Cairns

Sunday, 25 June 2017

Setting up house

The mud was still there

Rainbow bee-eater

Freshwater Creek

With another long day on the road from Townsville to Cairns, we left a bit earlier than usual yesterday.  Being the first day of the school holidays in Queensland also meant that there was a LOT of traffic, but a bit better behaved than our previous trip.  We had shorts stops at Ingham and Tully for comfort and driver changes and it was after leaving Tully that the weather started to change and the mizzle arrived.  Traffic conditions also changed with virtually continual roadworks all the way to Cairns and we were held up a few times.

By the time we arrived at Crystal Cascades, the mizzle had set in and was quite heavy – but also quite warm and very humid.  As our slab was wet, we only did a basic set-up, pulling out the awning in the hope that the slab would dry overnight before the matting went down.  The mizzle/rain did clear overnight and we were able to finish setting up with our cupboard and new table.  We will be here for more than two months, so comfort is a necessity.

With the temperature on 28 degrees and the humidity nearly off the scale, we called into Rusty’s Market after lunch to stock up on fruit and vegetables and then it was off to somewhere we had been waiting anxiously to visit – Movenpick.  We sat and looked at the Trinity Bay mud (low tide, as usual) and quickly realised ice cream in Cairns doesn’t last as long as ice cream in Canberra!  It was well worth the wait.

After returning to the caravan, we had a quick little walk to Freshwater Creek and not only discovered that the blue Ulysses butterflies are still there but also a rainbow bee-eater – such a colourful little bird which we haven’t seen in this vicinity before.