a few miles out to Homehill Comfort Stop - which was open 24 hours, unmanned and offered full toilet, shower and BBQ facilities for free! In the UK it would be a 'yoof' or drunkard hangout and been set on fire and covered in graffiti!
My first impressions of North Queensland: lots of sugar cane fields and railways crossing the roads, houses on stilts, flood level markers, banana's growing with colourful bags wrapped round the fruit, blue bottle stingers in the sea and workman wearing sun hats. Also noticed a few brands, some familiar, some not - BP, Caltex, Bunnings and Woolworths (food supermarket here, not toys, music, shite, etc). Names new to me: Coles and Bilo (supermarkets).
Also noticed lots of tired driver signs - all with a different phrase - like 'Break the drive, stay alive'.
Something else was that every town and village had a custom welcome sign, with some sort of logo, one of the not so good example - "Gladstone - you can't miss it". You can't miss a big pile of steaming horse pooh either - doesn't make it worth checking out!
Another thing was that all the creeks
and streams that you drive over (and there a lot in Queenstown) have little name signs. Most of which are named after the length of the creek - "Five mile Creek", "Nine Mile Creek", etc. Which makes me think two things - 1> there are a lot of duplicates and 2> All the distances and speeds are in Kilometers in Oz!?
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