Judy & Brian Tour Oz

Its only a short run from Atherton to Port Douglas via the mountain pass down to Mossman and we made it down to the bottom safely. It's probably a better way down than going via Kuranda and Cairns. Actually the van park is the Big 4 at Craiglie, which is about 4km south of the turn-off to Port Douglas proper. It makes for a quieter park and a nice little drive into the shops / beach / marina / markets. What possessed us I don't know, but we went up to 'the Daintree' for the day. First of all you go into the Daintree village, and then wonder why you are there, because there is nothing there except a couple of cafe places and outlets for crocodile cruises. Not a problem, we'll go back to the turn-off and take the ferry across into the Daintree itself. Or not. We waited over an hour for the ferry, but finally, for the small sum of $28 for a return ticket (just how many one-way tickets do they sell?) we were under way. Vehicular ferry. Daintree River, Daintree Qld...

I was awake at 6:30am and next thing we knew, it was 7:30 and we were pulling out of the van park and heading towards the Gregory Developmental road, heading toward Atherton, via The Lynd, Mt Garnett and Ravenshoe.  Any idea we had of a nice easy run were dashed as we proceeded to drive through thick fog for the first 85km, caused no doubt by the fact that the road runs parallel to the Burdekin River. Once clear of the fog, the road immediately turned to a true development road for 10km but was ok then for a while.  After clearing the fog and the dodgy road, we hit a good patch and were making good time when I failed to see the dead 'roo in the middle of our lane early enough to avoid it. The sound as it thudded along under the car and the thunk as it hit the towbar and the van chassis was pretty ugly. One has to blot these things out, the car felt OK and so we pushed on, and on and 'smack', a dirty big rock from a car and trailer going the other way, put a huge star in o...

Easy run over to CT from Hughenden, only 250km. Mind you, it wasn't looking too good to start with as we just had to wait for a huge road train to go past before we could pull out. But, using our trusty radio and the good graces of the truck driver we easily got around, right after the roadworks. We kept going, just cruising along for the few hours, only stopping twice, as directed by Police as they escorted two huge loads coming in the opposite direction to us, One was a single propellor blade for a wind turbine, some 70 metres long and 7 and a half metres wide, the other was two trucks carrying huge drums or tanks, also taking up the full width of the road. We had to wait at the gate of the Aussie Outback Oasis van park for them to process the queue, but finally we were in and a pretty nice spot it is too. We went into town and did some food shopping before coming back for a swim and getting ourselves ready for the Friday Night Pizza & Show. For $10 you get a pizza and a ...

Travelled from Cloncurry, through Julia Creek and Richmond and onto Hughenden. The road was horrible. One of those endless strips of tar that bounced and rolled and jumped you and the van all over the place for hours. Damn glad to be here is all I can say. We have not stayed here before, but as we've found, booking ahead has become essential, even in a flea-bite of a town like Hughenden. The van park has the oddest setup: what would have once bee all drive through sites, are now all tail-to-tail sites, and its full. There appears to be plenty of other nice grassed sites but they are all off-limits apparently. Oh, well, grateful to be off the road at least. We went back into town to have lunch and went straight to the FJ Holden Cafe, where the food matches the decor: 1950s style. Mine was OK, Judy had a mis-steak sandwich - 90% gristle. We wandered around a bit, had a cold lemonade at the pub and then wandered across the road to see the sheep sheering demonstration. This was r...

Just  a short note to say that we left Darwin and headed south to Mataranka, where we had the obligatory swim in the hot spa, then on to Banka Banka, which was all but full at 1pm, and then over to Camooweal (where we discovered it was also almost full and why hadn't we booked?) and Cloncurry (where we definitely had booked and it was just as well as it filled up by 5pm). Basically just  4 day transport section covering 1720 km. As we've done it all before, several times, in both directions, there were no snaps, no memorable moments, just a lot of driving. Actually, we did take some snaps: at Camooweal at the Billabong, which is just about dry but still popular with the free-campers. Trees full of Corellas. Billabong. Camooweal Qld Happy snapper. Billabong. Camooweal Qld  Billabong. Camooweal Qld Brolga. Billabong. Camooweal Qld Water Lily. Billabong. Camooweal Qld This sign has gone missing. The clever new operators of the BP...