Day3. 18th October Airlie Beach to Atherton

Another day of just crunching through the kilometres to get north to truly start this epic adventure.

But first .... a couple of things.

Just to recap, last night was the first night back in the swag and it was great. The highlight was sleeping with the tent flap completely open( not the mozzie screens tho ) so effectively sleeping under the stars.
Interestingly it was a bit cool and we used the blanket that we threw in just in case.

Lots to do this morning before heading off proper. Once the swag dried and packed it was off to the actual town of Airlie beach for a bit of a look, picked up some great coffee at a cafe then headed off.



Dropping in at Sue’s brothers farm on the way out off town to collect some food and say goodbye to her mum and dad.


Lots of activity on the road to Townsville this morning, much traffic, loads of trucks that are for the most part incredibly courteous. Hearing lots of truckie chatter on the radio about the 4.5er coming and w3 have no idea until we see the monster earthmover coming  towards us with its convoy. Never dull.










I guess it was about this time that a huge rock decided to plant itself in our windscreen........

Continued onto Townsville, where we peeled off to pick up some bits from Bunnings.

Just a slog for most of the afternoon until we head inland a bit to milla milla and start heading up. 
The landscape becomes green and lush. Lots of bananas and passion fruit and rolling hills.






Arrived Atherton about 6pm to another caravan park but tonight we sleep in a cabin.
First night with the full group ( 11 people!)






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 8 23rd October Weipa to Berti creek via Old telegraph road

Image
As cliched as it might sound, tonight the swag is set beside a babbling creek and I’m looking forward to sleeping beside it.....  but before that happens there’s a bit of work to be done. Bit of a disorganised and later departure from Weipa, little bit of shopping and  fuelling.  With 11 people in 5 cars, it’s a bit like herding cats but we made it eventually. Retracing our steps out of Weipa until we are looking for and find a left hand turn to Batavia Downs.  A private property that provides a track to cut through to the Old Telegraph road. It’s a rough old road but only approximately 25 kilometres so much easier than completely retracing our steps. About 3 hours through some great looking scenery, extraordinary and huge anthills before arriving at Bramwell roadhouse for lunch.  Really nice people but pretty expensive fuel. Here we are splitting from Glenn and carol for the afternoon, we will begin our journey on the old telegraph road proper.  Glenn and ...
Read more

Pre trip

 we should be somewhere else, like the middle of Asia somewhere between Xian in china and Istanbul in Turkey. Covid19 has hit and disrupted all our plans. So, we brought forward our 2021 plan for a Cape York trip, developed during the desert trip in 2019.  I think it is fair to say we are all very excited. Why? hard to say, a bit of cabin fever with Covid perhaps. For us a chance to trial the new wheels, possibly just another holiday with friends and family as the last was so good.
Read more

Day13. 28th October Thursday Island, Horn Island, Loyalty Bay

Image
An early start today as we are off on an adventure. We have  a little trip planned to firstly visit Thursday Island and then a tour of neighbouring Horn island. We have organised the trip through our camp ground and the owner has also offered to drive us to the jetty ( not far , next beach)  We had concerns parking at the jetty, just because of the safety of leaving everything we own there for the day. So this option worked perfectly. Onto the ferry for 1 hour trip to Thursday Island, again marvelling at the turquoise blue of the water. Met Liberty who is husband of the husband and wife team running the Torres Strait Heritage tour company. This bloke knows so much, a TI native but could seriously talk under water and then some. We visit the cemetery, which we have been to before. Memorable because of the huge amount of essentially unmarked graves of the Japanese pearl divers. These guys gave their lives in pursuit of fortune. It is widely assumed that they died from the “bends...
Read more