Roadtrip - North Queensland

Roadtrip Begins

A quick update on our roadtrip. There'll be four of us for a good part of the journey, if not all of it, as we're taking a Welsh girl called Sam with us. We've pre-booked a package for about 200 pounds each that gives us three days sailing round the beautiful Whitsunday islands, three days and two nights canoeing in Noosa, three days and two nights on Fraser Island, two nights in Rainbow Beach and a day at an aboriginal workshop where we get a didgeridoo lesson and a free boomerang to paint, which is a great deal. We have to do the Whitsundays on Monday 27th but the rest is an open booking (most of the other activities are much further south), and we can't wait.

Most of our food consists of pasta and tins so we'll need to make the most of the bigger towns and cities when we come across them. We have 2 tents and are hoping to camp for free as much as possible - not sure how that'll work out but we'll see.

Some sightseeing from the Friday on our initial slightly inland route: the Barron Falls, Lake Barrine and Lake Eacham, where we decided to camp up alongside some of the most annoying animals known to man. Ducks, dogs, cockerels, cows and singing birds galore to keep us awake; one of the ducks took a great big messy poo outside our tents, the cockerels woke us up at dawn and then an enormous trail of caterpillars took a walk straight towards our tents in the morning.

On Saturday we took in yet more waterfalls; Malanda Falls followed by Millaa Millaa Falls, and then we stopped by a creek for some mosquito-assisted camping. The next day would be the beginning of our coastal adventure after our inland start...

Come on, where's the good weather?

Our first stop was Mission Beach, quite a popular stopping point for travellers and holiday-makers alike. After a quick stroll through the local carboot sale we took a look at the beach but the weather sucked; after entertaining ourselves by trying to crack a coconut with a swiss army knife (and succeeding) we went to the tourist information centre where David Bellamy's twin Australian brother confirmed there was nothing (interesting) to do in the area, particularly if the weather was bad. So, lacking in ideas we decided to abandon Mission Beach and carry on down to our next port of call - the Murray Falls.

The Murray Falls are just south of the Tully River, where we did our white water rafting the previous week. Unfortunately on of the two lookout points was closed and there are only so many waterfalls you can find interesting after a while. We decided that we making good progress towards the Whitsundays and took a group vote to set up camp for free, had a long game poker and then pretty much exhausted our supply of games to playing the dark; any suggestions are welcome.

So, what could we possibly do the next day to better the last one? More waterfalls of course! Our Lonely Planet book insisted that we visited the Paluma Range National Park where we found several swimming holes and big boulders to jump in from. We also found a free campsite there, which was nice; it wasn't free of course but once again we got away without paying. What rebels.

Next stop - civilisation.

Townsville

Townsville is the capital of North Queensland, if such a place actually exists, and is also the gateway to the attractive looking and sounding Magnetic Island which we all wanted to go to. After a quick look around Townsville we decided to stay there for the night - and after a look at the island ferry prices we decided not to go to Magnetic Island at all and stayed in Townsville for a few days.

Sydney was cold when I left; it's nearly winter there now and although it's not the same as a UK winter it's still not great at all. Cairns is always hot, but as it's a tropical rainforest area it's often cloudy, humid and wet. Townsville, however, is just the answer to my recent weather woes and fast fading tan. It's hot and sunny most days and there's a nice little artificial swimming pool by the coast looking out on Magnetic Island. The pool is salt water and extremely dirty but the area is nice enough, and given that the sea is full of jellyfish it'll do very nicely indeed.

It's nice to stay at a proper campsite for once; hot water in the showers, lights, power points to charge things, stoves and barbeques, soft grass underneath your tent; all the little thing s you completely take for granted back at home. The downside of decent campsites is of course that you have to pay for them - just over 4 pounds a night each to be precise. That might not sound like much but Dave and Sam are both on a pretty tight budn the Spanishget so we're living as cheap as possible, something Jamie and I don't have a problem with either. As we've already paid for a lot of stuff further down the coast we're not expecting to spend a lot in the near future.

I'm still debating what to do when we get to Sydney, which will probably be towards the end of May. If I work then I'll need to find a 3 month contract - since I'll need a bit of time to find one that'll probably take me through to the end of August, and I can then do stuff like New Zealand, Fiji, New Guinea, Singapore and Thailand. The alternative is to spend more time in those places; like I said, I'm still thinking.

A quick update on the Spanish front - I've ditched the cheap book I bought and have downloaded an 83 track CD by a guy called Michael Thomas onto my iPod. I've only listened to the first 5 tracks but I can already say some basic sentences without trying hard to remember, and I have a pretty good understanding of how to pronounce all the combinations of letters and accents. Apparently at the end of it I'll know almost 2,000 words; in a single edition of the New York Times only 600 or so different words are used throughout it. Maybe a trip to South America next?