George’s Adventure

Thursday 5th October 2006

I have now reached Darwin and what a hard slog it was to get there.  Looking at a map of Australia you would be forgiven for thinking that it wouldnt take that long to get from Cairns to Darwin…oh no no no my friends, not only is it soooo hot and sticky in the back of a Ford Falcon with another 3 people in the car but it takes forever and the road is just one straight line.  There is only so many termite hills, red soil and trees that can amuse one. Hmmm.

Well, the road trip didnt start quite as expected.  On Sunday 24/9 we caught the ferry from Magnetic Island back to Townsville where we put all our bags into big lockers at the ferry terminal so that we could explore Townsville and catch the Greyhound bus later on that night.  We went to ‘Flanders Mall’ where they had a few market stalls up and visited the art gallery which was really good.  They had an exhibition by Lee Harnden who is a grafitti artist but his prints look just like fine art paintings – amazing what you can do with a spray paint (yes Dad i can imagine the look on your face and the mumblings of the amount of grafitti about and having to get it off the green box over the road….yes yes).  Anyway, the best thing about this art gallery is that the ground level is dedicated to participation.  There is a room filled with empty cardboard  boxes for you to make houses, there is a corner for drawing and colouring (yes i did do this), and best of all – there was a lego room.  Wicked!

Once we had finished being creative for the day we went for a long walk along ‘The Strand’, nothing like London’s street i might add, and then headed back to the bus/ferry terminal to catch the bus to Cairns.

Cairns is a very touristy place, I was surprised by this.  It was made better by being able to meet up with some people we had met on the Whitsundays and by the fact that Cairns has a lagoon.  This is again, just a big swimming pool but its great to sunbathe and swim when it is so hot.  We had a free night in one hostel and then had to move to another hostel to take advantage of a discounted night.  What an effort.  Just to move hostel it took us an hour to walk to the other one with all our bags and massive rucksack in the heat.  It was a nightmare.  Just to find out that when we arrived at the hostel, we couldnt check in until 12.30pm.  Greeeat!

From Cairns you can visit Cape Tribulation.  We did a day trip allowing us to see ‘where the rainforest meets the reef’.  We had morning tea and biscuits at the Daintree River where a boat took us on a little cruise and we spotted crocodiles on the river bank.  We did a botanical boardwalk where our guide talked to us about buttress roots (my brain was trying to remember some of that Geography A-Level stuff and it was starting to return).  We had lunch at a jungle village and visited Mossman Gorge, a beautiful place where you can swim – if only the water hadnt felt like an ice box i would have jumped right in.  On the way back we stopped off at Port Douglas for half an hour.  This is a lovely little place where some of the stars holiday.

We began our roadtrip on Thursday 28/09.  We met a couple called Anne-Marie and Brian on our Whitsunday trip and they mentioned they were driving to Darwin.  Janine and I soon persuaded them that they couldnt possibly leave without our sintilating company.  We stopped off at Mission Beach for lunch, made a slight detour to The Girrigun National Park to see the Wallaman Falls, and only reached Townsville on the first day.  Janine and I had already visited here as you know so we were keen to get going the next day but it didnt begin well as the car had to go in for a service which took longer than expected so we didnt set off until well into the afternoon on Friday.  We passed through ‘Charters Towers’ – Queenslands second largest city which was referred to in its heyday as ‘The World’.  We then got to Hughenden and stayed the night here.  As we left Hughenden on Saturday 30/09 we saw Kronosaurus Korner where they have a giant dinosaur with its mouth open which you can sit in.  They have found many fossils in these parts to indicate that many dinosaurs roamed these areas – they now cover even their bins with dinosaur feet.  Funny really.  For lunch we stopped at ‘Julia Creek’.  This was very eerrie.  All i could hear was the sound of me biting into my sandwich and chewing.  Very quiet town.  We ended the day in Mt Isa.  Apparently you are only an Aussie when you have visited here.  Janine and I walked to a lookout point and watched the sunset over the town.  We also met a guy in a hat and boots who told me he was a ‘real’ cowboy and did a pretend shoot with his gun.  That was quite funny too.

On Sunday 01/10 we went from Mt Isa to Camooweal.  We had lunch here in a cafe that charged extortionate prices because it could.  They had books for sale saying ‘1 book for 3 dollars or 2 for 6 dollars’.  What a saving!!  We went on to pass ‘Georgina River’ and then reached the border and passed into Northern Territory.  We stayed the night at Tennant Creek where in the evening we watched some aboriginal people play some music and sing.  On Monday 2/10 we reached Katherine.  On the way we say a bush fire – Janine was asleep and missed the whole thing.  The next day we finally arrived in Darwin.  We passed ‘George Creek’ where we took a ‘ten minute scramble’ as the guidebook said, to a waterfall.  It was so hot I felt like jumping in the falls.

We are now in Darwin.  Our hostel has two swimming pools and it is such an intense heat here so yesturday we just lounged on the beds by the pool and cooled off by swimming.  We have booked all of our trips down to Adelaide now and we leave on Sunday for those.  

Tags: Australia, Cairns, Darwin, Outback, roadtrip, Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Australia, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.