Road trip along the Gold Coast
This time we are driving along the Gold Coast from Cairns to Sydney, as it is Jackie’s (my better half) special birthday this year. Whilst we are away the studio will be open as usual so contact Jane if you need any help.
Cairns our first destination .
Our journey started with an eleven hour flight to Hong Kong, then a further eight and half hours to Sydney, followed by a mere three hours and some change short hop to Cairns. After travelling for 34 hours door to door we finally made it!
We are spending the first couple of days here just getting over the travelling, before picking up our hire car and beginning the drive back to Sydney. I’ll post as and when I can get access to the internet.
Cairns is a lively and vibrant town and is used to get access to the Great Barrier reef . There is no beach here, so they’ve built a pool and beach on the Esplanade. There are lots of trendy bars and clubs and the nightlife is fairly hectic! Late nights are followed by lazy mornings with street side coffee bars abound. This is in total contrast to the expensive looking boats and luxury hotels around the very pretty marina. Cairns I would say is a town of contrasts!
Tomorrow we are exploring Kuranada, so hopefully will post some photos from our trip!
Kuranda
Today we took the skyrail up across the rain forest to Kuranda, where we visited a butterfly sanctuary and wandered around the small town before returning to Cairns on board a real steam train.
Cairns to Port Douglas
We picked up our hire car this morning only to discover that our bags were a little too big for the boot! After a bit of shuffling, we headed north towards Port Douglas where we will be staying for the next couple of nights. On the drive up we stopped off at Trinity Bay and Palm cove, both extremely pretty seaside towns with endless beaches.
Sadly swimming in the sea this time of year in a no no as it is the “stinger” season – but each beach has a netted area for safe swimming.
That’s it for today as we are up early heading on to Mosman Gorge and Cape Tribulation.
Cape Tribulation – Daintree Rain forest – Mosman Gorge
Up early this morning for the relatively short trip up to Cape Tribulation. This is about as far north as you can go without a four wheel drive. Cape Tribulation has lots of nice beach’s and if you are lucky you may be able to spot Cassawary in the wild. We not lucky! The trip up is quite interesting, there’s a short hope on a cable operated ferry (think Clint Eastwood – Unforgiven!).
Every beach you stop at has warning to beware of crocodiles as well so it keeps you on your toes when you are photographing! We managed to find a two foot monitor lizard, a kingfisher, two orange footed scrub fowl and a sleeping bat!
From the Cape we head into the Daintree NP and took a walk along the aerial skyway above the tree tops of the rain forest – after our earlier sighting and promises by the visitor centre of the chance of spotting numerous wildlife here we set out in anticipation of a photographic bonanza however this all proved unfounded – in fact only dangerous thing we encountered was a scary hairy Mary Ah well better luck next time.
Our next stop was Mosman Gorge where the water falls and rapids tumble over huge water smoothed boulders and this certainly proved to be far more rewarding.
Tomorrow we leave Port Douglas and begin our journey south towards Sydney, starting with the Atherton table lands. More tomorrow!
Atherton Tablelands – Innisfail
Well today was a slightly later start than originally anticipated as a few beers were consumed whilst listening to a live band at the Court House Hotel & Bar in Port Douglas.
Today was our longest drive to date. We headed out of Port Douglas after visiting Four Mile beach and admiring some of the stunning beach side apartments there.
Our journey today took us through Mount Maloy and onto Mareeba were we stopped at the “Coffee works” for a very nice coffee and break from the driving. Most of the scenery so far has been mainly burnt scrub land.
We headed across the Tablelands where the scenery became green and lush.
Atherton was surprisingly bigger than we anticipated so we didn’t stop but headed off to Yungaburra – a very small quaint village.
The temperatures have soared today and the gauge in the car clocked 35 degrees – we were told that it should be cooler up here – whilst in Port Douglas and Cairns the highest it got was 31 degrees but there was always a breeze, today has just been very sticky! So we have been stopping fairly regularly for drinks, but each time we got back into the car it’s been like a sauna!
From here we took the road south to Millaa Millaa. Here there are three waterfalls, the first you could swim in to was quite “busy” but the other two we had virtually to ourselves. It was nice to get away from the searing heat and enjoy the cool air around the falls. By now we had been driving for about seven hours so it was time to head for Innisafail and find a room for the night. Unfortunately we couldn’t find a hotel to stay in other than a room above a pub (which was ok with me!) so we stopped at the tourist information office for some directions to the nearest town with hotels! Well we’ve ended up at Kurrimine – which closed at 7.30pm!!! hence today’s early update lol.
I’ll post some photos a bit later – including my attempts to support “Movember” !!
Kurrimine Beach to Townsville
Left Kurrimine at 8.00am this morning after a night of swatting mosquito’s. Final count 7 to the good guys!
Had a leisurely breakfast at Mission beach and stopped off at a few beaches along the way then before heading off to Townsville. Road works along A1 slowed the journey, so we didn’t arrive at Townsville until 3.00pm Found a hotel and checked in (this has got to be the worst receptionist we encountered ever in Australia!!) dropped the bags and headed straight off to Charter Towers which was another hour and a half drive west of Townsville. We arrived just in time for closing! so had a quick wander around the Queenslander styled buildings before heading back to Townsville. The light on our return was fantastic and managed to get some great photos of some derelict buildings.
When we arrived back at the hotel the car park was full, when we asked at reception we were told tough first come first served – good job we are only here for one night!
Townsville to Airlie Beach
We set off around 9.00am this morning for our five hour drive to Airlie Beach. The drive was pretty uneventful and a bit tiring. The recent high temperatures continued, 37 degrees again, however I swear it’s hotter than that in our hire car!
We have three nights here so I get a break from driving for a couple of days – yippee! Tomorrow has been designated a “pool” day – as in I shall not move from it all day. Sunday we’ve booked a trip out to the Whitsundays islands for some photos.
Airlie Beach
Airlie beach is a pretty seaside town, primarily used as a base for visiting the Whitsunday Islands. It has a small beach and an Esplanade which is aimed mainly at the backpackers. Shute Harbour is just a little further along from Airlie,, so we headed out to the marina and took some photos there.
Whitehaven beach on the Whitsunday islands
We spent three enjoyable days at Airlie, but left just at the right time as 2,300 “shoolies” descended there for the summer break!
Airlie Beach to Rockhampton
We left Airlie at 7.45am for the long six and half our drive to Rockhampton, where we were staying overnight before heading on to Hervey Bay. Rockhampton was bigger than we both expected and had an interesting mix of old (relatively speaking) and modern architecture.
We had time for a brief stroll along the river, dinner and then bed as we had another seven hour drive to Hervey Bay.
Rockhampton to Hervey Bay
The journey down was a hard slog – pretty much seven hours straight drive. We left at 7.30am and managed a quick stop at Gladstone for breakfast around 10.00am. Gladstone is a heavily industrialised town dominated by Rio Tinto, but it is also the departure point for Heron island.
Hervey Bay
We arrived in Hervey Bay around 3.00pm and checked into our apartment at the Charlton Luxury Apartments for the next two nights. we’d phoned ahead to book here and were somewhat when we were given a three bedroom apartment!
Tomorrow we are off to Fraser Island for the day
Fraser Island
Up early this morning to catch the ferry to Fraser Island – it’s only a short hop from Hervey Bay, but we were still up at 5.30am!
We then joined our “coach’ tour of Fraser Island. We were told that the roads were bumpy and that you could take your own four wheel drive if you were an experience off road driver. Well I’m glad to say I wasn’t driving the roads were truely atrocious! I’ll be off to see the osteopath as soon as I return as my back is in bits! The 15km road across the island is supposed to take one hour, however it was a one track road and an earlier tour had lost it’s four wheel drive and become stuck in the deep sandy track blocking the only way through. Captain Kevin (our driver) sprang into action, attached a tow rope to the “coach” in front and began to reverse back up the trail. unfortunately we didn’t have enough umph to pull it out, so we had to wait for the next coach which then towed us, with us towing the stricken original coach out! A three coach tow truck lol!
Anyway a couple from Fraser island.
The Maheno Ship wreck
Lake McKenzie fresh water lake.
That’s it for today!
From Hervey Bay we headed south (again!) stopping for breakfast at Mary Borough
and Noosa Heads where we overnighted. We headed down to the beach just before sunset and watched a local photographer shooting a family portrait session at the beach. It was interesting to watch someone else work for a change!
Brisbane
From Noosa, we headed to Tin Can Bay and Rainbow Beach (which was one of the best we’ve seen here) then onto the Glass House Mountains, Bribie Island (very nice) then on to Brisbane were we are staying for two nights. Brisabane is inland so no beach for a couple of days (or car for that matter!). We did the Brisbane equivalent of the London Eye, visited the local market sampled a few local beers the called in a day! Day two we walked around town photographing the local land marks, visited the museum and botanical gardens.
From Brisbane, we headed south towards Sydney where we had an overnight stop at Ballina. There were some celebrations going on (obviously in our honour)
From Ballina we drove onto Boambee, for two nights stay and a much deserved break from driving. The weather was changeable and it even rained on the second day!!!
Boambee was a short hop to our next destination Port Stephens, however with numerous detours, we managed to turn this into a seven hour drive. We stayed with friends for the night and watched the sun go down.
The following morning we headed onto Sydney, to catch up with more friends and see the sights!
Now back in the UK and it’s business as usual!
