Australia

It took approximately 4 hours to fly from Auckland to Melbourne. What a surprise when we got there as it was cold, about 16 degrees and cloudy. This was  a  bit of a change as we were getting used to the nice temperatures in Auckland, which were around 26 degrees when we left. We were not planning on staying in Melbourne for long anyway as we are visiting Melbourne later, when the Australian Tennis Open is on at the end of January 2012. We stayed in a holiday camp 10 minutes taxi ride from the airport, it was ok for a one night stop over, but it was noticeably far more expensive than New Zealand, costing us $120 for one night .

The following day we flew to Cairns, which took three and a half hours from Melbourne. It was a little bit different when we walked off the plane; it was very humid and a very  hot temperature in the region of 33 degrees . (You know it is going to be hot when you here the crickets which are  very loud and high pitched.) We found a campsite called ‘Cool Waters’, which was in an idyllic tropical setting about 15 minutes bus ride from the main city.

Cool Waters holiday Park

We rented a cabin facing the pool, the campsite was really quiet, which meant we had the pool for ourselves most of the time. Our routine was good, swimming before breakfast every morning a great way to start the day. It took a few days to acclimatise as we just constantly perspired. We stayed there 5 days while we planned our trip in Australia. 

The pool at Cool waters

We bought a car, a little Hyundi Getz as the rental would have been very expensive if we hired a car or a campervan for three months.

Cairns which is in the Queensland district known as tropical North is famous for the Great Barrier Reef, which is listed as one of the Worlds Heritage sites, spectacular for coral islands and its marine life.
It is a very picturesque city and the main front was impressive, many tourists enjoying the sunshine on Cairns Esplanade, which has a man-made pool/lagoon in the middle of the city, lots of grass areas to sit, plus free barbeque areas.
There is loads to do in Cairns, scuba diving, snorkelling, white water rafting, you name it they do it. There is also a wide range of bars and restaurants. We managed to find a bar that cooked Sunday dinners, pumpkin being their main vegetable. It was the first sunday dinner we had  eaten  for about three months.  The bar had had a great atmosphere which reminded us  of being back in England,ie a normal pub culture. There were certainly a few Aussies enjoying the live band and a corona or two,  We never saw one person drunk in New Zealand in our time there!

Cairns Esplande

Cairns Esplande

Free barbecue areeas at Cairns

It took about 5 days to sort out the car, with all the legalities, however we were now ready to go touring again. Our first journey was to go a bit further up North to the Cape Tribulation, a part of the Daintree Rainforest, which is thought to be the planet’s oldest surviving tropical rainforest. On the way there we caught a small cruise to go along the Daintree River , this is a place  where the  crocodiles live  in the wild. We managed to find a couple of the baby crococdiles sleeping on the banks, not that we really wanted to face one which was known as 'Scar face' who was about 5-7 meters long.

The only way to get to the Daintree rainforest was by car/ tug boat, which was winched across the river on large cables, this took about 5-10 minutes  on a good day, 

Once we were transported back    over the water it was just pure rainforest right up to the beach.  The rainforest was spectacular and so were the beaches. . On the way to Cape Tribulation this was one of the views overlooking the Daintree River at Walu Wuggirriga

Walu Wuggirriga

Cape Tribulation Beach- Steve with two large coconuts

It  took about 45 minutes through the National Park to the end of the sealed road. We stopped regularly for cassowaries (a less known flightless bird of Australia) speed bumps, that is not the sort of thing we see back at home,.  These birds are quite impressive as they grow to about one and a half metres tall.

We understood that there were not a lot of places to stay in Cape Tribulation so we booked an Australian government campsite called ‘Noah’s’ in advance.  We drove in and drove straight back out again, there was no light, it was such a damp dense forest ‘defiantly mosquito land’. So we were taking  no risks as we have already plenty of  bites to contend with.  That is the last time we will be booking in advance, we normally like to check the places out first.

We ventured up the road and found a campsite called ‘Cape Tribulation’ which was situated within a clearing of the bush about 10 metres from a golden sandy beach.  There were lots of noises in the bush so after our barbecue we kept the fire going to keep the creepy crawlies away./ or whatever they were.  We played our Christmas CD , Bing Crosby and drank a wine or two for our pre-Christmas celebrations in 33 degrees tropical rainforest. Very pleasent.

Cape Tribulation camp site

Horse Riding at Cape Tribulation  Beach

We succeeded our plan and had gone as far North as we wanted, our next journey was to turn back south with an aim to reach Newcastle by Christmas Eve which was going to be  quite a journey

Our first destination was Etty beach, just off the Bruce Highway, which took about 5 hours, we also had to do a small detour of about 9km to get there. It was well worth it.  It was quite a secluded little resort, all that was there was one campsite shop with a café. The bay was small and pretty, there was a good atmosphere as families were either relaxing, or  playing on the beach until fairly late as it had floodlights.   It was pleasing to see they had  a stinger net so it was the first time we had seen anyone swimming in the sea since arriving in Australia. So far there had either been  signs up at the river, warning people about the crocodiles or on the beaches it was sharks or jelly fish.  We only  just stayed one night as we still had a fairly lengthy journey to do.

Our next stop was Bowen, we stayed at a Big 4 holiday park on the beach, we managed to get a cabin with an ocean few, the first cabin with a jacuzzi bath. What a treat!

Bowen was famous for being the most northerley resort of the 'Whitsunday' region , bays, large wall murals and the bigggest Mango in the world!We stopped two nights, Steve was able to fish straight outside the cabin, it was getting regular now living next to  the water The pool was also a decent size to swim in, something which was needed as the humidity was still quite high.  The beach was fascinating with lots of coral branches washed ashore.  Steve wanted us to put them in our ruck sack and take home. I had  put my foot down as I  was not forfeiting any more clothes for shells, pebbles or corals!! There were lots of  secluded beaches surrounding Bowen, Horse Shoe Bay, Rose bay, all within a nice residential setting. It was a lovely place for people to live

Our next detination was Airlee Beach which took about an hour from Bowen. Airlee Beach is European backpackers paradise, centre of the Whitsundays region, this only took about one hour from Bowen. I personally loved the place and the touristy element to it, nice gift shops, bars and restaurants.  It had a similar feel to Cairns but smaller.  The centre of the town also had a man-made pool/lagoon and barbecue areas on the water front which was full of young back packers. We stayed two nights there and we both were entertained nightly ,with possums ,large flying beetles and  moths and best of all Steve went to the toilet and came back out saying there was a large green frog in the toilet - it was massive !!

Our next destination was Armstrong beach, which was a three hour drive.  It had got a good write up in the brochure, but once we got there it was a bit of a dump, the annoying thing was it still cost the same as the usual holiday parks $30 for a tent with electric. We were both tired after the long drive so we decided just to stay, after all it was only for one night. I have never seen as many frogs or big beetles in such a small proximity..  There must have been about 8 frogs just outside the tent alone, going to the toilet was a challenge not to stand on one. To finish us off it rained all night, there was no kitchen or communal area like all of the other sites we have seen so far, so we had to sit in our two man tent from about 6-30pm when it was dark.  However I have to hand it to Steve with no resources he got out our little barbecue and cooked salmon, jacket potato and antipasto salad. It was one of the best meals I have had.

The culprits who woke us up at 5am

We then got woke up the next morning around 5am which was all we needed, 4 parrots squalling away they were so loud.  So you can imagine we decided to set off pretty early to get back on the road we are so glad we did as we saw our first kangaroo hopping at some speed across the road.  Our first skippy! (But it was too quick to get the photo !)

The next journey was quite a bit of a stretch approx. 4 hours from Armstrong Beach to Yappoon and quite tedious, the landscape was full of fields of sugar cane once you see one flat field  with  nothing in between you have seen them all, no town or civilisation. . However we have to hand it to the Australians they had set up a little scheme on the highway which was part of a drive safe campaign, run by volunteers where they offered you free coffee and biscuits. 

We took a bit of a detour on the tourist coast road and arrived at a place called Yapoon we weren’t actually planning on staying there as we were going to travel a bit further  straight to 1770, but whilst driving through Yappoon town, it looked like an ideal little holiday destination, with a surfing beach  and  campsite right on the beach. It was really hot so 5 hours was enough driving for the day.

Yapoon Promenade

Santas running along Yapoon Beach

The  next day we  then travelled to 1770 which is famous for another of Captain Cook's discoveries   when he claimed Queensland.  This was a fantastic resort, once again lovely beaches, small  and secluded, definitely a place to visit.  One of our main reasons for stopping off here was that it was a place where the 1770 cruises left to go to Lady Musgrave Island and a chance for us to visit the Great Barrier Reef,where there was the only isolated lagoon ,within the reef.  The trip was quite expensive, but offered something slightly different to the rest we had seen on our 1000 km travels south

1770 beach front.

Captain cooks monument at 1770

We had a fantastic day out, the variety of fish were unbelievable.  We did a bit of snorkelling and fishing.  The boat stopped at a pontoon which had an underwater observatory so for the people who did not want to go in the sea, it was ideal.  As part of the deal there was an option to go reef  fishing for a couple of hours which was an additional $20 dollars each which was a bargain compared to other boat trips .So I decided to go along with Steve. I caught four big fish and was on a roll the skipper was very impressed and gave me a verbal gold star, I knew it was beginners luck. I was so chuffed as I caught the fish of the day. Approx. 45cm long. It took some pulling out of the water as it was really heavy (Poor Steve only caught one fish, not that we are very competitive with each other) but he liked swimming with them.

The Atlantic man- Steve

This fish took some pulling out of the water-An Emperor !

Steve's fish
(He did have to spend all afternoon putting my bait on ,so didn't have much time to fish!!

A great finish to the day as we met some people on the boat Craig and Alanna who offered to clean the fish and invited us to join them for dinner on the evening so we could sample the fish we caught.  We met up at a barbecue area on the front of 1770. The fish was absolutely gorgeous, which went down really well with a couple of glasses of white wine.

My fish covered in foil cooking nicely on the barbacue which was only just big enough

We didn’t really want to leave this place we could have stayed for longer than two nights, the campsite was great and situated in the bush, once again we were woken up very early mornings 4am to the noice of the birds which was unbelievable and difficult to describe, but great.(Steve describes it as being like sleeping in the aviary at London Zoo!)

We still have a few miles to clock before reaching Newcastle on 23^rd December, today is 20^th December so we stopped off at a place called Hervey Bay, we are  staying  at campsite next to the harbour, Once again a very nice place to visit, especially if you are into yachts.

Hervey bay= Aussies getting into the Christmas spirit

Hervey Bay

We have now done 2000 kms by car since arriving in Australia, with approximately another 1300km to go before reaching Newcastle via the Sunshine Coast (Mooloolaba) in 3 days. It seems a bit of a rush, but we are coming back up the east coast to Brisbane and the coast after January as we need to head back to this area for our flight out of Australia and to sell our car in February.

We are looking forward to our first Christmas in Australia, but we are missing England being with our children, family and friends.

If you are reading this blog  Merry Christmas from Bailey's Tours down under!
Keep following we will post again in the New Year 2012