One Long Drive

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Day 51, 01/11/11
Camping out in a van is really cool and even more so when it comes to cooking. Cooking on the stove at Dinner was great fun last night and breakfast was a bowl of Cereal and one of the stove Kettles which whistle at you when its boiled.
We had a long drive to Cooktown today through the outback and it was fantastic; something you wouldn't see anywhere else in the world. As we didn't have a 4x4 we had to go the long way around going inland but since our whole trip up the coast has been along the coast it was nice to see Australia further inland - which was absolutely nothing!! There is a Roadhouse halfway where Stuart finished his drive and I had my go through to Cooktown. The whole drive was about 3 - 4 hours along one massively long straight road (There is one road pretty much all the way up the East Coast - its insane). Towards Cooktown our Van started to struggle and we had to call the rental company who sorted us out with a garage to go to only to be told by the garage that there was nothing wrong with the van. This wasted 3 valuable hours of our time so we were going to see what the rental company had to offer us as a sorry. Stuart then drove back to the Roadhouse where we spent the night.

Day 52, 02/11/11
I drove this morning back through towards Cairns but we went via The Atherton Tablelands which were pretty much just fields. After my 3 hour drive Stuart took over and drove through The Millaa Milla Waterfalls circuit where we stopped off at 3 different waterfalls. We then headed back to Cairns stopping off and Josephine Falls and The Boulders. We got back to the hostel and checked in and then I took the van back to the rental place as Stuart felt ill and didn't want the walk back. At the rental place we were told we didn't have to pay the $60 fuel to fill the van back up due to the time wasted in Cooktown which we were quite happy with. The tour was brilliant and all the little towns we stopped off at were very nice and the van was amazing. On my walk back I popped into Domino's pizza and applied for a job in there. We went out with the hostel in the evening to a local bar for free pizza and $5 drinks but we new it wouldn't be anything special so we had a McDonalds too, we popped into the Casino in the evening but I didn't bet anything.

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