With such a massive trip ahead, it's about 2,800km from Cairns to Darwin, it was important that we knew where the petrol stations were and distances from one town to the other (to stock up), we really didn't want to be getting stuck in the middle of nowhere -has anyone seen the movie Wolf Creek recently?! We had a rough idea of how much our petrol tank took and how many kilometres we could go on a full tank but we always had the jerry can for back up. So folks, with all the important stuff done, including food shopping (lots of tinned food, pasta and noodles), we were ready to start road tripping!! It's not the first time we have done this (New Zealand) but with the prospect of how massive Australia is and with the massive distances to drive, it was pretty scary to say the least. But we were as ready as we were ever going to be!!
We don't want to bore you with every intricate detail of our road trip, after all it was mainly just driving through nothingness and sleepy, little towns. I have therefore written the next couple of entries in note form, pretty much taken straight from my notebook, that way you will get an idea of our experience without all the boring bits.
Day 1
Left Cairns around mid-day, felt great driving away in our own little van.
Drove through the rainforest of Kuranda (just outside of Cairns), it looked like it had been a bit battered from the cyclone, with fallen trees and flatten bushes.
Drove through a little town called Atherton, then stopped for a cuppa at Ravenshoe. Feels like we have been driving for ages, with not much to see and no music in van, the I-pod is broken and have no stereo!
The road trains are huge out here, saw ones with 3 & 4 trailers attached, they take up half the road and go so fast. We had to drive half off the road to let them past - bloody scary!
Carried on to a place called Mt Surprise and decided to call it a day, we have driven for about 400km today. Asked a local where to camp and ended up near some creek off the main road. Once it got dark we were weary of going outside, just didn't know what was out there, maybe a few crocs!
Had to cook our dinner in the dark (soup & bread), not easy in a little camper van, with really poor light. Lesson learnt, get to a place way before it gets dark and settle in. Poor Matt has one sun burnt arm (drivers arm) doh!
Not much else to do in the middle of nowhere but sleep, so crashed out at about 8pm. Glad didn't have to get up to go to the loo in the middle of the night.
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