TripRoundUnder

Arriving back in Australia from Bali, Steve had mostly recovered from his Bali Belly ordeal, but we were about to face our next challenge. Money or lack there of!

Steve’s family friend Becci was lovely enough to let us stay at her place for a little while longer and look after Noobi the greyhound while we planned our next move.

Lauren had joined a nursing agency and we were trying to decide where our next stop for work would be. We had heard good things about Cairns and even though wet season was approaching, we were pretty keen to settle there for a little while. Lauren applied for a position, but as things usually go, it wasn’t to be that easy. We waited out the week in Darwin for confirmation of the position, but even though we kept getting promises of an answer, they took their time. With the start date looming and a few thousand kilometres travel ahead of us, we decided to head east towards Queensland without confirmation. Sounds like an awesome idea in hindsight…

When we say that the drive east between Katherine and the Queensland coast is one of the most boring drives we have ever done, know that this is coming from Nullarbor veterans. There is almost nothing but flat hot plains and road trains for hundreds of kilometres. Some nice sunsets though.

We crossed over the border and headed for Mount Isa, the first larger town in Queensland we had encountered. We stopped here to await answers from Cairns hospital our next move. We found ourselves a little free camp on the edge of town and thought that we might as well explore the area while waiting for an answer. Steve was also applying for jobs as diverse as working in a dairy farm to a tour guide!

He was also still on a mission to catch a barramundi, so we headed out to Lake Moondara where they hold an annual barramundi competition, surely he would catch one here!

In sad but expected news, he was not successful, but we encountered a few locals both human and otherwise with this friendly cow chilling out on the road.

We also found another local flying a homemade hang glider over the lake, complete with propeller propulsion. We were realising that Queenslanders might be built a little different…

Starting in Darwin, we continued with our travellers tip of making use of the free library facilities in Mt Isa. Air-conditioning was especially helpful, with the high 30s outside making things slightly uncomfortable as well as the massive storms building each day!

After a few days of no news, we were getting sick of dust bowl Mt Isa and needed to move on. We decided to split the difference in terms of north vs south and headed to Townsville with only the vague idea of a plan. We were very lucky that Lauren had some family friends in Townsville and after a phone call, we had somewhere to stay!

As things would have it, it was on this drive that we got news that Cairns didn’t look like it was going to happen. This was a little disheartening as we had been looking forward to a northern Australia adventure.

While we were figuring out our new plan, we were lucky enough to be shown around Townsville, a hugely contrasting city. Although there are some very nice people living there, the town can be quite rough, but drive just outside the city and you have beautiful waterfalls and rainforest. As we have found with a majority of northern Australia country towns, there is a large divide between the haves and the have nots.

We also had the opportunity to be taken out on a boat to explore the coastline of the nearby Magnetic Island. Steve was super excited as this meant he would finally have a fishing trip on a boat after putting in hundreds of unsuccessful land based hours. To his sadness, we were woken at 5am to the news that it was a fishing ban weekend! We were still keen to go for a scenic trip, but poor Steve was struck out again.

The island was beautiful, although we were a little nervous when encouraged to jump out for a swim in the bay. Stories of crocodiles and jellyfish made Steve spend as little time with his head underwater as possible, much to Lauren’s amusement.

The next day we decided to head north out of town to Little Crystal Creek, a waterfall with a lot of positive reviews. A steep but scenic drive later, we made it up to the spot and were lucky enough to have it all to ourselves!

We spent a lovely hour or so exploring the cascading falls, confident no snappy croc boys would venture this far up into the mountains. Steve even had a go at using the rocks as a slippery slide!

It was a nice break from the dust bowl of Australia’s interior and from the stresses of trying to figure out our next move.

Back in Townsville, we had been provided with another option, a place called Hervey Bay further down the coast near Fraser Island needed agency nurses and we decided to give it a go! Little did we know what this would mean for us going forward!

It was time to say goodbye to Townsville and our lovely hosts who had really saved the day when our plans were unravelling. Packing up the car however created a new set of challenges… Opening up the back door, there was a horrible smell in the air and thinking it was the sink, we cleaned and flushed it several times to no avail. It was only when Steve looked down and saw something moving in the floorboards, did we realise that it wasn’t the sink. At some stage, water had entered the floorboards along with some foods scraps, creating an ideal environment for maggots to grow… beyond disgusting! We tried our best between gags to clean out what we could and stuff tea tree oil paper towel to drown out the smell.

Planning to properly deal with this later, we hit our second problem when the car wouldn’t start! Luckily, we had our self jumping kit and got on the way, but a second flat battery when we parked up down the road made us visit battery world for answers. We had only bought the battery less than 12 months ago and the people at the store said that we had been unlucky and received a faulty unit. They replaced it under warranty and it was take 2 on our exit from Townsville!

We headed out of town in the middle of a thunderstorm, pretty fitting for what we had been through in the last little while!

Thus we began our next adventure, I wonder what Hervey Bay has in store for us!