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Published: October 16th 2009
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A Big cricket thing
Like alice in wonderland It’s quite weird sitting typing this as I have got so behind, we are nearly half way through our time in south island, I’m about a month behind with this as we have been moving around so much and it’s too cold to have the window open for the power lead for the computer - what a hard life I hear you say!!
Anyway, back to Australia……..
We left Airlie by about 8.30 and after a quick stop at a little town to raid the delicatessen we made our way to the much acclaimed Mission Beach. Loads of people had said how expensive it was so when we turned up and found a cute little village with a wicked campsite right on the beach we were well chuffed. To celebrate we went to the local and had some ice cold stubbies with some fellow campers. Mission Beach is a gorgeous place, it’s an enormous rainforest that goes right up to the beach. The very rare cassowary birds live in the rainforest so it has hardly been touched. The cassowaries are mean things that will gut you with their claw, they date back to prehistoric times apparently; we didn’t see any
though but we did see something else. On day two of lying on the beach reading in the sun, I was just coming to the crucial part in Pride and Prejudice when Tel kept going on about something in the water (he is usually pointing at a rock when he says this) so I carried on reading, after about 5 minutes there was a crowd on the beach so I went over to Tel and turned out they were sharks! If you zoom in really close on that photo you can see a fin, it’s wicked! How exciting, bull sharks, right where we had been swimming, Australia has got some pretty evil things, if it’s not spiders, its snakes or crocs or cane toads or sharks, the list is endless!! There was a very cute tree frog which lived in the loo at the campsite though and an enormous grasshopper so there is some wicked and non deadly stuff here too!
We ended up spending 4 of our last 6 days in Mission Beach, it was just a really sweet place where we met some great people and just enjoyed camping out by the beach and eating beans on toast
in such an incredible place. We had decided to stay there and drive straight to Cairns to drop Clyde off but the morning before we were due to leave it started raining and it didn’t stop, we’d had the awning up when it started to rain and so everything in the van was soaked and caked in mud, so, we legged it and made for dry ground!! I didn’t really know what to expect of Cairns but we got closer to the city and realised that spending our last night right next to the captain Cook Highway wasn’t going to be fun so we found a campsite twenty kilometres past Cairns called Palm Cove and spent the afternoon doing washing and giving Clyde a bit of a wash and fitting our stuff back into the bags (Joy!)
We had left the site by 8 and decided to make a last trip to Port Douglas for our final day in Clyde (sob!) It was a very manicured and pristine place, unusual for Australia, but very pretty. We had a lovely brunch of eggs Benedict at the marina and then had a wander around the shops killing time before we had to
head back and do the unspeakable, give Clyde back. We sat on the beach for about 20 minutes and then we knew we couldn’t put it off any longer so we started the drive back to Cairns. The road from port Douglas to Cairns is just incredible, you just drive right along the ocean with the Great Barrier reef appearing to your side, I’m willing to bet it gets even better the further north you go but, we’ll have to come back another day for that!
We made it back to cairns and then found ourselves a motel for the night. We dropped our bags off at the Rainbow and then took Clyde back to the depot. There was meant to be someone there to meet us but the office was shut, in the end we abandoned him in a parking lot putting the keys in a letterbox - such a sad way to say goodbye! Back at the Rainbow after a short taxi ride we set about squishing our stuff in our bags and doing some blogs. The highlight of the Rainbow was the giant flashing golden palm tree outside our room - so 70’s and the three girls
If you look really closely
you can see the fin - honest! next door who argued and screamed and tried to smash up the room all night but who paid our room service bill as compensation - sweet! So we left the rainbow and got a taxi to the airport. We were both sad to be leaving Australia, we have had such a wicked time, it has surpassed my expectations and I think it’s one of my favourite places we have been to!
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