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Published: December 28th 2008
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I felt almost refreshed when I awoke at 7am for breakfast.
The morning trip was to an aborigine cave which had paintings on the walls that were more than 500 years old. The dingy dropped us off group by group and we made our way up some steep steps that seemed to go on and on. It reminded me of the ice climb all over again. When we arrived on the boardwalk at the top of the steps, we took turns to look at the cave entrance. It was all a bit of a disappointment - not many paintings were visible from our vantage point and the cave was tiny. We couldn’t even go inside as it was barriered off. Even Lou, our crew member guide, apologised as she had thought there would be a bit more there to see. Still it was nice getting out and felt good to have had some exercise seeing as we‘d spent the last few days eating non stop.
When we got back on the boat we stuffed our clothes into our bags and spent the last few hours sitting on the shady back deck drinking coffee and eating rock solid ginger nuts
while chatting to people. We were all sad to be going back to the mainland. The trip felt like it was a little holiday for us - a chance to stop thinking about our next move for a change as everything was planned out for us.
As we pulled into the marina we were told about a planned get together in town for the passengers and crew with free drinks later that evening, but sadly we had already decided to travel up north once getting back to the van. Laura and Tom were going to do the same so we took their phone number and said we’d try to meet up at one of the campsites in Townsville. Both Matt and Laura are competitive so it became a race as to who would get up there first - unfortunately for Matt they got dropped off by the courtsey bus first, and we were last off the coach twenty minutes later so we figured we had no chance.
Getting out of the coach made us realise the break was finally over and it was back to our lovely van. I had actually started missing it and kept referring to
it as ‘home’ without even thinking. We didn’t even both to unpack so, after a few minutes of making sure we’d stowed everything in safe places, we hit the road.
A few hours later, as we approached Townsville, we called into a petrol station right next to a Hippie Camper branded van. It was Tom and Laura filling up! It was such a funny co-incidence although considering we’d been following them around everything (they were on Fraser Island at the same time as us, and they’d been on the same Lady Musgrave Island cruise too!) I guess we should have expected it. Matt was highly impressed that he’d managed to catch them up.
We had a quick look at the campsite brochure together and decided to stay at a place around the corner. We set off first and found the campsite quickly and went to check in. As usual I checked us in under my name and then went to look at the information leaflets at the side of reception. Then Tom appeared and started checking in too. Earlier I’d given Tom and Laura my NZ Top 10 campsite membership card as it gave 10% off at all
Australian Big4 campsites too. We’d used it regularly around NZ, but as we now had a Britz campervan we automatically got 10% off Big4s anyway just by showing our key fob so it made sense for them to get some use out of it. We’d used it a lot of times in NZ and the receptionists never so much as glanced at it, but today the guy on the till read the name on the front and saw it was my name. He exclaimed how weird it was to have two Karen Bleakley’s on the site one after the other and I had to turn away laughing. Tom kept it together perfectly and replied that we were in a family convoy, and they guy booked him in as Tom Bleakley. I had to get outside before I burst. The receptionist said to Tom that he’d put them on the site next to ours but said he could move if he was sick of the sight of us!
We got parked up and then our attention started towards where we could eat. We didn’t really feel like taking our vans out into town, but there also weren’t any restaurants in
walking distance. In the end Tom and Laura went and found out a Chinese take away while we set our van up ready to fit us all around our table. We’d debated about eating outside but it was far too hot and sticky, plus it was already going dark and there were frogs and toads everywhere.
They arrived with a bag full of food and we opened a bottle of wine enjoying that we were out of the way of the bugs and the heat. We spent the evening chatting, drinking and laughing over stories from our travels. It was 11.30pm by the time we looked at our watches and realised just how exhausted we all were.
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