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Monday 14th May (1036kms) - a record number of kilometres in one day from Daly Waters to Mount Isla, crossing the Queensland border & making the time difference between us & the UK 9 hours. As you can imagine when we got to Mount Isla we were exhausted so went & got some cheese & Biscuits & wine for a nice treat. We may have overdone it a bit on the wine in the evening but I think it was needed as we were feeling a bit claustrophobic in Shack & homesick, constantly being on the road.
Tuesday 15th May (582.6kms) - We drove to Prarie, the smallest little town where we walked into a bar & everyone went quiet & looked at us, (a local pub for local people), it looked just how you would expect an outback Australian town to look like. As we had over done the wine on Monday night we had a lie in & didn't get on the road until about 11am. We parked up Shack in the back Garden of a motel, (the owner had agreed it, we didn't just park there!) After dinner Claire walked with me along the pitch black
road to find a phone box to call Andy as it was his birthday & there was no mobile signal in the town; so I got to speak to him & wish him a happy birthday.
Wednesday 16th May (454.3kms)- We drove to Townsville & the scenery was spectacular as we neared the coast, lots of green mountains & fields & rivers, where as all the rivers we had past before had been dried up river beds. We had lunch by a park in Townsville & had a walk around town, we went on the internet & then headed up to Ingham where we spent the night in an off the road camping layby. I got told off by a man in Y-Fronts for talking on my phone outside his caravan but it was the only spot where I could get a signal, he then told Claire off too, wierdo!
Thursday 17th May (202.7kms) - We drove up the coast through beautiful countryside to Innisfail, we where went on the internet again & walked around town. We found a nice little caravan park to spend our last night in Shack at Flying Fish Point & had a swim
in the pool. We started on the wine & had a nice dinner, jointly cooked by Claire & I. Claire coloured my hair for me & a strange man knocked on the window & asked if we would plait his hair for him in the morning, we said yes & hoped he wouldn't come back, I think he was drunk or on drugs, either way he wasn't quite all there!
Friday 18th May (108.9kms) - We got up & started clearing out Shack ready to return him when we got to Cairns when the wierd man came back & asked if we would plait his hair again. Claire said she would & he kindly took our rubbish bags to the bin for us, we had asked him to come back in 10 minutes so we could finish clearing up. 10 minutes passed & we were ready to go & he had not come back so we did a runner & drove off, luckily he didn't see us & thankfully we have never seen him again! We continued up the coast to Cairns, we parked up Shack while we found ourselves a hostel & tried to move our stuff into.
During which the keys to Shack managed to fall down the back of the seat & we thought someone had stolen them off the seat when we weren't looking. Claire headed to the police station to report the keys stolen & I stayed in the van, trying to call the hire company as Shack was due to be back with them at 4pm. It was such a panic, we checked everywhere in the van but I decided to double check & found the keys right down the back of the seat. I luckily managed to get hold of Claire before she got to the police station & she came back to the van & we laughed so much!
17 litres of wine, 8004.8 kilometres or 4963 miles later we said goodbye to Shack in Cairns & returned to normal backpacking life, living out of our bags on our backs!
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Andy
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Woohoo! At last i get a mention on the blog! Thanks for going to all that effort to ring me for my birthday babe, i love you Rico! xxx