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Published: March 28th 2011
Heading down the east coast our next stop was Townsville – since we had been roughing it up for a few days on the glamorous driver reviver stops we decided to treat ourselves to staying in an actual campsite for a couple of days!
The campsite we checked into seemed like a bit of luxury with working showers, clean(ish!) toilets, a laundry and even a swimming pool! After taking advantage of our free pool we headed into the city centre to take care of some necessities, an hour later and we were fixed up with an Australian phone number, an Australian bank account and an Australian tax number – now we are pretty much fully fledged Aussies!!
Aside from enjoying our great wee campsite and almost becoming Aussie citizens we actually really enjoyed Townsville as a place. It’s a charming little city and right bang in the middle of it is a huge hill called Castle Hill – all day long joggers and walkers pound the road up to the top in the sweltering sun, a bit like Arthurs Seat but a lot bigger! It was a tough climb to the top for both of us, Tina with her
feet up in the dashboard as Sheila carried us up!! The views from the top were amazing, you could see for literally miles in all directions.
Leaving our ‘home from home’ was a drag but as we were getting too comfy we decided to hit the road again in the direction of Airlie Beach. We were feeling back home for a while on the way though as we passed through the town of Ayr on the road down! Feeling a bit brave we considered staying in a national park for the night – the drive took us on a dirt track where we were completely in the middle of nowhere following our track! Before we knew it, it was pitch black and as we have found out here Australia really comes alive at night – first we were blocked by a herd of 60 cows, then we were swarmed by enormous bugs attracted by our headlights! Once the dirt track seemed to go into a small river we thought enough was enough and decided to turn back before we became stranded in the outback!! On the way back we had to try our hardest not to squash any of
the hundreds of suicidal frogs bouncing about the track in front of us. After heading back to the main highway we were soon camped up in a free campsite in time to cook up some supper on our stove!
The next day we reached the famous Airlie Beach – never one’s to miss a trick on the money front we saw that there was a free lagoon available so within a few minutes we had the towels out and were lazing by the pool. After our relaxing day by the lagoon we were sitting out by our campervan midway cooking up our tea when a massive thunderstorm struck – great! We ate our soggy dinner and contemplated whether we should just get drunk!
As there was nowhere free to camp up that night in Airlie we decided to head onwards in search of somewhere to stay but this ended up with us sleeping by the road in the town of Proserpine and waking up with a warning sticker on the window advising we could be fined for camping illegally on council grounds – woops!! We woke ourselves up and drove out the town for the nearest lay-by spot
for some much needed kip (not before Sheila had almost become stuck in a muddy verge at the side of the road). Never a dull moment with the camper!
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