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Epic Queensland Road Trip – Cairns to Noosa
Queensland, Australia |
Queensland, Australia
So here we are finally on the road, me, Tim, La Toya and our mascot for the trip Le Monty the dashboard koala. We have a vague plan of action but are pretty much winging it down the coast of Queensland and hoping that we find something good along the way.
Our first stop along the coast was Mission Beach, we arrived on a dreary overcast afternoon and chose what looked like the best pitch on the sight with a beautiful sea view from our van over to Dunk Island. We treated ourselves to a takeaway from the campsite kitchen and settled in for our first night in La Toya. La Toya is super comfortable, we have power so we have a fan cooling us, the poptop is canvas so we have a natural breeze blowing through, but there is one thing that we didn’t take into account when we picked our premier sea front pitch. The total lack of trees. As the sun started to rise so did the temperature. By about 7am we were both hot sweaty and gasping for a breath of cool air. Rooky mistake noted, from hereon we will be requesting a site with shade!
So we decided to head into the main town of Mission Beach and with it being out of season, it was a little bit like a ghost town, the huge beach was pretty much empty and there were just a few tourists like us wondering around wondering what to do with our time. Thankfully we found a coffee shop offering a cream tea for just $6 each, bargain! We had a drive around the area in search of the elusive cassowaries who live in the area and instead found more wallabies than we have ever seen, just wondering around the streets and sitting in peoples gardens. I can only assume that having a lot of wallabies in the area is a bad thing as pretty much every other house was for sale.
So for those of you who don’t know what a cassowary is here are some factoids for you: The cassowary is a large flightless bird smaller only than the emu and ostrich. They can reach a height of 6’6″ and can weigh up to 58kg. They have huge feet with 3 toes and one toe has a claw that is 5 inches long. They can swim, run at 31mph and can jump 1.5m high. Cassowaries have a fearsome reputation as they are more than capable of slitting your throat with their toes and have been known to have killed humans in the past.
That said I was desperate to see a cassowary, there were signs all over Mission Beach warning of them, even in the toilet block which required a key to get in, which worried me, but after 2 days of trawling the streets and beaches we hadn’t even had a sniff of a cassowary.
We gave up, packed up La Toya and were on the road to leave town, I was having a good old moan about not having seen a cassowary, when out of nowhere a huge adult cassowary and 3 babies crossed the road in front of us and stopped on the verge to pose for a photo. Despite being in the safe confines of La Toya the cassowary made it well known that it did not want its picture taken. Time to get out of here; now smiling and perky that I can cross wild cassowaries off my to-do list. Woohoo!
Our next stop was Townsville, There is not much to see or do in Townsville, it is the gateway to Magnetic Island, so named because it messes with compasses, but we decided to save our island trip budget for the Whitsundays and Frazer Island. Instead our reason for visiting Townsville is because it is the home to the Reef HQ aquarium. But this is not all, within the aquarium lies the Queensland Turtle hospital. In need of a turtle fix after so long away from Pom Pom the turtle hospital was the perfect solution. After a tour of the aquarium we were finally allowed to visit the turtle hospital which was just the saddest place ever. Most of the turtles have been found floating off the coast and islands of Queensland. This is a common problem mainly cause by either infections in their lungs or from them having eaten fishing hooks or plastic bags (which look like jelly fish in the sea), these block their intestines and leaves them floating on the surface unable to dive to feed so many of them are found in a really poor malnourished state. The treatment for most of the turtles is pretty simply a dose of laxatives to clear the blockages and then they just need R&R and to be fed back up so that they can be released back into the wild. The turtle hospital are doing an amazing job of keeping the Queensland turtles fit and healthy, great work!
When we turned up at the campsite at Townsville we met possibly the receptionist who hated her job more than anyone we have ever met. We were our usual perky selves and we couldn’t even get her to look up from her computer let along crack a smile. Seemingly our usual wit and charm was wasted on this receptionist as far from getting the best pitch on the site we were given possibly the worst. We were parked underneath a huge tree, which was great. Sadly this tree was some kind of fruit tree and had spent the last week depositing small apple type fruit all over our pitch and continued to deposit them all night giving us a less than relaxing plunk, plunk, plunk, splat through the night. Townsville done, time to head to Bowen.
Bowen is a town with very little to see, it was the location for the movie Australia but the main attraction that we found that excited us enough to stay there was the giant Bowen Mango. Australians down the coast have been astounded that we consider this a day trip, but we do love a giant fibreglass fruit. The Bowen mango had been so built up we were concerned that it might disappoint so after checking into our campsite we couldn’t resist anymore we had to see the mango. We set off and as we got on the highway the sky turned black and the heavens opened. How dare the weather gods mess with our mango trip. We made it to the mango and with torrential rain pummelling down we decided to save our photos for the following day, looks like we get two trips to the mango, rock and roll!
As Bowen really is a town with nothing other than a mango the campsite was completely empty, we were actually the only people there camping which was a treat, I could get used to VIP private campsites where I have the choice of 20 showers in the morning.
So the next morning the sun was shining, ready for us to see all that Bowen has to offer, a pretty nice viewpoint over the town, the hotel that was the centrepiece for the movie Australia and of course photos with the giant mango. Boom, Bowen, done!
Onwards to Airlie Beach, the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands. En-route we stopped at a lesser known beach called Dingo Beach, it is pretty far from the tourist route and had been recommended to us by a local, it was therefore pretty empty and as much as the water looked so appealing it is stinger season and therefore not really safe to swim. There was a stinger net on the beach, but the stinger nets are not really safe as there are tiny yet lethal jelly fish known as Irukandji which are so small they just sneak through the nets. They are just 1 cm in size and are invisible. These little stingers are pretty terrifying as they cause Irukandji syndrome which consists of excruciating muscle cramps in the arms and legs, severe pain in the back and kidneys, a burning sensation of the skin and face, headaches, nausea, restlessness, sweating, vomiting, an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, and psychological phenomena such as the feeling of impending doom. Having read numerous news articles of people who had been stung by Irukandji we opted to stick with swimming pools.
We made it to Airlie beach and checked into our camp site and were very quickly checked out by the local wildlife. First the local ducks did a waddle-by to check us out then later the local possums were loitering around our trees.
After lots of research we finally found a trip that we actually wanted to go on to the Whitsundays. The vast majority of boats are overcrowded with young backpackers who rock up to the boat wearing their ‘Same same’ tshirt freshly purchased in Bangkok and their drink for the day a bag of wine or Goon as it is know. We found a s
mall yacht which takes 8 people and goes over to Bali Hai Island which is not frequented by the other boats. We were in a state of absolute fear when we arrived at the harbour and everywhere there were groups of teenagers trying to squeeze one more bag of goon into their day trip bag, please don’t be on our boat, please, please, please!!! Thankfully we had the most awesome group of people on our boat with Mindy & Russ from the States and a lovely German couple, the conversation never stopped and made the day just perfect. The wind was in our favour for this trip so we did have to motor to and from the island but sitting on the deck of a lovely yacht with tea and biscuits I frankly didn’t give a damn how the boat was moving. We got to the island and were transferred over in the dingy ready for some snorkelling and lunch. The island was beautiful with beautiful blue water lapping the sand. We donned our stinger suits and set off to face out jelly fish and shark fears. This was possibly the worst snorkel ever, the visibility was pretty much half a meter at best but through the murky water we could see some pretty spectacular coral and tons of fish. Before we went snorkelling we were all told to tie a towel around our bags as the crows on the island are pretty clever and can undo zips, there were two other people on the cruise with us, two older women, who were to say the least a little bit weird. Despite this tour being an all inclusive lunch tour they had brought their own picnic with delights such a tofu on rice crackers and boiled eggs, yum. However they seemingly didn’t pay attention to the crow warning and when we all returned from our snorkel their special picnic had been devoured by the crows and they were happily entertaining themselves trying to peck their way into the various Tupperware pots. Whilst we were tucking into the delicious lunch that the captain had prepared the missing picnic came up in conversation and I mentioned that I had seen a crow with a Tupperware box, at which point the most odd of the two women asked me if I had given her lunch to the crows??!! Seriously, you do meet some interesting people when travelling. For the record I definitely didn’t give her picnic to the crows. Weirdo.
So after a long day in the sun, sailing (motoring), eating, drinking and snorkelling we were back in Airlie Beach, what better way to end a perfect day than to have fish and chips on the beach, yum.
When we left Airlie Beach, we had one more day stop on the way to Mackay, Cape Hillsborough where kangaroos and wallabies roam the beach. This was a recommendation we had received from someone on our travels so had to give it a go. After 30kms bouncing along an unpaved road we finally made it to the beach at Cape Hillsborough. What we had not yet learnt at this point is that kangaroos only like to come out at dusk and dawn so being here at midday meant that there was absolutely nothing to see at all, day trip, fail!
Our next stop down the coast was the less than riveting town of Mackay, there is no other way to put it, it was a terrible town and to make I worse it also had terrible camp site with not a tourist in sight, it was just full of workmen with their laundry hung out and big rigs parked outside their trailers. The only reason that we stopped in Mackay was that it was the last town before we hit what is known as the Rocky Horror Stretch, which is a 350km stretch of road with pretty much nothing to see or do the whole way, so this was just a sleep spot before the biggest road trip yet. With a storm rolling in we ventured into the big city of Mackay and treated ourself to an Indian dinner before having an early night ready for the next day.
So it was the big day of the Rocky Horror Road, Mackay to Rockhampton, 350km of nothingness. This journey did not start well, 5 minutes into journey the rain and wind started and we were about to pull into a fuel station as our solar panel was making an odd whistling noise when a big rig threw a stone at us and chipped our brand new windscreen, not the start to the day we were hoping for. Due to this road being so long and dull it is full of accident hot spots, thankfully we travelled on a Sunday so not so many big rigs on the road and the Queensland government kept us entertained with funny road signs “still 2 hours to Rocky kids” and our favourite “Stay alive, play trivia”. We were super excited by the prospect of a series of road signs asking us questions, first up, what is the second tallest mountain in Queensland, then a few minutes later the answer, Bartle Frere for anyone who is interested. Then that was it, seemingly you have to make us your own questions after that which we figured was likely to be more dangerous as you are inevitably going to be Googleing questions and answers. Half way along the road was a filling station and tim refused to use it as the fuel price was higher than everywhere else we had seen. There was a reason for that, the only other fuel station 5km down the road had been burnt to the ground. 10km extra on this trip, thanks Tim, next time just fill the damn car up!!
Amazingly the journey was not as bad as we expected, La Toya was going strong and with the power of Tom Tom we could just turn off and enjoy the total lack of anything to see. Tom Tom was also having a pretty relaxed day this trip, our initial instruction was drive 325km and turn left. Yes you guessed it, we missed the only turning of the day, ha ha!
After our epic journey we decided to stayed in Yappoon, This is the Capricorn coast of Queensland as it is where the Tropic of Capricorn passes through. The beach here was beautiful and huge and empty. We spent the night and the next morning we were happily eating breakfast when a huge emu just walked up and started watching us. Seemingly there is a natural emu park next door and this one has just decided that he prefers it on the campsite. I love Australian animals!!
Next stop Bunderburg, this is the home to the Mon Repos Turtle Rookery where Loggerhead and green turtles come to nest. It is a very well organised project whereby you buy a ticket, turn up and hope for the best that a turtle comes onto the beach to lay. We were there at the peak turtle season and had high hopes of seeing a turtle. As usual we were more or less the only campers on the campsite at Bunderburg, but here we met the lovely Jan and John, more at home in the their big and comfy camper at home they were travelling around in a Camperman hi-top, which could eat La Toya for breakfast, but they had us in fits of laughter at the problems they had encountered. Just for the record, anyone thinking of renting a camper, add Camperman to the same avoid list as Wicked! –That evening we all went to Mon Repos and as we were all stood around preparing for a long wait for a turtle there was an announcement that there was a turtle on the beach and group one could go straight to the beach. Amazingly our names were called and we were taken along the beach to find a beautiful loggerhead turtle just digging her nest. I had never seen a loggerhead before and having spent a lot of time with Greens and Hawksbills her head was MASSIVE, literally like a human size head on a turtle body, such a cutie! The rangers did an amazing job of keeping all the tourists a good distance away and with torches and cameras off until she had started laying. It was just like being back on Pom Pom, only with a lot more people. We watched her dig out her nest using her flippers in the most amazingly dextrous fashion and then she proceeded to lay. Most of the turtles here are tagged and it was identified that this turtle had already layed once this season and therefore would be expected to lay again. This is where it got interesting. Suddenly the main professor from the University of Queensland and a group of students arrived, and they ultrasounded the turtle and showed us that her eggs were ripe and ready to be fertilised again. So they made the decision to satellite track her to see where she goes before coming
back for the next egg lay. This meant that the poor girl set off down the beach after laying her eggs and was quickly transferred to the back of a pickup and taken to the uni to get tagged. Poor girl was planning on a swim and a trip to the sperm bank, hopefully she got a good dinner out of it! As this turtle was now of significance they decided to dig up her nest to see how many eggs she had laid, I had to refrain from getting in there myself to help out. She had laid 132 eggs, awesome!
We had time for one more trip in Bunderburg before moving on, it had to be the Bunderburg Rum factory. For anyone that is not aware Queensland is a major producer of sugar, and a by product of sugar production is molasses. In 1889 the first operations began at the Bunderburg Rum factory using the excess molasses from the sugar factory next door. Now Bundy is a household name, however it does have something of a repution as being the Stella Artois Wife Beater of the Rum world. Sadly because the rum is so highly flammable we were stripped of all battery powered items at the start of the tour so were not allowed to take any pictures but we were escorted over the molasses river and through the brewing rooms to bottling factory. The best part was of course the tasting at the end which left me feeling tipsy and then hangover for the rest of the day, especially seeing as I got to have Tim’s tastes too!
Onto Hervey Bay, this being one of the gateways onto Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world and the home to the only pure bred dingos left. Our first day at Hervey Bay we took a walk to the Urangan Pier, this was once a train line which brought supplies from the cargo ships and so heads out 1km into the sea. The novelty of this pier is that it is that it is the local hangout for a group of fishermen who apparently speak their own dialect. I can only assume that they are like kangaroos and only come out at dusk or dawn as there was not a single person to be seen.
Much like the Whitsundays it is difficult to find a good tour to Fraser Island as they tend to be huge bus groups and you just get dragged from spot to spot with a dull commentary on the way. Keen to avoid a tour like this we found Unique Fraser which promises small groups of just 7 people in a 4wd, it sounded perfect so we booked ourselves on. The next morning we were stood in the street watching all the huge bus groups zoom past when a little Toyota Landcruiser pulled up, and lo and behold it contained none other than Jan and John who we had met in Bundeburg.
What a great day Fraser turned out to be, with great company and our truly hysterical driver Christine who had this amazing ability to drive on the most treacherous of sand roads with no eyes on the road turned around telling us all jokes to keep us entertained. Aside from the guide and company Fraser was pretty special in its self, god only knows how there is a rainforest growing on a sand island but there is and apparently there is some enzyme in the sand which ensures that any leaves that drop to the floor are dissolved and absorbed much faster than on any normal forest floor. It is the home to the only pure bred dingos still around Australia and was sadly the location of an attack in 2001 that left a young boy dead and called for a cull and for harsh penalties for anyone found feeding dingos. We were incredibly lucky to see a dingo as soon as we arrived. Fraser is said to have some of the cleanest lakes in the world and we took a swim in Lake Mckenzie which has a beach made up of nearly pure silica which worked wonders at cleaning our jewellery! After bouncing our way around the island we asked Christine if there is a knack to driving on sand, without missing a beat her answer was “Drive it like you stole it”, class, love it. We finally made it to the main highway, the beach. At 75 miles long with a speed limit of 80kmh and seas infested with the largest breeding colony of tiger Sharks in the world this is not your average beach to say the least! We unfortunately visited Fraser on the day of the king tide so were not able to make it all the way along the beach to Indian Head where you can see the sharks off the coast, but we did see the wreck of the Maheno, an old hospital ship which beached on Fraser whilst being towed to Osaka in a cyclone. It made for a pretty cool sight having the tourist day trip planes taking off over our heads whilst we were stood at the wreck. Our last stop for the day was Eli Creek which is the largest creek on the east coast with a flow of 80 million litres per day. It served as a perfectly chilled lazy river to float down to the beach. Another day was over and it was time to say goodbye to some great friends. Hope to see you all again sometime!!
Tin Can Bay was a bit of an impromptu stop, someone had told us that there is a pod of dolphins that visit Tin Can Bay, so with time on our hands we decided to stay the night and visit the next morning to see what all the fuss was about. Out campsite was quite funny as a bunch of retired caravan clubbers were having their Christmas party in the BBQ area so we had singing and dancing and a visit from Santa which was nice, they were very rock and roll and they were all tucked up in bed by 9pm. We were up at the crack of dawn and got to the dolphins at 7am. Much to our surprise we were the first ones there and in the shallows were two beautiful dolphins just resting on the sand. The story of the Tin Can Bay dolphins starts back in 1955 when an injured dolphin appeared in the shallows and was fed back to health by the local fisherman, from then onwards that same dolphin started to bring his pod to the bay for fish. Amazingly now the third generation of dolphins led by Mystique are still visiting Tin Can Bay for free fish. It is a very well organised affair and for just $5 you can paddle with the dolphins and another $5 you can feed one. They ensure that the dolphins only receive a very small amount of their daily food intake so they are not reliant on this food to survive. Standing in the shallows with two beautiful dolphins (Mystique and Patch) just swimming around was possibly one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had. Hand feeding Patch a fish was just an added bonus and well worth $5, although the fear of being swooped by a pelican or a cormorant was at the forefront of my mind! Tin Can Bay also had a bargain $10 boat trip around the bay so we decided it had to be done, amazingly there were just 3 other people on the trip with us which took us out into the bay giving us an amazing view of our next destination, Carlos Sandblow at Rainbow Beach.
Just a short hop down the coast and we were at Rainbow Beach, so named because the cliffs along the beach are made from layers of different coloured sands which comes from their rich mineral content and some claim looks like a rainbow…. The other attraction of Rainbow Beach is the Carlos Sandblow which is a natural formation caused by the wind blowing a gap in the cliffs and creating a sand dune overlooking the city. At sunset the colours and lights were just beautiful and were a real sight to behold and well worth a visit.
It was finally time for the last stop along the coast for this epic road trip, Noosa. We had been so lucky the whole way down the coast and had had the pick of exactly which campsites we wanted to stay at, suddenly we hit Noosa and it was a different story, the school holidays had started and that meant that pretty much every Australian family had packed up their caravan, boat and 4wd and had moved with their family, sofa, washing machine and fridge and had set up their home from home on a campsite where they would now stay until the end of January, this is going to be interesting.
Amazingly our luck was in and I took a chance and phoned the campsite that we wanted to stay at, and they had had a cancellation that they could give us, the only down side was that we were seemingly in kiddies corner and every kid in the campsite came to the patch of grass outside our van to play cricket from dawn til
dusk, the sound of tapping wood and balls flying past my head got old very quickly! We did however have another stroke of luck in Noosa, when we checked in we were chatting with the receptionist and for no apparent reason she told us that she had an early Christmas present for us and pulled out 2 tickets worth $110 each for a one day BBQ boat trip into the Noosa Everglades, our only obligation to leave the tour company a review, wow Australians really are just so nice.
Not quite believing our luck, we booked onto the tour for the next day and all went perfectly smoothly, we were taken down the Noosa River and off into the everglades which were just full of amazing birds. Yet again we had a great group of people with us which always adds to the experience. We had a lovely BBQ lunch and had a little dip in the Noosa River and I was delighted that I hadn’t gone for a swim when I saw the huge catfish circling the boat when we were leaving!
Noosa was a perfect end stop for this road trip, with the cute café culture and fish and chip shops in Noosaville to the posh restaurants and bars on Hastings Street at Noosa Heads.
La Toya has been amazing so deserves a little rest, we have travelled 3,000km in 3 weeks and seen some amazing sights and we have not even finished Queensland, but for now its time for a little break from Road Tripping and we are off to the Sunshine Coast for another Helpx job.
Queensland you are wonderful, the rest of Australia really does have a tough act to follow!
Beans Around The World 