Mark and Anna's Aussie Adventure

After our amazing fun week of pretty much driving solid the entire coast of Queensland we decided it was time for some much needed R&R. We headed to the small costal towns of Agnes water and “The Town of 1770”. We basically wanted to go here because of the name, but after doing some reading into the place (named by yours and our good friend Capt Cook, the year he sailed this way) it sounded like an awesome place, and also we could do a boat trip out to the great barrier reef – super!
We stopped in an awesome little national park/council campground in Agnes water, it was right on the beach in a wonderful little forest (it also only cost us $5 per night – AWESOME!). That day we headed out to sort out the boat trip out to the beautiful Lady Musgrave island, we also went to a couple of local farmers to buy some fresh produce. The first farm was actually more like the couples large garden, they were super nice and we had a good chat and came away with bags of fresh herbs, salad stuff and Bananas! We were so excited about the Bananas, we haven’t eaten any in months because they have been so expensive because all the crops were wiped out by cyclone Yasi…. But these nice locals sold us some for a sweet deal – which meant we could have Anna’s speciality Banana pancakes for breakfast! The second farm stop was also awesome, we loaded up on seasonal veg and a nice juicy pineapple (also in season at the moment)…here comes my big seasonal fruit and veg buying spiel….. read on/skip on if you want to…

Anywho, being on a budget, we have tried to shop outside of the big supermarket chains or local convenience stores when we can, we have always tried on the trip to buy only Australian grown produce and also only stuff in season. Buying Australian (or British if you are a UK reader) means that you not only get the stuff that is in season, so therefore the freshest and tastiest but it is also the cheapest as well. Also by supporting your countries farmers it means that they will continue to grow these crops and therefore keep good food coming in. We have tried to do our shopping at farmers markets or road side stalls, this has been great as you only get seasonal food, plus these places always sell at about half the price of the big chain stores. This is a great way to get the best food you will eat!
Obviously it is not always possible to go to markets as they are generally on sat/sun mornings or your local region may not have any at all, but you can still apply the same logic at supermarkets and it will save you paying over the odds for a flown in kiwi… just keep an eye on the price per KG and you can’t go wrong. Also get a book or App for your iphone that tells you about what veg is good and when!

Anyway rant/lesson over, back to the trip.

The beach campsite was nice and peaceful, we got some good rest in, a bit of fishing under a blanket of stars and a good nights sleep before our big day out to the Great Barrier Reef!
I was soooo excited to do this, visiting the reef is one of those awesome travel experiences that is just amazing.
We took a boat from 1770 out to Lady Musgrave Island, which is an hour and a half of bumpy, vomit inducing fun. Unfortunately Anna “Ironguts” – “I haven’t vomited in 10 years” Fulford, started to turn a little pale about an hour in…. after a few sickyburps, up came brekkie. My poor little honey didn’t look too good immediately afterwards, but another quick blow of chunks sorted that out!

Lady Musgrave is a small coral based island that is only about 1km wide by 2km long, it is surrounding by fringing reef in crystal clear water and around that reef is a coral wall that protects it from the open ocean, so it creates a safe harbour inside. The island is covered in small trees and all sorts of birds that nest in the trees and also in burrows! It basically just looks like your classic paradise island!

After fighting off the Chinese tourists to get a choccy bickie and cup of tea (we didn’t get any cake, the buggers all swiped about 5 pieces each!) we chilled for 5 mins and fed the fish that were floating around the pontoon that was our base for the day. We then went on an informative nature walk of the island, which was informative. The island is pretty stunning but the best bit was under the water, which we couldn’t wait for!
After the tour, we took a semi sub tour of the reefs, we spotted loads of awesome coral, amazing brightly coloured fish and loads of green sea turtles. The semi sub was cool and a good way to see things if you didn’t want to actually get wet! But we did! We opted for wetsuits as it was a bit chillier than the bath water temperatures of the western Australian seas, it was a good decision as it we were doing this trip in winter! We had a top snorkel, we saw some amazing big fish (spangled emperors, bream, darts), awesome coral, little brightly coloured fishes, but the highlight was a 5 minute swim along with a sea turtle – jackpot!

After a spot of lunch I headed in again for another awesome snorkel, this was well cool because as I reached the pontoon to climb out, Anna got the guide to chuck a bit of fish food in, which sent the massive shoal of fish crazy while they swam around me fighting for the food!
The boat ride back was nowhere near as bumpy and we survived with no mishaps this time around, we arrived back just in time for a stunning sunset, one of the best in Aus I reckon!

The following day I headed out at dawn to do some beach fishing, there was not much around but it was great being the only person up on the beach watching the sunrise and the land come alive. We headed out on a nice cycle ride for the rest of the day, we cycled form Agnes waters to the tip of the headland at 1770. We scrambled down on to a nice little beach where we enjoyed a great picnic, chucked a Frisbee and got some suntime in on the guns….

The following day it was time to leave this lovely little area but we had a treat ahead of us, we were off to Rainbow Beach/Inskip Point where we could catch a ferry over to Fraser island!

Ciao xxxx

Townsville was a great little place to pass through. We had a lovely walk alone the foreshore and enjoyed the sunshine. We thought we would keep going to go kayaking around Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday’s and so kept driving. The Wolf, however, had other ideas. We were about 40km out of Townsville when something we thought would never happen again did. The bearing on the van failed again and off came the axle. This time was even more spectacular as we started a large fire. Just as we were calling the fire brigade some handy blokes turned up with their extinguishers and sorted it out! We were on the phone again to the NRMA who kindly (as per our policy) found us somewhere to stay and organised a tow. It was Saturday again so we were stuck for the weekend not knowing what would happen. We made the most of staying in a nice motel – big bed, TV and hot showers! We spent another few days in Townsville waiting for it to be fixed. We walked to the top of the Castle Hill and saw some great views, and enjoyed the markets on Sunday.

It turns out the reason the bearings had failed this time was that Ron in Karumba had over tightened them. We called him and he offered to pay for the repairs, which made us very happy! By the time they were mended we were ready to hit the road. We had only 2 days to get to Brisbane, 1400km away. We drove 80km that night and stopped in Ayr for some dinner. Mark checked how the bearings were holding up and burnt his hand in the process. Turns out they weren’t doing too well and there was no way we were going to drive further that night. And so we stopped at a caravan park for the night and drove back to Townsville the next day. We suspected that the new set of mechanics had done the brakes up too tight thus causing more bearing overheating which could eventually lead to another full scale failure, so some minor tweaks were required. We spent the couple of hours back in Townsville having a good feed at a dodgy local pub (reminded me a bit of the Kenilworth working men’s club, but without the heckling). Anyway when things were all fixed, we hit the road again. Not far out of Townsville the phone rang and all our worries (especially financial ones) were thrust aside as Anna found out that she had actually done better than thought in the interview as she received a job offer! She happily accepted and will start work with the Home Based Rehab Scheme at the Royal Rehab Centre. Needless to stay she was very very happy!
After a mental drive of about 600kms we felt pretty shattered and stopped in a roadside lay-by, by the time we arrived though, there was not much space so we were forced to take a spot quite close to the highway. Needless to say we didn’t get much sleep that night as the road trains hurtled passed throughout the night.

Next morning we again had a big day ahead of us, so we loaded up on coffee and set off, our aim was to drive a further 200km to a place where we could leave the van for a few days while we carried on in just the car to get to Brisbane to catch the flight I had to get back to Sydney for the weekend (I was attending the Australian masters team tryout for the world camps in 2012). So we successfully dropped the van off at a little caravan park, then continued on the remaining 600km to Brisbane… woohoo!
We arrived in Brisbane absolutely shattered, but were greeted by Anna’s lovely NZ cousin Katy and husband Rob. We spent a lovely evening with them, such wonderful people, and Katy made an awesome roast dinner (first in 5 months – Yum!) and we had a much needed sleep in!
Next day we headed into Brisbane to meet by strange coincidence one of my best mates from the UK, Andy. He was passing through town on business for one day, so we had a few great hours catching up over too much coffee and way too many gay bromance references…top stuff. The rest of the day we hung out in Brissie, enjoyed a trip to the beautiful botanic gardens and a trip to see Anna’s old house. From there it was the airport and a flight south back to Sydney.

The weekend was pretty full on for me, I arrived in Sydney pretty late, met 40 guys for the first time, had a beer or two, hit the hay, got up at the crack of dawn, ran hard all day at training, then had a nice Thai meal that I would see again 4 hours later when the food poisoning kicked in…. the Sunday trial was also good but I felt a bit out of it following the few days leading up to the weekend, plus not playing Frisbee for 5 months prior to this made it tough! Anywho it was a top weekend, but I couldn’t wait to get back to Brisbane to see my lovely lady wife who had been taking in the delights of the capital of Queensland with our super friends Jill and Niall.

Whilst Mark was having fun playing Frisbee and spending more time than he wanted on the toilet, I was having an AMAZING time!! On Friday night I met Jill and we had some great dinner before heading to see Fat Freddy’s Drop, and awesome band that I can’t believe I have never seen before! The next day we got up and went to West End Markets. It is a great market, with lots of great fresh produce and some awesome stalls. The afternoon was spent at different museums/galleries with Niall before an evening of Trivial Pursuit!! Sunday involved more coffee (so good to be around great coffee again!) and more markets for me. Such beautiful people to be around! I spoke to all the beautiful girls in my life on the phone but suffered some massive Mark withdrawals and so was glad to see him on Sunday night!!

The Monday morning involved a big lay in and a good breakfast, we then headed out for a day of Brisbane based fun, we went for a walk along Southbank, checking out the coffee shops and fancy restaurants, we then hopped on the river ferry service which we rode to the last stop and back again. We took in all the sites and delights of the city from the water in a great cheap way to site see!
That evening we hung out Jill and Niall, watched a bit of TV for the first time in ages and chewed the fat.
Next day it was back on the road and north again to pick up our van from whence we had left it – so fast forward 500km and we were reunited with the lone wolf!

We weren’t expecting too much out of Cairns, and so we weren’t disappointed when we got there! We had planned to see if we could do a day trip to the Barrier Reef from there, but the weather prevented us doing that. Lucky for us, there was another incentive though – the great Dug Wilders! That’s right, he happened to be staying at Palm Cove (just north of Cairns) and so we stopped off for a couple of days to see him. I had found out that I would have a job interview that week (they had very kindly offered to let me do a phone interview) and so I had some, ok lots, of preparation work to do. I did managed to go fishing with the boys for a little but found myself tied to the computer instead trying to get up to date with NSW health and remind myself what a stroke was. The boys had an awesome time fishing, although they didn’t seem to catch much!!
We spent a day around Cairns but apart from a great lunch (at an allergy free café so I was happy) and some good op shops I’m afraid we weren’t inspired. We headed back pretty quick to the beauty of Palm Cove so that the boys could try and catch some food for our BBQ dinner. They failed but luckily Dug’s girlfriend Faye’s parents had more than prepared and we had a great night of lots of food and an awesome game of UNO! It was very emotional saying goodbye to Dug but I am sure our paths will pass again soon!

The next morning I got up at the crack of dawn to prepare. 15 minutes before the interview was due to start I was emailed a case study to prepare for. Although it was fun being interviewed sitting cross legged in my caravan I found it very difficult to not be in the same room as the interviewers. I really felt I had not done well and only coffee and cake would cheer me up afterwards. I wouldn’t find out for another week if I was successful……
We headed next to a great place called Paronella Park. It was built by an Italian man who wanted to have his own castle, somewhere to entertain people and something to be proud of. It was amazing. He had built a lovely cottage for his family and a fantastic building next to it with a ballroom/cinema and dining area. Further into the park were creeks, waterfalls and rivers and more places to dine. Unfortunately the area has suffered a lot of flood damage over the last 70 years and not all of it has been rebuilt. The most amazing part of it was that he built it all by hand, every piece of stone and every walkway and spot to stop in the Park always has a view back to the central waterfall. Definitely a place worth visiting.

It was an interesting drive that day through different places affected by the cyclone. The trees are regrowing and some people have rebuilt but there is definitely a lot more to do. We stopped at Bingil Bay for the night in the middle of a massive storm. To prevent getting all our clothes wet we even set the van up in our underwear and raincoats, much to the amusement of the other people! The next day was still pretty dismal so we bypassed the beaches around Mission Bay and drove straight through to Townsville. And it was here that a little bit of déjà vu came our way…

A + M xx

We headed due east from Karumba across the savannah highway, although it is a major route from the gulf region, you would expect that maybe it would have two lanes of road to make passage smooth and quick… but that is a big no! Most of the road was just wide enough to pass oncoming traffic fine, but there were a lot of sections which created some interesting moments of chicken with large trucks, if you didn’t pull off the bitumen and onto the gravel verge you were in a heap of trouble…. When you met a car coming the other way, the common courtesy was you both move one tyre width each onto the gravel, this worked ok, except for the stones that got thrown up by the other car – our windscreen took a couple of direct hits but managed to hold steady despite some moments of girly screaming as a rock was hurtling toward the car at 80km/h – this girly screaming was mostly by me not Anna!
So we drove hard to gain some time back and found ourselves a day later in a different world. We had arrived in the Atherton Tablelands – gone were the dusty red roads, the coarse scrubland and the flat featureless plains, we had arrived into green, hilly, forested highlands! We only were spending two days in the tablelands before pushing north towards Cape Tribulation and the Daintree rainforest region, but as we found there was a lot to fit into a short amount of time.
So after an awesome chat with a nice old fella at the tourist info we hit the road on the waterfall circuit that this region is famous for! We took in several beautiful falls in a incredibly short distance, while driving up and down hills through rural farmland – we were still quite blown away coming from the west where you have vast expanses of space with not much in, to then coming over to the east coast and seeing lots of tourist sites, cars, people and towns all within 10 mins drive of each other – weird! We stopped off for an awesome lunch at a local biodiverse cheese and yoghurt producer (off topic but the Aussies pronounce yoghurt – ‘yo- gert’, they seem to lengthen the ‘yo’ section and add a silent ‘J’ to it….weird, but interesting nonetheless. Rather disturbingly I also pronounced it this way the other day, arrrrgghhh!)

Anyway back on topic after my rant, the cheese place did an excellent cheese platter, which we munched down and we even came away with some tasty mango YOGhurt. The people were pretty snobby at the place but we liked the produce!
Anywho, we took in a couple more waterfalls before going to visit an awesome fig tree that has been taken over by vines and now resembles an alien creature or old tree man type thing from lords of the ring (see pic). That night we stayed in a nice free camping area, chucked a frisbee about and had an awesome dinner of Anna’s magic tomato pasta before hitting the hay!

Next morning we woke up sharp as we were off to have a much coffee as we could drink at the excellent coffee works museum and roasters! This was definitely a highlight, we tasted 20 odd different coffees they produced as well as liquors and chocolate, but the real highlight was the museum they had!
They basically had a shrine to coffee with full history of its roots and about 3000 odd coffee pots from around the world, there were all sorts of corny displays where it pitted coffee pots against each other in coffee Olympics and beauty pageants….very weird, but all the same there was some informative stuff in there too.

So after our little trip to coffee works we kinda felt like we were on a bit of a trip, 21 different coffees in under an hour make for some pretty hyperactive behaviour, I found Anna in the corner of the car holding a conversation with a potted plant about the virtues of modern public hospitals… anyway, buzzed up we hit the road and headed north to the wonderful world of the Daintree rainforest!
We were aiming for a beautiful little area called Cape Tribulation, named by Captain Cook because of the spot of bother he got in to around that section of the coast. The drive up was not that far (about 150kms) but it took forever because of the maze of tiny, windy roads and the ferry crossing. We found a nice little campsite right on the beach front, we set up just in time as the rain started to fall, our first rain we had seen in 3 months….
Cape Trib is the picture postcard rainforest meets beach location, stunning palm trees, gorgeous ocean and white sand, unfortunately for us, because of the rain and some bad weather that they had had, the ocean was choppy and not it’s normal crystal clear turquoise. Never mind, we still loved it!
We headed out the next morning on a big hike up to the summit of mount sorrow, it was down as a 7km return hike, not that far, but it did suggest you should put aside 4 to 5hrs to do it. We soon found out why, it was proper jungle stuff, massive fern leaves, wet long grasses and the whooping sound of exotic birds and on top of that 98% humidity, we should have taken a machete with us!
It was a great walk, really steep stuff on slippy mud and tree roots, also every few yards you had to stop and brush off the attacking hordes of leeches that were working their way up your boots towards your legs!
The hike was great fun, we got soaked, sweated tons but we made the top to be rewarded with a complete white out…. The views of the valley and coast below were shrouded in cloud, but for brief breaks, but it was still well worth it. The route back down was twice as hard as the up because of the slippyness factor, but when we made the bottom we felt super chuffed to have been lucky enough to go on such a great and different walk.

We spent two nights at cape trib, I got a bit of fishing in – catching a nice stingray! We also had a walk to spot some of the local crocs in the river – but to no avail… shame as there was meant to be a big one!

We left the Daintree region super satisfied after a great couple of days following on from our Karumba disaster, our plan now was to head south, follow the coast and eventually head all the way back to Sydney. First stop though was Port Douglas, a nice little seaside town full of funky shops and café bars. We only passed through for the day, but long enough for Anna to pick up a pair of new shoes…. There goes the budget!

Next stop cairns! Xxxxx

So it’s been some time since we last wrote a blog entry. I am not sure why we have abstained from writing for as long as we have, as we have been pretty awesome at putting out our daring adventures quite frequently (well Anna has!). So I am retrospectively doing this and hopefully the old memory still is working fully so we can clue you in on what we have been up to. If I can’t remember bits then I’ll make them up and add a bit of spice to give it some extra fun for you avid readers!
So Karumba went a little something like this…
Monday morning after the breakdown: hmmm there’s not a lot to do in this town… shall we go to the shops and stock up, 15 mins later, job done. What now… hmm maybe a walk, ok down to the beach, well I say beach more like an estuary with mud… done in half an hour…. What now. Too early for lunch… maybe go check on Ron to see if he has ordered the parts…. Nope….
Ok now what, I guess read…. And then read some more….. hmm bored now, let’s try and find a local job to do, maybe pay off some of the garage fees we were racking up. Anna was successful at the local pub, they hired her for some bar and glass collecting action, I tried to convince them I looked good in a skirt too, they didn’t seem too taken on that idea! Anna came home that evening with $65 for 3hours work and also a free meal of lamb curry! Woohoo!

Tuesday: Go to internet café and search for jobs for back in Sydney. Check with Ron if the parts are on the way – 1. Yep parts ordered, 2, there not coming today…boo. Read some more, go fishing and running. Fishing = no fish, not even a bite!
Weds: No parts, more running, more fishing (still no bites), more applying for jobs by Anna and CV updating for me.
Thurs: Parts should be here today! Hurrah, the rest of the day takes a similar pattern until the parts arrive at 5pm. Not much can be done today then….

Fri: Work begins at slow pace, I chase him every half an hour to keep him on it. We might get to leave today! By 4pm it’s evident that we are not leaving today. Boo. Anna heads off to the pub to doing some more awesome glass collecting and hot bar work!
Sat: We’re fixed by midday! Whoop on the road again.

So it took a week to fix the wolf but we were back on the road and itching to get to the East coast. Karumba was a very small place to get stuck for a week, especially when the main past time is fishing and there were zero fish around (4 days fishing, we didn’t see a single fish caught by anyone in town!) but we did get sorted for working life back in Sydney and got a good rest, ready for some catching up of lost time!