FLIP, FLOP AND FLY!

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We were going to leave Townsville lots of times, but we were enjoying the rest so much that each morning we would wander over to reception and book another night. Travelling in Hilda is lots of fun but we had covered al ot of miles to make sure that we would get to Cairns in time for Christmas. Doing hundreds of kilometres every day can take it out of you. On Tuesday we finally left. We drove around Townsville looking for a tent and some chairs for Gemma and Kieran. Walking to the shops proved tricky for Andy. He has never been the greatest fan of flip flops, but out here there is no other option if you want to keep your feet cool and not wear Jesus creepers. Learning to walk in them has not been without problems. There have been stubbed toes, broken toe nails and a few times he has only just managed to stop himself falling flat on his face. Today’s flip flop incident topped the flip flop charts. Not looking where he was going he stumbled, and trying to regain his composure (trying not to look like a Wally) he then tripped himself up with his flip flop and managed to stop himself falling over. Unfortunately by hitting his head on a lamp post! It took all the will power I had not to laugh. Putting on my best concerned look I asked if he was ok. I could tell from his face that he was not happy. Apart from a bump on his head I suspect that the only other thing that was dented was his pride!

All the camping equipment bought we started heading north. We wanted to get as far north as we could but sadly Hilda did not want to. Her temperature gauge was on the move again so we had no choice but to get her looked at . The garage didn’t have time to look till the following morning so back to the campsite we went. By the time we pulled up outside the office it was raining really hard. The owner gave us our old pitch back and we got on with setting up in the rain. By the time we had finished we looked like someone had thrown buckets of water over us.

The following morning Andy took Hilda to the garage. Rather than pack everything up again I stayed at the campsite and looked after our things. I did look a little strange sat in my chair with a rucksack and a BBQ for company.

Andy returned with a disappointed look on his face. No one wanted to take our money to do a job that probably wouldn’t solve the problem - now that’s an honesty that you don’t normally find at a UK garage! We sat and thought about our options for a while and eventually decided that we had no other choice but to carry on and see what happened.

On our journey out we spotted a festively decorated road sign for Christmas Creek - this we decided was a photo opportunity not to be missed. Pulling over by the side of the busy road we put our Christmas hats on. Holding a drink and a Christmas cracker we set the timer and took a photo to put on a Christmas card we would send to our parents. Many passers by showed us their approval by waving and beeping their horns as they passed and a few others stopped to take a picture.

As we drover further north you could really tell that we were in tropical Australia. The rainforest was getting thicker, the noises from the animals louder and the humidity was still rising. We made our first stop at Cardwell. There we found a rainforest centre where we learned of all the insects and animals we should be watching out for. Some of them we would look forward to seeing, but the poisonous man eating ones could stay deep in the forest as far as I was concerned. On our way to our free camp spot we noticed that a police car was following us. Assuming he would over take us once we were on a straight stretch of road we were not concerned. Therefore we were a little surprised when he switched on his blue lights to pull over. The policeman appeared at our open window and enquired if we knew what speed we were driving. “around 70 kmph” Andy replied, “ I thought it was an 80kmph area.” “you were travelling at 72kmph” the policeman said with a strange look. “that is much too slow in a 100kmph area” Now this was something we had never experienced before, being pulled over for going too slow. We explained that we don’t like to drive too fast otherwise we miss seeing things and also it makes a huge difference to our fuel economy. The policeman finished by telling us that he liked our driving but the locals would not. His concern was that the locals would get frustrated and try and overtake us when it was not safe to do so. We had to promise that we would keep our speed to at least 80% of the limit and then he let us on our way. (It turns out that it is against the law to drive below 80% of the limit… the way these people drive that’s asking for trouble!)

Notching our speed up to a big 80 we soon arrived at our free camp spot. It was a gravelled area that was surrounded by rainforest. It seemed to be quite a popular spot, with at least 5 other campervans already set up for the night. We managed to get a good spot and were pleased that we arrived when we did. Soon after we were set up another 5 vans turned up and a few more had to drive on as there was no room at the inn. As darkness fell the many strange noises from the rainforest got louder. Many were noises I had only heard on television and some that we had never heard before. All this was a reminder of just how far we were from home. That night as we lay in bed there was an amazingly bright flash of lightning - its was as if someone had just switched the lights on. This was very closely followed by cracks of thunder so loud that we couldn’t hear each other speak. This continued throughout the night with rain like I have never experienced - well this was the rainforest after all!

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