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Published: October 10th 2007
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We left Kieran & Kate's on 25th September to start our roadtrip adventure - 13 days to drive up the Bruce Highway from Brisbane to Cairns. This trip is about km, but when you factor in the side trips it is probably a little over 2000km.
For this roadtrip we rented a Wicked van, which you see all over Oz as they are geraed towards the backpacker on a budget; that is until you factor in all of the petrol, yes, petrol, not diesel as you would expect. We had to fill up the tank every 200km, which made us dig a little deeper into our pockets!
Our first stop was Australia Zoo, about an hour north of Brissy. This is, or should I say was, home to the Crocodile Hunter. We spent about 4hours going around the zoo, an hour of that being spent in teh Crocosseum watching the crocs, bird and snake shows. After this we headed up to Nossa, which is the more ponsy and pretentious version of Byron Bay. There are some lovely shops and restaurants but unfortunately for us it was the same old story - lack of money!! We did want to try
our hand at surfing again, as so far we've only had the 2 hr lesson in Byron, but the surf looked pretty crap so instead we opted for the people watching sport! We only spent one night in Nossa and then headed to Hervey Bay, which is the launch pad for many holiday makers going to Fraser Island, and incidentally is also the whale watching capital of the world!!
Fraser Island, or K Gari (meaning Paradise) as it is known to the local indigenous Australians is basically one gigantic sandbar (120km x 15km) and is said to have more sand than the Sahara Desert. There are many ways to see the island, as long as you have a 4x4, but we opted for the 2 day, 1 nt Cool Dingo Tour. There were 23 of us in total with our driver and guide, Ranger Bob. Bob was quite amazing as the island seemed to be his life and I have never seen anyone as passionate about there job - sorry, but I never really got like that working with sandwiches!! Although it is, as I said a massive sandbar, it is suprisingly green, with miles upon miles of rainforest
anbd over 200 natural lakes - Lake MacKenzie being the most stunning that we saw. Whilst we were travelling along 75 mile beach, on the East side of the island, we saw a pod of dolphins and a dingo that was just wandering aloing. We were taking a well deserved rest by Eli Creek, just off 75mile beach, and while we were there we had the opportunity to go on a plane ride. The runway for this ride was the beach.... the same beach that had 4x4 trucks and utes coming down it which was quite bizarre. Imagine an 8seater light aircraft taking off on a motorway, well it was something like that! It was a fantastic ride and we saw more freshwater lakes (1 in the shape of a butterfly), 75 mile beach, a ship wreck and saw a humpback whale, not bad for a 15 minute ride.
The next couple of days, after leaving Fraser Island were quite mundane as we made our way to the Whitsundays. It's about 800km between the 2 ports and not a lot to see along the way, other than sugarcane fields, and lots of them! However we finally reached Airlie Beach,
the main gateway to the Whitsundays. Our choice of vessel was quite limited but we managed to book ourselves on the Atlantic Clipper for 3 days and 2 nights. It was Ok but was a bit of a party boat, well at least it was the first night, but calmed down the second after everyone was walking around hungover! The 1st day was a little overcast, but still the Whitsundays were quite stunning with crystal clear waters and white sandy beaches - this really was picture postcard territory!! Whitehaven Beach has got the finest sand I've ever seen (and I can tell you I've seen my fair share of beaches over the past few monthgs!). The sand was almost as fine as icing sugar - my photos really don't do it justice.
The next stop on our roadtrip was Magnetic Island, so called because one day Captain Cook had a bit of a dodgy compass and so he assumed the island had a magnetic force (what a dope!!). We were only on the island for a short time so opted for a bus tour, which turned out to be full of Japanese tourists and rubberneckers!! The bus took us
around the very compact island stopping at many coves and beaches and we also got to feed some rock wallabies which were suprisingly very friendly (mind you I can be very friendl;y if someone is offereing me food too!). About 6 hors later and we were back in teh van heading towards Port Douglas & Cape Tribulation. These places are both past Cairns in the Tropical North Queensland. port Douglas is a lovely little town with a real holiday atmosphere to it. Daniel 'Harry Potter' Radcliffe is there at the moment making a new film, but unfortunately we didn';t see him.. What we did see, which was even better was England kick Australia's arses in The Rugby World Cup - Very satisfying being a pommie in Oz at the moment!! The following day and it's off to Cape Tribulation. Cape Trib, and all around Cairns are called the Wet Tropics. Here the rainforest meets the white sandy beaches which meets the crystal clear sea. This area is stunning. Cape Trib is also where you'll see the last of the buitumen roads, as if you want to go any further north you have to take a 4x4 as it's all dirt
tracks. So this is nearly the end of the road for us, quite literally, before flying over to Darwin, ironically via Brisbane!!
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