'The Gambler' - 29th Aug - 8th Sep 06

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We waited until 8.15am to wake Wigg and Ross even though we were excited, having not seen them since Cambodia. As usual, they didn't thank us for waking them at such an 'anti-social' hour! We had a brief catch up before our room was ready. We hadn't slept since the night before flying, so were desperately in need of some sleep... the excitement of a bed was short lived for Greeny though as within 10 minutes of getting into an actual bed for the first time in 2 1/2 months, her friends from home, Iain and Jacks, text and were in Cairns, so whilst Whits and Smithy slept, Greeny dodged snoozing and went to meet them. We were staying at the Caravella 77 backpackers on the Esplanade, opposite a huge manmade lagoon with a gorgeous chilling out area - the lads had selected well!
Late that afternoon, the roadtripping team reconvened. As well as the 3 of us and Ross and Wigg, the boys had also succeeded in roping in our compulsary 'token Irish', Wayne. It seemed Iain and Jacks were planning the same trip so would undoubtedly be able to do part of it with us, though they were in possession of a vehicle already so would be starting ahead of us. After a team meeting of agenda and time scales, we realised we really needed to get organised and get ourselves motors! We spent the afternoon looking at cars and vans but eventually gave up for the day, focusing our plan of attack for the following day.
The 8 of us headed for the Woolshed for our free dinner, a complimentary inclusion of our backpackers. With their special 5 drinks for $12 we got fairly steaming and randomly found ourselves watching goldfish racing in the pub - this is a freaky sight when you've had a few drinks so we moved onto another bar, Gilligans. Us, still wired from lack of sleep and Iain and Jacks planning to leave for Cape Trib in the morning, left the boys with a stack of drinks vouchers and headed to our comfy beds!
We checked out another car the next morning, but still slightly clueless on car buying found ourselves chatting to a British guy living here, John, at Travellers Autobarn. The registration rules of each state vary and purchasing a vehicle is very involved. We realised that, clearly way out of our depth, we may have found our saviour! He happened to be selling his own Mitsubishi Magna hatchback which half an hour later we committed ourselves to, and John was going to take us personally to deal with its registration ... phew!
The next few days were really busy and buying a vehicle is a stressful business! The lads debated over a few different options on cars but opted for an $1100, 20 year old shed, with the reasoning that as it has already done a gazillion kms anyway, a couple of thou more can't hurt - hmmm we'll see!
We did manage to have some chilling out time including a trip out to the cable wakeboarding club just out of town and some realaxing at the lagoon.
With both parties now vehicle owners we took a trip out to Big W for the essentials, (including the walkie talkies) The lads were suitably impressed by our extensive research done the day before and we shopped up fairly quickly. The was however, the point that we realised that they love to faff around, with lengthy delays to rival Team Ireland! We drove to find them in Big W car park as they were missing in action, only to discover that their key wouldn't turn in the ignition and the barrell was bascially knackered! With time ticking on, we left them to wait for the locksmith and headed 27 kms out of town to Palm Cove. The area is gorgeous, with loads of swanky resorts. Our campsite was modest by comparison but nice - with a night without the lads, we had time to try out all the equipment that was sold with the car. We quickly discovered that our stove didn't work and that our 3rd chair was built for a 4 year old child! Other than that, we had a great tent, spacious enough for all of us!
The rains had fallen hard last night and the weather was still drizzly but we went over to the wakeboarding club to watch a local competition. Luckily it held off and we positioned ourselves in a prime location on sunloungers right on the edge of the lake. It was great, some of the guys were amazing. Our major source of amusement was a little Jack Russell that kept tearing around the lake, it moved like lightning, and fondly reminded us of the crazy mutt at the Cheetah park in Africa. With the lads now with us, we shopped for the final neccessity, a personal CD player so we could play our new car named 'The Gambler' its theme tune on each journey!
That night we spent back in Palm Cove. With the weather still abysmal, Greeny went off to call home and returned to find her comrades steaming drunk and a game of 'turd man' in full swing! Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em - Smithers made sure of a catch up for her by some exquisite dice rolling!
We finally left ... destination Cape Tribulation heading north, so in the wrong direction but at least we were leaving Cairns! The first stop en route was Mossman Gorge. It was very different to any we have encountered to date, a beautiful rainforested area, sadly no swimming allowed due to the crocs and fast flowing waters. We did a walk around it, at one point crossing a rickety old bridge which looked doomed for an imminent collapse, this spun Whits out slightly and she crossed it in about 3 seconds flat - the rest of us took an alternative tactic and tried to bounce as much as we could to floor each other! Funny at the time but it left you feeling like you were walking on the moon for about 10 minutes after!
We stopped off further on to get the boys another tent. Whits and Greeny thought this was the perfect opportunity to do a stealthy birthday cake mission and so sent Smithers off to purchase the grog. The mission nearly had to be aborted when Smithy appeared in the supermarket, Whits had dived behind a trolley to avoid being caught, whilst Greeny like a rabbit in the headlights, dumped the cake decs in the pet food section and immediately embarked on a discussion with Smithy on the differing types of velcro whilst Whits left the building. Small things aren't easy when you spend 24/7 together!
We crossed over the Daintree River on the ferry and headed towards a campsite we had heard was good. The scenery on the drive was gorgeous, through hills and rainforests, The Gambler, however did not like it at all. She was making some dubious noises and creeping up hills at about 5 kms an hour ... we began to be a bit wary of our purchase ... We stopped at PK's where we'd intended to stay but had to make an immediate change of plan - as well as the sites being tiny, the place was licensed and we had bought with us enough alcohol to sink a small ship. It was here that we learnt of the tragic death of Steve Irwin, the aussie legend, which by the way has hit Australia pretty hard. After shopping around a few campsites, we settled on the Rainforest Village. It was perfect, we commandeered a huge area next to the kitchen and there didn't seem to be anyone remotely near which would be great for Jos impending birthday. We spent the evening playing cards - the favourite President and Donkey, Shithead and attempted to remember the rules of Chase the Ace for Jos birthday party.
The morning weather for Jos birthday was fairly miserable, but after a leisurely brekkie time with cards and pressies we weren't disheartened and went to Kulki Beach. The beach was gorgeous, deep and flat with rainforest and rocks high on either side and perfect for games. The boys had a play with the football whilst we tried to find digging implements for a sandcastle competition with a 'nautical' theme ... we were unsuccessful, so started up the cricket. We were rained on, but undeterred, and Smithy had a birthday win! After the game the weather picked up and it turned beautiful. The 3 of us had a game of the favourite paupers tennis and then roped the guys into a game of paupers volleytennis (which for those who don't know is an improvisation of the 2 games due to a vital component being amiss ie - no volleyball, but the basic rules of it with a tennis ball and our flip flops as bats) Sadly, the lads thrashed us at our own game! Smithy and Greeny had a quick kick about and then we had a 3 aside footie game ... we had to leave it at a reasonable 2 all so we could get back for the party preparations! Whilst Jo S went to call home, the rest of us frantically decorated the cake and pimped the place up with balloons and table arrangements, though by the time Jo got back a fair while later the rest of us were pretty tipsy! We decided it best to eat before embarking on any drinking games. The BBQ was amazing and there was serious amounts of food (thanks Uncle Pete and Aunty Kate) Reluctant to stop eating, Wigg fed himself to the point of collapse and had to bow out of the debaucherous pass the parcel drinking game and be music master - as we had made up the challenges though, he didn't escape - we had stitched the boys up royally, and there were heaps of shots for them all tucked inside! We managed some games of the legendary 'turd man' and Chase the Ace - Smithy lasted to her usual birthday time of 11pm whilst the other 5 stayed up til about 2.30am in Jos honour of course! It's all a bit hazy but there was plenty of dancing on tables and piggy back fights - what a great birthday we had!
Needless to say all 6 of us felt like we'd been steamrollered the next morning. We could barely move - a mixture of the previous days activities on ageing bones, and the alcohol abuse ... ouch! The 3 of us and Wayne managed to muster up the energy to move by 4pm and went to the Insect Museum down the road. The friendly aussie lady there was great and gave us loads of information. We were awestruck by the bugs and butterflies - they were all so perfect and there were thousands of different species. Amongst our favourites were the UV butterflies which glow under certain lights and had the most stunning irridescent appearance. Some were elecric blue - we had never seen anything quite like it. We had another yarn with the lady and she told us about a creek named 'Blue Hole' by the Aborigines, so after visiting the peaceful creek next to the musuem, we found ourselves on a dirt track. Greeny hopped out to remove a fallen branch from the road, and got impailed on a visious looking spiky tree which caused a few laughs as we were all still a bit spaced out! The walk was like crossing through an enchanted forest, the path a mass of huge tree roots, and the pool itself was, just as the name suggested blue as the sky and stunning - a well kept secret.
That evening, totally exhausted, we must have looked like the biggest bunch of nerds ever, reading and doing crosswords, hence an early night was in order!
We were quite sad to be leaving the site which had come to feel like home. On the way back from Cape Trib we stopped off at Jindaba Boardwalk where we wandered the 700 metres through gorgeous rainforest, it's so calming listening to nothing but the sounds of the wind in the trees and its inhabitants - we really loved the serenity of the place.
We took a brief detour on the way back to Cairns to Port Douglas to pay our respects to Steve Irwin. We spied his famous boat Croc One, one of the vessels being used at the time of the accident, moored in the marina and saw some of the tributes people had left for him. It was extremely sad as he is obviously such a well loved character.
Once back in Cairns we booked up a snorkelling / dive trip onto the Great Barrier Reef for the next day. This was a long overdue necessity so with an early start ahead we had a relaxing evening.
Ross dropped us all down at the harbour for 8 am, a slight squeeze with Whits crammed snugly into the boot with all the lads baggage! We stepped onto the Supercat and were greeted with a hot cuppa. We were lucky as there were only about 30 of us on a boat with a capacity of up to 80. We cruised for 1 1/2 hours out to Saxon Reef and after the initial shock of the cool waters, swam off to explore the reef. Whits and Greeny spotted a huge stingray straight away and we were stunned by how many different and beautiful fish there were. After a gert lunch, we got back in - due to the tides being so low, a large amount of the coral was exposed above the surface, and rather than waste loads of time trying to get to another reef, we moved to another area of Saxon Reef. We floated around for ages, as well as a huge variety of fish, we were astounded by the diversity of the coral - the variety of shapes and vibrant colours captivated us so much that at one point we had all scattered in opposite directions! Having re-established contact, Smithy had just gone around the corner of a reef when she started flapping frantically to Greeny and out of nowhere a huge Loggerhead Turtle appeared gliding gracefully through the water. We were so excited and followed it. As we passed over a group of divers Greeny managed to attract the attention of the dive master below and once spotted he did a signal to the others and everyone saw it, turning and pointing in unison. It was so funny with everything seemingly in slow motion! We were all left totally buzzing and ready to see more of the incredible Great Barrier Reef.
Catch Ya's Later Ya Little Ripper

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Photos

Nice Wheels
The legendary Gambler

Classy!
The interior of the Gambler

At the bug museum
A beautiful electric blue butterfly

Not just a clever name
Blue Hole Creek

In Port Douglas
Steve Irwin's boat Croc 1 with tributes in the foreground

Kulki Beach
Playing cricket on Smithers B'day

Cape Trib
Kulki Beach

Stunning!
The Great Barrier Reef

Jindaba Boardwalk
Lush rainforest

Smithers professionally decorated cake!
We did the best we could under the circumstances!

Happy Birthday!
Can you tell why she was in bed by 11pm!

Drink it bitch!
I'm not too keen on the tequila forfeit!

Music Meastro
Wigg ensures that there's no favouritism in drinking games pass the parcel!

Hilarious!
The crazy Jack Russell distracting the wakeboarders!