Arriving in Cairns was a smack in the face. People - lots of them, cars – as in not 4x4s, various Europeans – noisy, shops – keep me out and rain – the cold sort.
Perhaps we picked the wrong place to stay, but after having to get up at midnight to shout at some Dutch backpackers next door to us and after the tenth time a smile or hello was ignored we couldn't wait to get ourselves back into some remote place with not many people around (and those that are are on the whole friendly).
We did get out to see the football (Germany vs Turkey), had a kebab and had our mysterious knocking in the car looked at. Apparently a popping floor panel. Unfortunately though the garage had the car for 3 days so we didn't get about as much as we would have liked. A day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef was good – we got a dive in – but with the weather not being its best it wasn't the amazing 'must do experience' we'd perhaps hoped for. It did get us reading up about diving in the area though and we started to look into a a wreck dive off Townsville.
The Rural Theme of North Queensland
We both wanted to see a cassowary in the wild. But preferably not one jumping us from behind or trying to disembowel us with their crazy big and extremely lethal talons (They have been known to cause fatalities). On a recommendation we spent our first night south of Cairns in Etty Bay. A great local's spot, with nothing but beach, caravans and cassowaries. One of the imposing creatures dutifully appeared the next morning and we took a few snaps whilst keeping a suitably large talon free distance.
Sunset from outside the tent, Etty Bay
We then sat ourselves down by the tent, beach view and tucked into our bowls of muesli and mugs of tea. I was teling Simon some fascinating story about something which he was paying his usual amount of attention to, when into my line of sight, about 2 foot behind Simon an unexpected visitor appeared. Given I'd stopped mid-sentence I'd finally got Si's attention and he turned following my eye gaze. The look of fear on his face!! (And he laughed at me for being afraid of the crocodile!) Si in his own words was in a slight quandry about what the correct course of action should be when one's muesli is interrupted by a strutting cassowary picking at rainforest plums on the ground behind your back. Fortunately I was ready to dive into the tent to find the camera and managed to catch Mr Cassowary parading away from us, obviously rather less interested in us than we were in him.
Following Etty Bay we headed to Jourama Falls in the Paluma National Park. A great national park campsite, good little walk with some improvised off-piste boulder scrambling by us just to liven things up and cold showers! Fortunately the weather had cheered up and it was a good 25 or 26 degrees again by this point. A National Park we would have liked to spend a bit more time around but we were feeling the pressure of there being so many things on the east coast we wanted to see.
From Jourama Falls we continued south. The sugar cane fields which had started immediately south of the Daintree rainforest continued to line the roads which were criss-crossed with the sugar cane train tracks. The sugar cane goes as far south as Bundaberg and with the highlands as a backdrop they are pretty spectacular.
Bowen Pier
One of the many Sugar Cane trains pottering about
We made a brief lunch stop in Townsville and treated ourselves to fish and chips in the sunshine by the beach. Our destination was Alva Beach. A little south of Townsville it was going to be our jumping off spot for the Yongala wreck dive.
Magnetic Island - Seen form Townsville Town beach
The camping ground in Alva Beach was great in itself. Once again a local's special, with couples staying there for 3 / 4 months and it being the 8th year they'd done it. But the camping wasn't the the reason for the stop.
Yongala Dive (we'd recommend them as a dive company) were taking Simon and I and 8 other like minded souls to dive the wreck of the SS Yogala.
Sunk in 1912 with the loss of all 123 people on board it has become one of the world's top dive sites. The wreck is the only thing on the sea bed for miles around and so it has become a bit of an attraction to the now local fish population. It has formed its own reef with masses of wonderful coral and schools of HUGE fish inhabiting the surrounding waters. Not only fish but turtles – perhaps the biggest turtles I've seen were dozily sheltering on the wreck - sharks are known to frequent the area (although none appeared on our dive), marble rays at least 3 meters across were gliding through the water and a little later in the year they get the whales on their migration passing by. Fabulous dive.
Above - Scenes from the Yongala
Eungealla National Park, somewhere I really wanted to stop into. After slowly ticking our way through the checklist of Australia's weird and wonderful creatures, a platypus was still outstanding. Apparently this was a top spot to view them so off we went. Little did I realise that heading a few hundred metres into the hills (which are still covered in rainforest I might add) would lead us to a freezing night where we improvised lighting a fire in the tent by carrying in a dish full of hot embers, wondered whether hot embers would kill us through carbon monoxide poisoning, put the hot embers back outside and brought in hot stones from the fire instead which crumbled apart in the bed. It was flippin' freezing though! And to justify it all we woke up to a white field – covered in frost – something we haven't see since leaving the UK.
Above - Scenes from the Eungella
Again another wonderful national park, great camping and we saw a platypus. From a distance. But that was good enough for me.
You might need to maximise this picture to see it but there is a platupus there, honest
So after 2 nights freezing our proverbials off we agreed it about time we started out east coast sunshine holiday. Land of endless beaches, surfing dudes, hot sun and glorious winter weather. Well the winter weather was about right.
Si was itching to get back on his surf board and Agnes Water being the most northerly surf beach had to be a good place to stop. It was a heck of a drive south though with little to see on the way so we over-nighted at a roadhouse campground (still freezing) before rocking up in Agnes Water the next morning. Small village, not too hectic and surely hot and sunny we were still so far north. No chance. The heavens opened as we were arriving and after 4.5 months of never putting the tent up in the rain we discovered that it's not much fun.
The Surf at Agnes Point, some nice easy longboard waves were just what was needed
We spent 3 nights in the end – Si got some surfing in, the weather cleared up enough for us to get a walk or two in but I felt entirely miserable being cooped up in the tent. I admit it, after all, I am a fair weather camper.
Agnes Water and the Town of 1770 as its called were definitely good spots though and in good weather would be even better. I would head back there like a shot for a holiday.
Above, fishing and walking in the national park outside 1770
By this point we were counting the days we had left and trying to work out priorities of things left to do. Fraser Island was the big thing. After a night in Hervey Bay (beautiful beach, nice town, too early for the Whales) we took the morning barge across the bay to Fraser Island.
The largest sand island in the world and a world heritage site, Fraser is one of the highlights of the trip. We'd been a bit worried about it being full of tourists and families with it being school holidays, but it's such a big place that we didn't really see that many other folks. It's strictly four wheel drive only with narrow sandy and winding inland roads on which you rarely top 30km/h and the east coast is one long 'beach highway', easily traversed at 80km/h at low tide but a bit trickier later in the day when the soft sand and tracked out beach don't do much for your fuel economy.
Above - Scenes from Fraser, above right - I am actually fishing here not "using the facilities" as it might look like
We took 5 nights there in the end and stayed on the eastern beach tucked away on a small plateau behind the sand dunes. We had a stunning view of the beach and ocean and it was probably our top located campsite for the whole trip. It's basic camping, no facilities, but we got a hot shower at the national park campsite on one day and had a cold dip in Lake Wabby another day. The inland lakes are one of the highlights of the island, beautifully clear, fresh water – known as perched lakes, along with the crystal clear creeks – so clear you almost can't see the water in them, and the ancient rainforest. We also headed upto the northernmost tip. Which due to a couple of tricky bypasses and it being only possible in the couple of hours around low tide, is much less well traversed than the rest of the island.
The "Mahena" wreck and..wait for it..a group of backpackers with their troopy stuck, you don't see that very often!
We proved how tricky the bypasses could be by taking 3 goes to get up one of the ascents on our way back south. It had been fine coming the other way :) But our now legendary skills in the Patrol meant there was no panic at potentially being trapped by the rising tide which would have given the car a very unwelcome salty bath.
The inland tracks and how to make our car look small
Back to the mainland and we continued our beach trip – staying at another national park site – Freshwater in the Great Sandy - and took the beach all the way south to Noosa.
Noosa was a bit like coming home (it's a lot like Manly, although a bit more upmarket) and we took the chance to holiday. We set up camp on the river, surrounded by Pelicans, facing west for glorious sunsets and spent a week lazing in the sun, splashing in the sea (which was a bit cold), making new friends in the camp kitchen, fishing at sunset, beer in hand and wishing away the nasty weather due to arrive on the Monday. We only had 5 or 6 days before we were due back to Sydney. We'd deliberately stayed north in the warmer weather as long as we could. But with the rain and cold heading in we packed up and started the 1100km journey south the Sydney.
Surfing with the dog (Max the photo's). We love Australia.
We didn't get too far though as first stop was the mighty Australia Zoo. Steve Irwin's home and a a great day out. Maybe some of the impact lost on us because we'd seen so much whilst on the road but we did get to see (and play with) wombats!
Wombats - like a giant marsupial guinea pig!
The one creature we hadn't seen at all whilst in Australia so we signed up for a 'close encounter' and got to find out all about the 3 different species of wombat and see them be fed. Apparently the most intelligent of the marsupials, it's about as clever as a dog (they all knew their names), but without the same sense of subservience. So when our wombats started being naughty (one of the old girls had got into a grump) we had to get out of the way and leave their keeper to fend off the 40kg of hairy lump.
We stopped over in a roadside rest area and set off quite early for Brisbane the next morning.
We spent a few hours looking around, sitting on the artificial city centre beach, checking out the museum and thinking that if the sunny winter day we had there was typical of a Brisbane winter day we'd be very happy to call it home. We carried on south and took in the gold coast. Quite a shock to see Australia so built up, with some serious high rises going on.
That night we found a really pleasant campsite – with a heated pool! - on the Tallebudgera Creek. We've been getting used to the number of people around again and comparatively when it's busy here it would still be a quiet day in the UK. Everything's relative. But this campsite was very quiet and we made the most of having the whole camp kitchen to ourselves.
Byron Bay in the rain
Our last two nights heading south were spent living it up in motel rooms! The weather had really closed in and although we would have love to spend the last coupel of nights camped by the beach on the east coast having a wet tent and gear was really not something we wanted to contend with at this stage.
A last word from Si:
So we're back in Sydney where we started, the cars been sold, our tax returns done to give us a bit of much needed cash and a last weekend ahead before the flight back to Blighty. This blog's more for us to look back and remember than anything but thanks to anyone who's read it - hopefully it's given you a bit of an insight into our trip.
We might get round to doing a best of section if we can find the time in our now busy schedule but in the meantime just two pieces of advice for travelling Oz. Do it by 4x4 and get away from the East Coast, thats all you need to know.
We guess there won't be an entry for a while now but this is definitely "paused" as opposed to finished and we look forward to the time when we pick it up again.
