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A Swing To The Left, From Blue To Red
Hello from tropical Townsville in Northern Queensland!
So we left Brisbane with the usual mixed emotions of being back on the road, but this time we felt particularly sad as Jude and Jeff had been such great company. Also, with no further visits planned, the next time we will see friends or family will be back in the UK, in however many months time.
The weather forecast was stormy for the next few days, so our plan was just to drive North until we found the sun again. We drove through some torrential rain just North of Brisbane, but it wasn’t until a few days later that we realised how bad the storm was. 330mm of rain fell in five hours, over 130 roads were closed and sadly at least 5 people died in flash flooding. Having missed the storms around Sydney by a matter of days, this time it appears we missed the worst by a matter of hours – it’s a good job Caroline’s got such a heavy right foot!
On our way North we passed by Fraser Island, the only place in the world where a rainforest grows on sand. It’s one of the ‘must see’ locations in Australia, but is only accessible by boat and you need a 4-wheel drive to explore the island. We had toyed with the idea of leaving Mario on the mainland and joining a tour for a day or two, but we were concerned as to how much pain the lack of roads would cause to Bry’s shoulder. We had read some negative comments about the island, with it basically now just being a sand-pit, full of speeding 4-wheel drives, but we would have liked to find out for ourselves. However, the weather was awful and apparently the island took the brunt of the storm, so the decision was made for us and we just continued North.
For 2 days we drove in the rain until we reached Rockhampton, crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and then the sun came out. With the grey gloom gone and everywhere immediately looking lush and green, we diverted off the highway to the little village of St Lawrence, where the Council provide a superb free camping site. We took a wander to the local pub, a proper old style wooden building with a huge veranda, where we chatted to the aged owners about travelling and motorbikes. Back at camp, we watched the sunset over the nearby wetlands and the next morning woke to see kangaroos skipping by. It was a great campsite and certainly an improvement on the 2 previous nights spent next to the highway.
Having missed out on Fraser Island, we decided we would instead visit the Whitsunday Islands and head to Airlie Beach, about another day’s drive North. On the way we stopped at Sarina where they were holding their annual Mud Trials – truck racing in a quagmire. There seemed to be two classes, 4WDs and 2WDs, with the latter allowed to have chains on their drive wheels. The noise of up to 20 unsilenced V8 engines roaring around the “track” was incredible – many of them making no progress at all, other than showering their competitors in mud. There were 4 4WD tractors constantly pulling the stuck trucks out and even these were finding it tough going. For us there were 2 highlights. Firstly, one truck rolled-over and caught ablaze and secondly the sight of a rather large female steward getting so stuck in the mud she could not move. She had to call a tractor over to pull her out!
The next day we arrived at Airlie Beach, the gateway to the Whitsundays that is described as “a drinking town with a sailing problem”. We found a decent campsite not too far out of town and set about planning our next few days. When we first got to Oz, we decided we would do one big thing in each state – there’s so much to spend your money on, we can’t afford to do everything. In Victoria we got the very expensive ferry to Tasmania, in Tasmania we go the very expensive ferry back and in NSW we did the Sydney Bridgeclimb. Our “thing” for Queensland was always to see the Great Barrier Reef, initially thinking we would do this in Cairns. After some research we realised it was a better option to do this from Airlie and then also see the Whitsundays as well.
So on Tuesday we were aboard a fast catamaran heading to Reefworld, a pontoon moored off Hardy Reef. From here you can snorkel and SCUBA dive, but it also has an underwater observatory and a submersible viewing vessel, which we thought would be ideal for Bry (still with bad shoulder). Caroline obviously was going the whole hog and would SCUBA dive the Great Barrier Reef! It took about three hours to get there, having first sailed around some of the islands. On the trip out the staff came round with consent forms for the various activities and when we explained Bry would not be getting wet, they were having none of it (“Dude, ya gotta get in the water”) and said they’d sort something out. We were expecting them to be total health and safety jobsworths, but they couldn’t have been more encouraging.
Caroline was booked on the first dive session, so as soon as we arrived at the pontoon she was suited and booted ready for her first dive in 15 years! It’s always a little nerve wracking going diving and she’d forgotten just how heavy the equipment was when out of the water. However, once she was in it’s just like riding a bike (or a fish to water?), you never forget what to do and Bry watched from the underwater observatory as she followed a rope and her instructor to the reef’s edge.
Hardy Reef has been very well looked after and the coral is alive and hosts an abundance of beautiful fish and anemones. That serene feeling of total quiet, except for your own breathing, is quite something and to gently swim over and alongside the Great Barrier Reef is an experience she will never forget.
Caroline was gone for about an hour, during which time Bry was a little concerned as to how he would manage to snorkel. His main concerns were something happening to make him automatically move his right arm, or an over-zealous helper trying to get him in or out of the water by grabbing his arm. All snorkelers were advised to wear stinger suits because of the chance of jelly fish, so we decided the best thing to do would be just to tuck his arm inside the suit as if it were still in the sling, to keep it out of harm’s way. The staff gave Bry a noodle float to help steady himself and tied orange tape round the top of his snorkel to show that he was ‘special’, which resulted in us being followed very carefully by the rescue boat.
Getting in and out was quite straight forward, but due to the current, Bry found it difficult to stay stationary with only one arm, so we just spent our time swimming up and down the reef, occasionally holding onto one of the floating rest stops. It was at one of these stops when the official photographer decided to snap Bry – when Caroline saw the resulting photo she was reduced to tears of hilarity, suggesting he looked like a petrified shark attack victim!
Caroline would like to add that she thought Bry was extremely brave getting in the water with his injury! He was very glad to have done it as the underwater views were amazing and we are both grateful to the staff for allowing him to get in.
As part of our trip to the Reef, we got a free return journey to Hamilton Island the next day. On the ferry over a couple sat next to us, almost buried under what were obviously a wedding dress and groomsmen suits – they were off to Day Dream Island to get married a couple of days later and they were very sweet and obviously very excited. They both drove trucks for a mine near Rockhampton, the groom was very proud of his “rig” showing us photos of his three hitch trailers, proper big “Road Train” stuff. However his bride-to-be then upped the ante and showed us her work vehicle – she only drives the huge dumper trucks! One photo we could hardly make her out, the machine behind her was so big, carrying something like 450 tonnes in one load.
Hamilton Island is mainly a holiday resort with a few exclusive private homes and a luxury marina. Other than the free shuttle buses and a few works vehicles, no cars are allowed on the island, so everyone drives around in golf buggies. There’s literally hundreds of them! It was really bizarre walking around this tropical paradise with identical buggies buzzing back and forth – it felt like we’d been shrunk and were walking around a model village with all these little cars quietly moving round a track. All the road signs have golf buggies on them where there would normally be a car and even the estate agents’ details have a symbol for ‘buggy parking’.
We stopped for lunch in a picnic shelter and put on the table a cold bottle of water which had condensation running down it. Immediately a Rainbow Lorikeet landed next to the bottle and started licking the condensation off. We were then joined by a flock of white cockatoos trying to nick our sandwiches!
There are some huge hotels on the island with all the usual facilities, but the great thing is that anyone can use them, even day trippers like us. However, after walking up the very steep One Tree Hill, all we could be bothered to do was laze on the sun-loungers on Cats Eye Beach and then go for a couple of drinks overlooking the marina. We had a taste of how the other half live and it cost us next to nothing. Ideal day!
Another day’s drive North and now we’re in Townsville, which has a beautiful, long foreshore, but the town itself is rather grotty and rundown. Today we went to Reef HQ, the world’s largest (only?) reef aquarium. It’s basically an indoor version of the Great Barrier Reef, showcasing the most spectacular fish, anemones and corals found on it. It’s very eco-orientated with loads of information boards, but the highlight is the huge aquarium with a walk-through tunnel, allowing you to get up close and personal to the cutest and deadliest reef creatures. We’re not sure if it was worth the $23 entrance fee each, but it was a nice way to spend a few hours.
From Townsville we can either continue North to Cairns or go West into the Outback. As you may have guessed from the loose and rather inaccurate General Election based title, we have decided to leave the big blue sea and head into the Red Centre. Basically, we don’t think Cairns has anything to offer that we haven’t already seen (apart from a 700km roundtrip) and we are ready for a change of scenery – and we don’t think you can get more different from busy seaside resorts to dusty, outback two-house-towns.
The drive up here from Brisbane has mainly been long roads through endless fields of sugar cane, constantly crossing little narrow gauge railway tracks used to transport the harvested crops. Some of the roads are so monotonous that the Councils have put up road signs with trivia questions on them, followed by the answer a kilometre later. Unfortunately the questions started repeating themselves, suggesting either a lack of imagination or they really want you to know what the State flower of Queensland is. It’s the Cooktown Orchid – if you were wondering! There were also signs saying ‘Dad, are we there yet?’ and ‘Mum, are we there yet?’ which we don’t think would really help anybody!
We can certainly tell that we are now in the tropics, having seen many signs warning us of the presence of crocodiles, sharks and stinging jelly fish. After NSW and Gold Coast it’s strange not to see anybody in the sea, but restricted to safe swimming areas inside stinger nets or mostly in manmade seawater lagoons. Luckily, as it is now approaching Winter, there isn’t much humidity and although the days are around 30 degrees, it drops down to around 16 degrees at night, perfect for sitting out in the evening, specially as there are hardly any mozzies! When we get to Alice Springs we might have a bit of a shock as this week they had an overnight temperature of 4 degrees and even had a frost!
Bry’s shoulder is improving well and he’s doing his exercises religiously. Only one more week in the sling and then he’s onto some strengthening exercises – he’ll be back behind the wheel before Caroline knows it! Having the sling on has been a good icebreaker, with numerous random people just stopping us for a chat and with our map on the back of Mario, we’ve met some interesting people who’ve been amazed/bemused/envious of/by our trip. It helps remind us how fortunate we are to be able to do what we’re doing and makes those times when we’re homesick easier to bear.
We’ve only managed to upload a handful of photos, so we’ll try to get the rest up when we’ve got a better internet connection. We don’t know what sort of internet availability we will have in the Outback, so are unsure when our next update will be, but we hope it will be in the next couple of weeks or so. Until then ...
Hoo Roo!