Okay, so I may have fallen slightly behind here. Apologies. But really, what can you expect from an ex-Civil Servant? Given I’m closer to two years behind than one, I think I better paraphrase a bit to keep up. So we shall proceed with at least some brevity.
Part 1 – in Rachel we trust
We rejoin the adventures with Rachel, Alex and I… and of course Big Lizzy (our camper), we’d just scuba dived on the Great Barrier Reef and it was time for our journey to continue.
A common problem in group travelling is a mismatch of desires, I wanna go here you wanna do this etc. Fortunately in this case, Alex and I had come to Australia without any plans (or much common sense for that matter) – while Rachel came equipped with not only a plan but detailed research and even an itinerary of what to do and see. Alex and I were both more than happy to lean into Rachel’s plan be blindly led day-by-day. Each day we would would conclude by asking Rach what we are doing tomorrow.
One of our first stops was Mission Beach, where our Australian inexperience and perhaps plain stupidity led us to paddle in the sea mere minutes after seeing and discussing a ‘Warning – crocodiles sign.’ Thankfully our paddle concluded fairly quickly when we put two and two together without any croc-cidents. Later that night we found a lovely car park on a remote-ish beach with toilets and showers! What a dream. We collectively decided to ignore the ‘no camping’ sign which displayed a crossed through tent – our logic being we aren’t camping, we’re motorhoming. A clearly drunk driving bogan let us know what he thought about our decision. At around 3am his verbal beratement lasted about 5 minutes, and from what I could decipher through his thick bogan accent, he wasn’t happy. However, upon receiving no response from our van he soon left and we fell back asleep.
In Kuranada and Atherton (towns which still had a frontier-y vibe) we explored the stunning jungles and old railroads. We hiked to stunning view points, and the next morning rose early to try and spot a platypus – which we did! Some fun Platypuses facts:
- they lay eggs,
- their back legs have venomous spurs,
- they have a duck like bill,
- they posses electroreception,
- they produce milk however lack nipples (instead oozing milk from their abdomen),
- and if all that isn’t weird enough they are fluorescent under UV light.
They do all this and they have the nerve to call themselves a mammal? Which I would argue over, but frankly I’ve seen many humans [insert friend or family member here] who push the definition much further.
We found a beautiful waterfall in Yungaburra, and then spent a day paddling, skimming stones and basking in the sun at the poorly named Alligator Creek (there are no wild Alligators in Aus). Thankfully by this point we had just about descended far enough south to escape Croc territory.
We then went to the stunning Airlie Beach, home to the luxury tourist attractions of the Whitsundays (and other) Islands. Rach had some friends from home who were working on the Islands, and they took off for a girls retreat while Alex and I decided to save some money and explore the mainland (leaving the girls to enjoy the luxury without the company of two equally strange man-mals. See what I did there? Yep not great) – we opted to take on as many hikes in the area as we could. We ended up clocking just over 30kms of hiking across four treks which made the walking feel very easy.
The next day we picked up Rachel from the docks and continued our road trip south. We stumbled across a banana stand (pictured below) which operated on an honour system and where you would weigh your nanas and pop the cash in a little box. That evening we made our inaugural use of Australia’s incredible public BBQs for the first time; at what I think we would all agree was our favourite camping spot – a small peninsula in the town of Campwin beach. There were no signs saying we couldn’t camp, but we decided to attempt to hide the van anyways to be safe (also pictured below).
It’s worth noting here, our van really only required two things on a regular basis. Petrol and water (for drinking and cooking etc), the petrol was easy (albeit somewhat expensive) the water however was more of a problem. Even when we found taps like we did on our peninsula – our hose was never quite long enough. Fortunately, we had a bucket which combined with our hose allowed us to siphon the water into our tank – a fairly slow process. But throughout our Australian road trip – water piracy was an essential element to keep us going. No tap is safe.
We met up with some more of Rachel’s friends in Noosa. A really nice town, filled with restaurants and bars. We had some dinner and drank a lil with Rachel’s friends enjoying a lovely evening. I also popped to the doctors to have my ribs checked out (post surfing injury), the doctor had a feel and almost x-rayed me then decided against it, as even if they are broken there is nothing they could do. I do regret not pushing him a little bit here as to this day (two years on) something isn’t right. They discharged me with a note saying ‘musculoskeletal injury, recommend over the counter pain medication’ which I translated to ‘stop wasting my time and get lost’ (Well honestly I translated to something more crude but you get the idea). Thankfully this consultation was completely free as the UK and Aus have a reciprocal medical care agreement (so I wouldn’t bother with travel insurance if you go – personally), and the canteen provided me with a lovely very affordable veggie lasagne.
In the following days the gang went to Steve Erwin’s australia zoo! Which I decided to avoid instead opting to be dropped at a national park for a day of hiking and rendezvousing with the gang in a nearby town later. We later headed to the famous Byron Bay, where we ended up staying two nights. We spent our days on the beach, where I tried to teach Alex and Rachel to surf – they both managed to take a wave or two and even rose to their knees! And as we were approaching the end of Rachel’s three weeks we ended things with a big send off – skydiving! On our ascent our pilot who I was sitting next to, pointed out a pod of Whales in the ocean. As I was thrown out of a plane attached to some dude who based on appearance I wouldn’t trust, I did briefly think ‘why did I pay for this?’ But it was great fun and a really beautiful place to do it.
Our final leg with the gang took us to Brisbane where we had to say goodbye to Rachel 🙁 Dropping her at the airport marked the end of our road trip covering well over 2000kms, from the croc infested northern Queensland to just about the bottom of Queensland. Crazy how you can drive 2000kms in one direction and still be in the same place. We said our goodbyes and took a final few snaps with our beloved van – Big Lizzy.
It’s so great to see you back on the blog. I hope to read more, soon.