What a trip. We experienced some really extreme weather – blistering sunshine and warm nights during the first few days, then slowly we encountered rainy days and nights (soggy campsites) and finally torrential rain and gale force winds! That’s what you get when you embark on a northern road trip in Oz in the wet season!
But despite the flood warnings, persistent torrential rain and winds (the rain was due to cyclone Luna, it was reported as 250km winds at some points), our hardy stationwagon made it to our final destination - Cairns, on time.
Despite not having the comfort and luxury of a campervan, the stationwagon did us well (although, we gave up on the tent in the end, as it was a bit too small and Arran’s feet stuck out!) and we were definitely thankful for it on the semi flooded roads, as it proved to be hardier and more resilient than the previous campers.
It feels like we’ve packed in so much on this road trip – we’ve visited more pristine beaches, taken in more local bands (and sampled more local beers!), encountered more of the exotic Aussie wildlife up close, and tried a bit of snorkelling...
• Noosa
On Anne’s recommendation, we made the seaside town of Noosa our first stop. So glad we did. It was a beautiful little town, with an amazing beach full of surfers training for a big surf competition the following day. Lovely town centre full of funky restaurants and coffee shops and high end clothes shops. Amazing houses along the cliffs near the beach, which must have been worth quite a bit. Would be a great town to live in. We camped for the night in a Sea Scouts campground. It was pretty basic, but cheap and had everything we needed. The campsite was full of frogs, so we had to watch our step on our way back from the pub! It was then that we discovered that the tent was a little small....so much so, that Arran’s feet were hanging out. We decided to make the station wagon our home for the duration our trip!
• Hervey Bay
This had to be one our favourite stops. Another beautiful seaside town, with lots of surfing and great shops. We found the perfect camp spot for the evening, at a secluded end of the beach. We spent the afternoon browsing round the shops and chilling out on the beach. I think the main beach in Hervey Bay has to be our favourite beach to date. Not only did we pretty much have the entire beach to ourselves (it was a Saturday as well), the water was so shallow, you could walk out for miles and it would still only be up to your knees. We were also paddling on the start of the Great Barrier Reef, so we spotted a few schools of fish. It was great fun. From the beach we could look over to Fraser Island. We ended the day with a couple of schooners at the Beach Hotel. This soon turned into a few more schooners, when an ageing rock band rolled up and started playing a great mix of 80s and 90s rock classics.
• Gladstone and Rockhampton
After a late-ish start, probably on account of all the beers from the night before, we headed to our next stop – Gladstone. On the way we stopped off in a small quaint village called Gin Gin for fuel and lunch. It is one of the many towns around the North of Oz which has kept its original Aboriginal name. We arrived in Gladstone late afternoon and quickly discovered there wasn’t much too it. It was a funny town, really industrial with the main attraction being the railway station (reminded us of Kansas City!). We drove to the beach front to investigate possible campsites and were a bit disappointed. The beach was a bit dire, really muddy water and a rocky bed (no lovely white sand in sight). We felt really sorry for the people staying in the nearby holiday apartments with a 'beach view'! We decided to continue on to our next stop over – Rockhampton.
When we made it to the Rockies (as it’s known amongst the locals), we quickly discovered wild camping would be tricky (we found most of the touristy / picturesque towns have placed a ban on overnight parking and wild camping) so we checked into a campsite next to the Fitzroy River.
In the morning light we noticed a sign warning campers to beware of the crocodiles which live along the Fitzroy River (just meters from where we were camping – eeek!). Luckily, we had a very peaceful sleep.
We spent the following day exploring the Rockies (it’s
based on the tropic of Capricorn, which is why the North of Oz is
referred to as the tropics). We spent the day mainly in the botanic
gardens, walking around the free zoo (where we met a couple of koalas,
an aggressive emu, some more iguanas and a horrible little thing that
looked like a cross between a lizard and a snake) and the Japanese
Gardens.
We then set off on our four hour drive to Mackay. It was a really lovely evening, making for a great drive and a beautiful sunset, but it was a big day of driving, so we arrived in Mackay in the dark, around 7pm. We planned to stay at Blacks Beach, but it proved a little tricky navigating in the dark (especially as the GPS insisted on taking us down a couple of dead ends). We finally arrived at the beach, half an hour later.
We woke up really early the next day (around 5.50am) to the sound of some keen joggers. So we decided to get up and check out the beach. Really pleased we did as we saw the most amazing sunrise over the Coral Sea. Blacks Beach is the longest stretch of beach in the region and its lined with 6km of tropical gardens. It was really quiet on the beach at that time in the morning, so ours were amongst the very first foot prints on the sand, which was quite cool. We watched the sunrise and walked the length of the beach, but opted against going in for an early morning swim as we spotted the warning about Box Jellyfish, the night before.
• Airlie Beach - Whitsundays
We arrived in a very sunny Airlie Beach just after lunch. Again, as it’s in the Whitsundays (a hot tourist destination), there were many signs indicating that wild camping was forbidden. We checked with tourist information and found a really cheap campsite nearby. It was so cheap, we decided to stay in Airlie for three nights.
Unfortunately, after our first night, we didn't see the sun again until the morning we left. But the grey sky and rain didn’t put too much of a damper on things as there was so much to do in the area. We booked on to a package deal which included a day trip to part of the Great Barrier Reef (Hardy Reef) with snorkelling and a trip to Hamilton Island the next day.
• The Great Barrier Reef
We had such an amazing couple of days in Airlie. Our trip to the reef was great fun. As the weather was a little changeable, we were warned that the water would be a little choppy on the ferry over to the reef platform. So much so, that the crew decided to hand out sea sickness tablets with the complimentary tea and coffee in the morning. It was in fact, the choppiest boat journey we had ever been on (with 2 metre high waves crashing off the sides of the boat). It made the hour boat ride quite entertaining. We were among the small number of passengers who did not use the complimentary sick bags!
Snorkelling in Hardy Reef was magic. As soon as you jumped off the platform you instantly spot schools of fish swimming along beside you. It was fantastic getting into the deeper parts of the reef and seeing the expanse of corals, the bright colours and clams (we saw a giant clam opening and closing!). Also spotted a huge fish near the bottom of the reef, swimming slowly past. An Australian guy pointed it out to us as a pike. It wasn’t a pike!
In the afternoon we took a semi-submersible boat around the reef for a closer look.
On the journey back to the mainland, there was more sea sickness action to keep the crew busy. Luckily, we managed to keep our sea legs and settled down to watch the in-house showing of finding nemo with a couple of beers (we did have to hold on to our cans pretty tightly though, during the extremely choppy parts of the journey).
• Hamilton Island
We were a little dismayed to wake up to another morning of dark skies, rain and a soggy campsite, but once we arrived on Hamilton Island we soon perked up. It’s such a great place. It’s mainly a holiday resort, although there are a few houses on the island (there are only 5km of roads around the Island). Most people get around on golf buggies, which add to the holiday feel of the island. We decided against forking out $90 for a buggy and made our way round on foot. We spent our morning at the zoo, where we saw our first full sized crocodile up close (it was apparently a rogue crocodile from the Fitzroy River in Mackay – again we breathed a sigh of relief that we didn’t come across any during our overnight stay at the campsite!), a really chatty cockatoo and some more lovely wallabies and koalas.
And then we spent a very lazy afternoon in the resort pool. It had one of those pool bars, like you see in the movies, so we were hooked for the afternoon. The novelty of swimming over to the bar for drinks never wore off! (Australian money is waterproof, which was handy).
We spent our last night in Airlie in the local backpackers’ pub, taking in a couple of bands and a few schooners.
• Townsville
We arrived in a very rainy Townsville around 3pm the following day. The rain was so bad, we decided against attempting to sleep in the car overnight, so we checked into a local B&B. It was a great little B&B, really quaint with lots of vintage pictures and furnishings. The owner, John, was a really smiley, friendly chap (like most of the Aussies we’ve encountered) and didn’t take any money from us until we decided how long we wanted to stay. He knew the weather was bad and that we trying to make it to Cairns, so I think he took pity on us a little!
The rain hadn’t let up in the morning (I think it rained all night), so we decided to stay another night. John seemed happy about this and thought it was a wise decision. He said he’d keep an ear out on the traffic weather/news for us, which was really helpful.
Despite the weather we decided to head out for the day. We had read about Magnetic Island before we arrived and were keen to visit it. We took the ferry over from the mainland and arrived half an hour later. Unfortuantley, Magnetic Island is really not a place you can see on foot. It’s best to see it by car (which you have to hire on the Island, you can't take your car over) or by bus, but the buses were few and far between. We had originally intended to hire bikes, but when we arrived, we realised the company we had intended to hire with, no longer existed and the rain was that heavy anyway, it wouldn’t have been much fun.
Still, we managed to see a bit of the Island by foot. We made it to one of the many bays (there's about seven) called Picnic Bay and decided to stop there for lunch. It was about this time that the torrential rain decided to start up again, so we jumped on a local bus back to towards the ferry. We stopped off at one of the few bars on the Island, Base, which is also a backpackers. It looks like an amazing place to stay. It was right on the beach and all the rooms/dorms were along the beachfront in little beach huts (must be amazing in the dry summer months!).
We decided to stay in Base for the rest of the afternoon, as it was St Patricks Day and the green beer was flowing and the live music was playing all day.
We later read that Magnetic Island is rather unique, as it is first and foremost a protected national park (home to lots of koalas, kangaroo rats and wombats), with only a small number of people actually residing on the Island. This explains why it’s so sparse and difficult to get around on foot.
Still, we had a great time and marked it down as a place to visit in the future...during the dry season!
• Cairns
John, informed us at breakfast that the road South of Cairns was closed. Luckily he mentioned that the road North was passable with care and said he’d keep a listen out in case he heard anything else before we left. We were a little nervous as we knew we not only had to hand the car back the next day (Monday) we also had an early morning flight departing from Cairns on the Tuesday. John mentioned that last year, during the floods, the rain lasted for two months straight. We started to worry a bit more about our flight and decided to leave quite quickly after breaky.
The drive for the first hour or so was fine. Light rain, but clear roads. After this, we experienced a few rather nerve racking spells of torrential rain which lasted around half an hour each time. After a slow drive and a few stops at roadside cafes (to sit out the rain!), we eventually made it to a rainy Cairns just after lunch.
We checked into our hostel, aptly named Shenannigans, and found that it was actually part of a big Irish Pub. I think it was the first time we’ve ever signed an agreement during check-in stating that we cannot complain about the noise from the pub or receive a refund if we decide to leave because of it. We didn’t mind though, after a nerve racking journey and the fear of not making it to Cairns in time for our flight, we would have slept in a booth in the pub if necessary! And on the brightside, we were given a whole load of bar vouchers to use during our stay!
