Winding up the east coast
Trip Start
Nov 24, 2008
1
73
98
Trip End
Oct 21, 2009
Where I stayed
Cairns, Queensland, Australia
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
We reached Townsville after a long day of driving and found a campsite near the city center. We were still recovering from a rough few days so just crashed out and slept for a few hours. That night we found a sports bar with big screens showing the first Lion's test. There was a good crowd there but we all left disappointed as the Lions got trashed.
Sunday morning we were up early and back on the road for our last big drive, 350km to Cairns. The driving over the last couple of days has been quite interesting as we've been passing through 'Sugar Cane' country. There are fields and fields of sugar cane as far as the eye can see, also the odd banana plantation here and there. We reached Cairns early afternoon and found another campsite which was near the centre of the city. Its a handy spot as the drop off for our van is nearby as well. Oddly enough nearly all the people staying at the campsite seem to be German, apparently Cairns is very popular with them?
We didn't get up to a whole lot in Cairns even though its the major jumping off point for the Great Barrier Reef. We only had one full day in Cairns and we could have done a day trip out to the reef but we didn't bother in the end. It may seem like a major thing to miss out on but between the dull weather, budgetary constraints and the fact we had been snorkeling in the amazing Whitsundays recently we were content to give it a miss. Also a lot of people say its vastly overrated? So for our last full day we hung around the campsite and just chilled out in general.
On Tuesday we got up early and started the unpleasant task of cleaning out the van and trying to jam all our stuff back into our bags. The van wasn't due back to the depot till 3.30pm and our flight wasn't till 7pm so we went down to the Cairns Marina where we parked up and took a stroll around. We went into the small Cairns museum where we met an interesting local character who was doing tours of the museum. The second he saw me he brought us over to show us the 'Mustache' cups. Its basically a cup with a little guard around the rim so you don't get milk or whatever in your mustache, genius! Unfortunately they weren't available to purchase as they are in fact antiques. After some lunch we dropped the van back and got the all clear from the guy inspecting for damages and the likes. We were at a bit of a loss for something to do so we just went out to the airport about 5 hours early and waited for our flight to Perth.
