We decided to visit Jo & Perce in their new park (managers at the Glenwood Tourist Park) at Grafton for the maiden voyage with our new van.  Coincidentally, my daughter and family (Alicia, Jason & Tallow) decided to visit from Darwin for a week.  As we had our old camper still we decided to make it a road trip in convoy.  A lot of hard work in the week prior saw me getting

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We never did finish the blog for this trip off, I think the reality of the end of the trip left us a bit flat, even though we were certainly glad to be home.  Hard floors, our own en-suite, and a real bed…mmmm.  So here we go, better late than never, there’s nothing like planning a new trip to refresh the memories from the last one. We stayed two lovely nights at Tannum Sands

After a long day of driving we arrived in Mackay late Monday to stay a couple of nights and catch up with friends Danny and his wife Karen who are in town for the Endeavour Car Rally.  The fundraiser rally starts from Mackay, goes up to Cape York and back down to finish in Townsville, taking 10 days to complete.  We managed to find them in amongst the sea of cars, including a 4WD VB Commodore

We have spent the last 3 nights in Kurrimine Beach Holiday Park, a nice little caravan park in a neat town.  This turned out to be a fluke after ringing around at the end of the day to find all the other parks in the vicinity being fully booked but this one had a site available.  The park managers, Richard and Rosemary do a great job making everyone feel welcome and did a sausage sizzle

We had decided that we had seen enough waterfalls, dust and caves to satisfy us for a while and wanted to head back to the coast again. This of course meant parting company with Shelley, Geoff and Erin, so Erin wasn’t very happy to lose her playmate…sorry Erin (Rachael is already complaining she’s bored). We have enjoyed their company for the past week and have seen some country that we wouldn’t

We are still in Dimbulah with Shelley, Geoff and Erin, the days have been beautiful but the nights have been getting a bit chilly -  I suppose it is winter isn’t it?  Today we set out towards Ravenshoe (the highest town in Qld) where we stopped at the bakery and HAD to buy pies for lunch.  We ate them at the Millstream Falls which is apparently the widest single fall waterfall

Today Shelley and I escaped for the day to visit the Kuranda Markets and the Cairns Botanical Gardens.  Everyone else voted to stay at camp in Dimbulah to just catch up on chores and chill, because they know how agonising it is for them when we go to a garden.  We horticulturalists have to see every plant, read all the labels and analyse the leaf shapes, textures, growing conditions ……and

Today we headed out to Chillagoe with Shelley, Geoff and Erin to see some of the local mining and cave attractions.  The history of the area is well illustrated in the Hub building at Chillagoe and gives a really interesting insight into mining life in the early years.  Shelley and Geoff  had been on the guided cave tours before and wanted to go to the other ones that you can explore

We were supposed to get an early start today and take a drive along the Bloomfield track down to Cape Tribulation but the boys had to get into Cooktown to buy some replacement bolts for our camper.  Terry discovered that the heads of the tow hitch bolts had been ground away to nearly nothing and cracks were starting to appear.  We thought that we may have caused this damage last year when

We are only halfway through our trip and it feels like we have been away for much longer.  We met up with Shelley, Geoff and Erin again on Thursday to continue together up to Cooktown.  Just as we pulled up to their camp they were drying things out, apparently Geoff and Erin fell in the creek.  We heard that Shelley fell over laughing, sorry we missed the action by about 10 minutes. 

Well our time in Cairns has gone quickly and we still haven’t seen a lot of the places we had planned to.  We have had a great time catching up with our friends the Chant’s from Jabiru and have been exploring the area together.  The girls particularly have quickly picked up from where they left off when we were neighbours and they used to chat over the back fence.  Yesterday

Arrived at Paronella Park yesterday afternoon, set up camper, had a wonderful hot shower and went on the night tour.  This place is unbelievable, who would have expected a Spanish castle at Mena Creek (inland from Innisfail) with such an interesting history.  Spent the morning walking around exploring, had lunch and hit the road for Cairns to meet up with good friends and ex-neighbours,

We have spent the last 3 nights at Broadwater with Shelley, Geoff and Erin and had a great time, thanks guys!.  Geoff has introduced Carolyn to Bundy Red (much nicer than the original!).  We did run out of power running the Engel off the car battery, but was easily re-charged by running the car for a while.  We have a battery protector hooked up between the car’s 12V socket and

Today we headed to Broadwater Campground in Abergowrie State Forest to meet up with our friends Shelley, Geoff and Erin from “Doin it our way”.  We haven’t seen them since they left in April so it will be great to see them.  This next 3 nights will test our ability to go without 240V and may lead to some modifications before we head up to Cooktown later on.  Shelley

Left Gladstone without really looking around at all, but had a lovely stay with cooked breakfast to start the day.  Were heading to Eungella NP but changed our minds and thought we would try somewhere from the Camps Australia book.  Ended up staying at Seaforth for 2 nights which turned out to be a pretty spot but plenty of sandflies and mozzies.  Fed a tribe of local possums with

Well the time has come, Terry has been counting down the days for the past few weeks, the car is ready, the camper is back from its cosmetic surgery and all packed up.  Two questions remain:  what have we forgotten? and why has it started to rain?  Our departure time got stretched to 12.00 midday instead of 9am, so you get in the car all excited about hitting the road and have to stop