A Stranger is Just a Friend We Haven't Met!!

How to torture your child in a fun way.

Visiting people our parents know that to us are total strangers? No, haven't done too much of that on this trip. Mum was not to be denied however. Shona McDowal was Mum's best friend, and a very regular visitor to my home growing up. Mum insisted in the nicest possible way that we get in touch with Shona's nephew Wal, and his wife Rach in Emerald. We hadn't planned on touring anymore mining towns in outback Queensland, but then Mum had suggested we should, and so we did.

Impressive, old school form

 

"How do you want to start?" asked Rach. "Wine, beer, bubbles, or would you prefer to park the van now?" Dad's old idiom "first things first" came to mind, and the van was backed into the yard without delay. It became obvious rapidly that Rach's enthusiasm for a drink was equalled only by her enthusiasm for a chat. In half an hour, it became even more obvious that she and Wal were a match made in heaven and this visiting thing was off to a fabulous start.
















The next four days were a blur of water skiing, flying, swimming, loud talking, drinking and touring. We all went water skiing on the dam, Sara unable to resume her glory days on a single ski off a long rope but was a star on the short rope. Wal took myself and the kids for a tour of the area in his plane, possibly getting a little close to one of the local coal mines. Their kids, Georgie and William, although littler than ours, were great fun, as was Crinkles the dog.





Cotton circles from the sky

On the last night, we went out to Rob's shed. Rob's shed is the reason so few of the local farmers go to the local pubs. They can store their beer in his shed, and drop by whenever they want to drink it with people they actually want to drink with. A simple concept, but one that works nicely. On the night we went, Rob even put on a "son et lumiere" for us. A massive storm front pushed through just to our north bringing lightning and a bit of rain. Rob, Wal, Ryano, Bob, Glenn, Danni and Scott huddled around their iPhones, studying the radar just like their cotton farming fathers did in years gone by...or didn't as the case maybe. Cityboy Hamish got a good talking to re the future of farming (crap), government (crap), American government (crap), global warming (crap), and Brazilian cotton farmers (really crap), and mostly kept his mouth shut until Wal fell asleep and Cityboy had to fend for himself deferentially. After all, I was a guest in Rob's shed, and Rob is a big unit at 6'8".





Kids, Wal, and his toy (almost paid for)

We dragged ourselves away the next morning and headed gradually to the coast. The gradual thing was through no fault of our own, it's just that in Queensland, it appears to be against the law to drive on a road that is not being worked on. Back to the coast, Yeppoon (waterslide in the park), 1770 (surfing again!!!), Bundaberg (turtle laying eggs that needed relocating), and Rainbow Beach where the towball fell off the back of the Disco as I was perfecting yet another reverse park. No matter, money and time and a very dodgy bloke from Rainbow Wreckers who drives a Jaguar will have a crack at repairing it on Saturday. We'll be on Fraser Island.




The GT Hoses gang (William and Georgie on the right and Crinks in the middle)

 

H

Castaways on the Island of Death...(not really)



Ivy and clown fish

 After 5 days in Townsville with the highlight being Oli bagging his 300^th bird we were all desperate for some action. Sara and Oli had scoured the towns op shops to find sufficiently ugly anti-stinger wear and I’m really not sure what happened to the other 2 days. We moved from one Townsville caravan park which wouldn’t store our van, to another which would. The car was packed with supplies for six nights and we returned to Lucinda to await the boat to Orpheus Island. We had no idea what to expect; this could either go brilliantly, or it could be a complete disaster.

 



 

 

 

 



Kids on the boat heading over to the island...of terror

Orpheus Island; there was something sinister about the name that reminded me of the movie “Jurassic Park”. It is a scientific research station after all and so my over indulged brain slipped into Hollywood screen writer mode. Enter stage left, Ian; the talkative, nut brown boat driver, with his sun and salt bleached mullet. As you looked into his eyes, you knew you were only ever going to get half of his story; that the bits he would tell were only hints of something far more interesting. From stage right, stepping out of a taxi, comes Marta, a young Brazilian woman who was about to start work on the island. And there was us, a young family of three blonde excited children, and two haggard parents looking for an escape from the real world. It was late when this motley crew left the shadow of Hinchinbrook, and as darkness fell over our shoulders like an inky, damp shroud , Ian steered us out into the channel.

 



 

 

 



Looking towards Hinchinbrook Island at sunset

The lights of the manager’s cottage appeared over the blue bruised swell. Ian cut the engines and squeezed the Challenger 2 across the jagged reef. Our gear was transferred into the basket on a forklift, and we stepped onto the beach. Haley, the island’s manager, welcomed us with a grin, showed us our accommodation, and in her soft Kiwi accent, suggested we meet for the induction tomorrow morning at 7:30.

 

We were on time. Even Oliver had sprung out of his bunk bed in anticipation. Haley’s soft accent told us about the island and with the briefly mentioned menace of 4 hours of work from each of us hanging over our heads, we signed forms releasing James Cook University from any responsibility for our death or disfigurement, then returned to our quarters for a cup of coffee. Enter the mad and hairy English scientist. Professor David Bellwood. The scene was complete. Cue thunderstorm. Cue greedy, disgruntled employee. Release the mutant man eating fish.



Giant clam garden

Coral and fish, coral and fish, coral and fish etc

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Walking on the beach at low tide

None of that happened. Haley the Betadine Queen didn’t abduct us and sentence us to a lifetime of slave labour. Instead she gave assignments to the kids including coral, fish, and bird identification projects, with only brief periods of toilet cleansing. Ian’s stories never became menacing; only more amusing as the week went on. Marta wasn’t the first to be eaten by the mutant fish monster, but she did introduce us to the local black tip reef shark population, her babies! And the mad scientist popped in for a chat and promptly told Oli to become a marine biologist for work and an ornithologist in his spare time. As we stood around the fish tank he taught the kids and us a lot of things about fish that we’d never thought we needed to know, in a sing song voice that meant you were never sure as to whether he was telling the truth, or just making stuff up.

 

Coral and fish, coral and fish, coral and fish etc

We walked over to the other side of the island and weren’t trapped in the massive webs of the golden orbed spider. We swum over the reef and weren’t stabbed by coral spears, or eaten by a giant clam. The seven nights we had planned to stay turned into fourteen. Haley provided food including a leg of lamb until I was able to head back into town with Rhonda and Terry for supplies. Again the film script threatened to rear its predictable head. Rhonda had never piloted a motor boat back across the channel alone. Now she had to do it against a savage outgoing tide and increasing 18 – 20 knot winds, with the most inexperienced first mate in the world. My time on a Dutch barge in France counted for little apparently! We’d only gone 200 metres when she suggested Plan B might be returning to the dock, and settling down in the pub. But she pushed on and got back me and my bruised bum back in time for sunset with prawns and beer and wine, just as Terry said she would.

 

Boris the Green Tree Frog in the sink

It was a remarkably quick 11 days and became the longest we have stayed in one place to date. The kids revelled in an environment that revered knowledge of all things natural, not to mention one that supplied as much white bread as you could eat. We snorkeled and paddled and read and hiked in as beautiful a place as we’ve been. Who knows, we may just return to Orpheus, for if nothing else, it has ensured our children will never clean toilets for a career!

 

 

H

Goats, Moats and Boats

Without the grace exhibited by it's more nimble cousins in the Swiss Alps, Elizabeth the goat leapt between the two wobbly podiums and made the crowd gasp in awe. The toothless ringmaster gave Elizabeth her reward and duely saluted, absorbing the applause and perhaps thinking, as we were, "What the bloody hell am I doing with a performing goat in this dead end town called Mourilyan?"

We'd left Cairns and were headed for Etty Bay where the cassowaries walk on the beach when we saw the red and white striped not so very big top. A floppy haired English back packer introduced us to the ringmaster, who then introduced us to the monkeys and then invited us to the show that night. Turned out the floppy haired one was an "acrobat" who teamed up with a lanky Dutch back packer who could breakdance quite well according to Oli. The monkeys weren't part of the show because they were on heat, but one did liven things up by trying to rip the guts out of a local kid while his dad was concentrating on rolling a ciggie during the half time break.

If you're going to die, it's good to die next to a pretty woman says Ned

The show ended with the toothless ringmaster doing a bit of whip cracking. How he managed not to kill anyone I'll never know. It certainly felt like the Eton Brothers circus was managing to stay half a step in front of total disaster. We may not have seen a rodeo, but we managed to be entertained by jumping goats, tumbling Brits, prancing Dutch, and a weary, wobbly Aussie ringmaster.



Cassowary and our rig

We did see cassowaries on Etty Beach. I missed the one with chicks because I was barbecuing. We stayed a couple of nights with the kids having a homework day to bring them back to earth after the night in the big top. We'd also heard about a place called Paronella Park, some ruin of a castle built by a Spanish cane cutter back in the 20's. Might be worth a look according to the greyies. Sara and I expected to find a little bit of the over hyped Gold Coast transplanted into northern Queensland complete with bad robotics and overpriced souvenirs. What we got, was the ruin of a castle built by a Spanish cane cutter back in the 20's. But it was more than that.

Paronella Park, named after Jose the cane cutter, had been a sprawling palace of sculpted gardens and concrete that he had created over 30 years. Time, neglect, and cyclones had worked hard to destroy it, however the guts of his dream remained and somehow, the guts were beautiful and entrancing. Add Yeng the funniest tour guide ever, who told us how the bush turkeys are making love to his mates chickens with the result that his mates chickens now have no feathers on their necks, Sara almost falling into crocodile infested water to escape a rat, and all the fish and eels the kids could feed, and you have a winner of a stop. From there it was a quick pause in Tully for the big gumboot and the sugar mill, (I was so proud when the kids managed not to stick their ear protectors up their nostrils to ward off the smell), and into Mission Beach.

With the weather in our favour, we boarded Big Mama, a sailing boat and set off for the Great Barrier Reef. Previous attempts in Cairns had been thwarted by poor conditions, but that ended up being a good thing. Stu, Lisa, their nine year old son Fletcher, and a 20 week old chihuahua called Coco live on Big Mama. Fletcher has never lived in a house! They take up to 12 people at a time out to the reef, today it was just us and a German girl, Delia, which I thought was an odd name for a German. After a day of snorkeling among coral more varied and colourful than anything we'd seen on the west coast; after a BBQ lunch with homemade salads; after listening to Stu tell me how easy it was for him to make a reverse osmosis unit that generated 200 litres of  fresh water a day from sea water; after seeing how worldly Fletcher was and how happy Stu and Lisa were with their life on the ocean, I couldn't wait to get back to Google. I mean, I can reverse a 23ft van now without too much trouble, how hard could it be to buy a boat and sail it around the world?



Paronella Park by night

That's not Sara but it could be...

Not as hard, apparently, as getting across to Orpheus Island. Stu had said this would be a great place to camp, and that you could snorkel the reef right off the beach. The problem was, no charters would take us out there, and we couldn't afford the $1400 per night to stay at the resort which didn't want kids anyway. Not that I would have had too much of a problem with that last technicality. Then we met John the volunteer wearing shoes with zips in the information office in Ingham. There is a research station on Orpheus
Island. We could volunteer our services, working for 4 hours a day, and in return, they take us over and provide accommodation. Imagine that, a tropical island to ourselves in exchange for a spot of weeding. Surely there's a catch somewhere. It could be brilliant, or it could go horribly wrong. We'll find out in a weeks time. I hope it's got nothing to do with shoes and zips...

H

The Tip is a Tip but the Tip's Worth the Trip

The tip of the trip

Why, when there is something truly worth visiting, do Australians make such a monumental job of uglifying it? Apparently, in peak season, the easy road up to the tip sees well over 6,500 cars a month. Add the fly ins, the tour groups, and those that avoid chicken tracks, and there are a lot of people anxious to travel a long way just to tick the tip off their bucket list. My issue is, and it may  be unimportant to most, but I don’t need to know that Tracey, Mark, the DiDinato family, the


DiDinato dickheads

Tazzie Boyz, Stewie, Foxie, Brett, Shayla-Raye, the Hoskin family, the Brentwood Boys, Macca, Wacca, Shakka and his dog Brewsta etc etc etc also got there. I certainly don’t need to share the experience with their non-decomposable, cyclone strength toilet paper and Four XXXX Gold cans. Have a bit of pride people.

 

Sunset at Umagico

At the northernmost part of mainland Australia, there is no signage indicating where to walk. There are no toilets, there are no seats. There is nothing speaking for the (apparently) significant indiginous culture or (allegedly) important European history of the place. There is the remains of a resort of sorts, and a beautiful, wide, white beach. There is also a lot of graffiti and a heap of rubbish. Apparently, in peak season, you have to queue up to get your photo taken at the sad and desecrated sign. We had it to ourselves; just us and a dirty shrine of autographed rubber thongs, now there’s a tradition I call Australian! Give me strength! If anywhere was screaming for a bit of local initiative, if ever there was an opportunity to give the community in Bamaga something to do, it would be here.

 

Oli and his goliath half a fish

We stayed on the beach at Umagico looking over the Torres Strait and yes it was a magical spot. We took a boat over to Thursday Island, ate fair Thai food, and fished a bit. I got a Spanish mackerel, and Oli half a coral trout, with a shark conveniently letting go of the fish before Oli could get it into the boat as well. Our guide Tom, with his wispy moustache and indications of private education, moved around the boat the way Sara moves around a kitchen (her words). After that, we really didn’t know what else to do. The cape is without an operational tourist information centre, choosing to rely on mud maps handed out by some bloke who lives in the “Croc Shack” on the road to the tip. No surprises, but we didn’t stop there because we didn’t want to feel obligated to buy an “I Survived the Trip to the Tip” t-shirt. Maybe we should have. Nick Linton, get up here and straighten this place out!

 

Trentham Falls south of Cooktown

Still, we had survived the trip to as far North as we could get and loved its’ beauty, now we really were headed South and home. Cape York is known for its bird-watching, and Oli had created lists of birds he wanted to see with the result that he dictated the schedule back to Cairns. Visiting Iron Range and Lakefield National Parks we camped in rainforests, beside rivers and in woodland. For the first time, the processes associated with making and breaking camp didn’t wear us down, and the tents survived their first taste of serious rain. Plenty of driving, plenty of water, but plenty of wildlife too, and most of the birds the Big O wanted.

 

Ivy at Cape Tribulation

Cooktown was an interesting and windy stop, the towns’ effort to give its’ visitors something to do and see in sharp contrast to Seisa and Bamaga. Great fish and chips too, and more than enough properties and businesses for sale if you have a hankering for a sea-change. Having had no trouble with the Bloomfield track, another 4WD adventure that has succumbed to asphalt, we returned to the Daintree we’d briefly encountered with the FannNoonans, and camped in a field at Cape Tribulation surrounded by backpackers in Wicked vans. The next morning, a spot opened up under the trees and Sara burned what rubber was still left on the tyres getting the car in to bags the posi. We carried the tents across and settled in to explore at leisure.

 

Oli at Mason's swimming hole, Cape Tribulation

That was okay for half a day, then there was some serious touristing to be done. One croc tour would never have been enough so we chose the mob that promised more for less. Luckily, they delivered in spades and if the administrative staff wasn’t enthusiastic, the guides were brilliant. First off was Peter, aka Mangrove Man. He took us out twice that day, making a special effort to look after Oli having heard the Kingfisher Camp saga. His shtick was almost identical morning to afternoon, and we now know almost too much about mangroves and bad Irish jokes. We also went twice to the Daintree Discovery Centre, but sadly only once to the organic bio-dynamic ice cream shop. Ivy connected with several leeches, Ned saw a wild pig but didn’t chase it this time, and Sara spotted our first cassowary. Another croc cruise the next morning on the way back to Cairns, this time with Lex, a local whose mum still lives on the dairy farm he grew up on. Crocs, snakes, frogs, flowers, birds, and a dead calf all delivered with local flavour and not a hippy in sight.

 



 

 

 





Ned finishing his undie run strongly



We found the hippies the next day at the Kuranda festival outside of Cairns. However the real reason we went was to participate in the second annual undie fun-run. I was disappointed Sara sat this one out especially given how well her birthday present 5 pack has been holding up, but Ned was determined to take her place. We three boys set off in tasteful boxer shorts to appropriately little fanfare and tackled the hilly 3.5k circuit. Could have been worse, there was a fat Englishman running in a pair of saggy blue y-fronts! We all managed to stay well in front of him! We then watched a bikie with no front teeth come in a narrow second in the sausage eating competition, listened to some reggae, avoided buying anything at the craft market, and set off back down the hill to Cairns having adopted a bat at the bat rescue shelter and naming him Barney. Who’s the fastest bat in the world? The Barnes is of course!



The Barnes (the bat, not the whippet)



 H

I'd Still Rather Push my Landrover, than Drive a Toyota

An Austin 7; the first car to drive to the tip

Gareth called and spoke to Sara. Priscilla was ready for pick up. Gareth wasn’t the most inspiring of Landrover mechanics. He answered most of my questions with a shrug of his shoulders, and  in his too soft Welsh lilt, he offered the obvious but blindingly useless observation , “It’s a Landrover mate, you’ve got to expect these things.” Makes his choice of profession seem gifted. Still, we were back on the road, and it was action stations as we prepared for our greatest adventure having done the least amount of planning.

 

Kids in a sprinkler at Moreton Telegraph Station

Again we had heard the horror stories of strandings and punctures and drownings and other Top End type disasters. Again we chose to ignore them. We parked Kimmy up the back for the princely sum of $6 a night (seventh night free), and managed to get out of Cairns in the late afternoon. Too late unfortunately for coffee tasting at Coffee World, but not too late to pick up a new coffee cup for Sara and a frypan from Crazy Clarks, because we’d forgotten to pack one.

 

Wenlock River

 Mt Carbine was the first stop and Mt Carbine has a pub. Mt Carbine also has a tungsten mine, a lake popular with bird watchers, and a quiet caravan park on top of the hill. The pub was a hit with trashie mags for Sara, free pool, darts, hookey, and table soccer for the kids, and beer for me. Could have done without the cheesy chicken and mango salad though.

 

We left the next morning having finally taken some advice on board. We would take the inland route up and the coastal route back. Simple. Armed with the simplest of directions, we eventually found the bird watchers lake, but no ducks of distinction. From there the Peninsula Development Road (PDR) stretched away into the distance. The days highlight was the iced coffee in Laura, and learning that an Austin 7 was the first car to drive to the tip. Not sure what Gareth would have made of that. A long day got us to the Archer River Roadhouse, famous for…wait for it… the Archerburger! It is apparently very important these days to be famous for something, but I’ve driven past too many famous burger stops now to be impressed. No, it was time to open up some cans of beans and put the new stove to the test.

 



Palm Creek; 8ft drop into a clay pit, no Discos allowed

Jocy had said Weipa was worth a look, so we had a look. First stop was the cultural centre, which happened to be closed. It was closed because Rio Tinto, the small company that runs / owns Weipa, was celebrating 10 years of running an indigenous mining training program with a buffet lunch. Noting our kids distress at being excluded from a museum, we were assured we were welcome and so we went in, but that wasn’t the good bit. A big bloke called Frank wandered over to our skinny blonde kids and asked if they needed a feed because they’d over catered. He didn’t need to ask twice. Pies, pastries, salads and fruit juice. Heaven. And then they brought out dessert. We rolled out of Weipa after the obligatory, but ultimately duckless stop at the poo ponds.

 

Elliot Falls

More driving, a night at the Moreton Telegraph station, a raid on a mango tree, and we headed off again. A brief look at the start of the Old Telegraph Track (OTT) was all we needed to decide that attempting it in Priscilla was well beyond her all too complicated engineering and us. Fortunately the PDR is a super highway and we headed up to Elliot Falls for the night. It got a bit tricky on the way in, but we made it, and prepared to tackle the easier sections of the OTT the next morning. I’d been assured by several blokes who were drinking beer for breakfast that the chicken tracks were very doable. The reccie looked okay, but halfway across Canal Creek, panic set in. I backed out, and slunk past my smirking blue singletted, Toyota driving friends. Pride got in the way of comfortable conversation for a little while, but ultimately sanity had prevailed and on to the tip we drove.

 

H

 

We're Not Talking About the Football

Wonga Beach

Daintree view
 

The lovely but admittedly slightly unnerving thing asbout Oli being a birdwatcher, is that so many strange older people want to adopt him. He has been showered with hints and advice and encouragement. Frank even showed up unannounced at the caravan in Cairns to give him a tape of Daintree bird sounds that his grown up and gone sons had no interest in. However the bubble of birding love was rudely popped by the manager of the Kingfisher Birdwatching Resort who flatly refused us a campsite because "the children would get bored". Nice of him to think of their welfare. Suggesting that the father might get bored might have been more accurate. We left with Oli almost in tears, and while staying with hard core, militant grey nomads at Wonga Beach filed an aggressively negative review on tripadvisor.com. Deal with that nasty rude bird place man!

Onto the beach at Port Douglas and we could have been in Broome. Victorians everywhere on a massively wide, white beach, with stingers and crocodiles patrolling just offshore. Friends from home, the Neavetts and the previously encountered FannNoonans were there. A quick catch up, then onto more pressing issues like where to eat for dinner sans children. Thai was the answer, followed by burnt toffee icecream.



The next day we drove up to the Daintree, with Oli and Eammon pretty much picking up where they left off nine months ago; subjecting us to the chatter, nonsensical language, dubious music and one upmanship of 11 year old boys. We'd swapped Eammon for Ivy, who happily indulged Gerda, Kev and Imogen with her own non-stop chatter, at least until she fell asleep. The purpose of the drive was to go "Jungle-Surfing". No boards or waves here though, just high flying foxes. Kids loved it, but the overall opinion was that it would have been better if it was higher, faster, and longer. We saw rain for the first time in 5 months too. Torrential stuff but very exciting. A couple more meals out, a breath test, a bbq, a football game Ned and I have since forgotten about, and more ice cream. That'll do for PD.

Oli on the high wire

Arriving in Cairns, the first job was to get the car fixed. Two weeks previously we'd had it assessed, and the news wasn't great. Still, if we were to tackle Cape York, it was necessary. We were staying at Australia's only 5 star caravan park, complete with water park, two pools, mini-golf, movies, two jumping pillows, etc etc. Sara and Oli went birding, the rest of us stayed and played. We did manage to drag ourselves away to explore Cairns a bit. Bumped into Tracey (married to Terry the baker from Lawn Hill) and meant to call but didn't. Saw a movie, shopped, fixed the ringtone on the phone, washed the van. All that normal stuff normal people do. Time to move on, I think things are getting a little too comfortable!

H


Tinkerbell, Cookie Monster, Mad Max, Bugs Bunny, Robin Hood, Dennis the Menace, Catwoman, & Mary Poppins

Aliens, Dinosaurs, Golden Bowerbirds but no Cowboys.

"Duz it look loik there's a ro-de-o here this woikend?" shot back the disturbingly scarlet headed hag at the Dajarra Roadhouse in reply to Sara's enquiry. We all trooped back to the car, and tried to work out our next move. The trouble was, that the plan we had made was entirely predicated on the Dajarra rodeo being on this weekend as per the two telephone conversations we had had with an unknown, but quite probably just as dangerously coiffed woman as the one who had just shooed her only potential customers for the week out of her establishment.

 

And happy to be here

Oli had survived a night in the UFO capital of Australia despite my best attempts to mimic a skinny green alien. Got the skinny bit right, the green was lacking. We pushed through some pretty boring country, stopping beside a deadend river next to a deadend town so that I could watch the Hawks smash the Pies. The barman at the Camoweal pub was good enough to switch the ABC over to the footy, but I watched it by myself out the back. We had arrived in Queensland, rugby league territory.

 

Ivy dropping

From there we pushed up into Lawn Hill having been told by countless people including mum, that it was spectacular. Well, it was, but it was overpriced too, offering less than the National Park down the road for more than twice the coin. Still, poor park management on their part i.e. reliance on the honesty of their guests, meant we stayed five nights, and only paid for three, which made the price about right in our eyes.

 

Lawn Hill was pretty in spite of its three dollar phone charging charge. I managed to get over dinging the van and destroying a rear stabiliser by driving through a dip too quickly. The kids had a ball swinging off ropes and jumping off tree branches into the water. One night they collected over 70 cane toads which we euthanized in our freezer. Needless to say, they weren’t involved in cleansing the freezer of frozen toad juices. The next night they drowned the buggers. It was here that we met Terry the baker from Cairns, and helped him out when his car battery went flat. I’m looking forward to being repaid in doughnuts. It was also here that we learnt about the rodeo in Dajarra.

 

Two unlikely miners

A fun mine tour in Mt Isa and more dinosaur fossils, before we were told we were in Dajarra a week too early. We’d started a loop into nothing, and so pushed on. We pulled up in Middleton, once a Cobb and Co. staging post, now just a pub. A 140 year old pub that is. Two sweat stained, unwashed, bed haired, toothless people wandered around the mess and the questionably heritaged staffordshire terriers that made up the entrance to their pub to greet us. No beer on tap, just cans of VB. Val cremated Sara’s fish and my t-bone, but the kids loved their pies, chips and paddlepops. We ate in what doubles as Val and husband Les’s lounge room over a dirty, fluorescent gingham tablecloth, watched the footy and learnt a lot about camels.

 

Mt Isa sunset (sorry about lack of focus)

We stopped again to learn about dinosaurs in Winton, and met Belinda and Mick. They own the house Jenny and Jim are currently renting in Fremantle. Now that’s a coincidence. A freebie up the highway proved a very popular stop with the kids as they hooned around the town’s tennis courts on a plastic billy cart. Sara and I were happy enough in the community owned Coffield pub across the road. Apparently the original hotel burned down in suspicious circumstances resulting in the locals taking over the liquor licence and setting up in the old school instead of allowing the dodgy publican back in. We met all five of the locals and said we might be back for their races.

 

Middleton Pub

Another massive drive and we were in Undarra national park, home to the world’s longest system of lava tubes. Steve was our guide for the tour and proved to be one of those blokes who has done a little of everything. This surveyor, environmental scientist, sports trainer, publican, farmer, miner, surfer, traveller was brilliant and never shut up as he showed us around. The tubes were breath taking in their cavernous beauty, and all the better because we’d never known what to expect.

 

One roadside stop later and we were in Cairns. The park brake in the Landy had failed again. It’s only dollars I know, but I’m getting very tired of saying “it’s only dollars”. Still, the car needs to be right if we are to get to the tip, so the plastic will be coming out again. Of course, parts need to be ordered in, and the Queen gets an extra birthday in her home state, bless her, so we had some time to fill in.

 

Lava tube

Luckily, Oli had some ideas on where to spot some more birds for what is becoming an impressive life list. Back up into the Atherton Tablelands we drove, Sara’s eyes firmly clenched around every corner (eyes Kevin, I said eyes). Luckily we have a frequent flier pass to Coffee Works in Mareeba which is a fantastic place with the world’s largest collection of coffee machines. That this collection is in Mareeba is not the surprising thing. The surprising thing is that it is so interesting. Well… that and the free coffee and chocolate tasting.

 

Oli and his chauffeather Sara, got up early and went out late spotting heaps of fluttering squawking things. I decided that if you can’t beat them, join them and watched my favourite birds, the Hawks get over the Crows, after beating the Magpies in preparation for the Swans next week. We hiked a bit, swam a bit, saw platypuses and plenty of birds but no tree kangaroos or cassowaries, learnt about rainforests, and then headed off back down the hill via CoffeeWorks to the coast, the FannNoonans, and the home away from home for too many Victorians, Port Douglas.

 

Curtain fig.



H