Nick’s world tour

What must be the shortest bus ride in the past 9 months, 2 hours north of Mission Beach is Cairns. The sky clouds over as we leave and is appropriately raining as we pass through Innisfail, a small village which apparently is the wettest place in all of Australia. 

Cairns is a popular town which is completely geared towards tourism, as the main place for exploring the far north of tropical Queensland. The town itself is all low rise, with a long grassy esplanade along the mudflats (no beach here) leading to the swimming lagoon and the pier area with all the million dollar yachts. [read on]

I left Townsville early morning for a short ride north along the coast to Mission Beach. My mission (ha ha) whilst here was to do nothing for a couple of days, by way of recovery from spending three days getting to the coast. [read on]

I was going to take the weekly Desert Venturer bus down the backroads, stopping off at outback ranches and old pubs, to the east coast and the town of Cairns. But they cancelled it. So my only option is to ... [Continue reading this entry]

That was a mission, half the height of the country in one go. Now back in the tropics, Darwin is a tiny little city, and the capital of the Northern Territory. Destroyed with varying degrees of success over the years ... [Continue reading this entry]

After a sleepless 24 hours we left CP and headed into the Northern Territory (ok, we go north, and it's ANOTHER time zone?!) for the town of Alice Springs, or Alice. Hours of endless yellow sand, red sand, scrub, trees ... [Continue reading this entry]

Most of the population live near the coast, perhaps explaining why Aussies are so cheerful and relaxed about everything. But the real country is the outback, so after travelling west, half way along the South Coast it's time to make ... [Continue reading this entry]

Just north of Adelaide is the famous Barossa Valley home to many wineries, including that of Jacob's Creek, everyones favourite Special Offer wine in Tescos.

The Groovy Grape wine tour bus takes us out through the hills past the Giant Rocking ... [Continue reading this entry]

We roll into Adelaide early, and have to wind our watches back half an hour... and dispose of any fruit or veg we might be trying to smuggle across the state border. They do take quarantine quite seriously here. Being ... [Continue reading this entry]

When I arrive at 5am, it's very very cold. I'm lucky I booked ahead as everywhere is very busy as it's the Melbourne Cup. Melbourne is a nice city to wander round, and it's supposed to be a good place to ... [Continue reading this entry]

The first bus journey went well, though it wasn't helped by being incredibly tired from a late night. I arrived late afternoon in Canberra and there was a hint of sunlight. Just a bit, though still a cold wind. I ... [Continue reading this entry]