Cairns, Here We Come

18th July – Saturday

A very important day today – a birthday!

We had an early start after a fairly sleepless night, not as cold as the last couple of nights. We managed to hitch the caravan without too much drama and only had to remove the electric brakes wire from the plug just in case of a short. Then discovered the batteries in the 2 way radios had gone flat (someone forgot to recharge the batteries), so a quick stop at the servo for some batteries before we left Georgetown at 8.00am.

We have a 20 year old Toyota Landcruiser, 3 speed auto and both gas and unleaded petrol. The full tank of gas only lasted just over 150 kms before we had to switch to petrol. Once it was mobile, the vehicle had plenty of power, but was rather sluggish going up hills (bit like a Nissan).

Our big problem until Ravenshoe was looking out for cows, pigs and kangaroos – plenty of cows, a couple of kangaroos and no pigs. Cows are a big worry as they can go anywhere! Today is the first time we have seen a snake, and I saw two! The second was flat and dead, but the first was certainly alive, fat and HUGE!!! It was so big, brown and with patterns on its back.

At Ravenshoe the scenery suddenly changed: the western side of town was dry savannah, the eastern side of town was lush dairy farms and tropical rainforest or jungle. We had a descent of 1000 metres in 25 kms down the Palmerston Highway towards Innisfail and the Landcruiser handled this very will, considering we didn’t have any caravan brakes. We did stop a few times though. Once we reached Innisfail, banana and cane farms, it was an easy, although bumpy, run into Cairns. We certainly had our share of RAG (rough as guts) roads today!

Russell and Jenene were waiting for us at Crystal Cascades and Russell very quickly had us on site – don’t worry about paying, etc, until we were settled. As soon as everything was unpacked, electricity and water connected, we decided to open the birthday bottle of wine. A very nice drop!!!

A wonderful surprise was a video call from Michael and Emma. Also had telephone calls from David, Jack and Aunty Pat.

Much happier now in the humid heat of Cairns.