Otherwise known as the day we met Phil the bus driver. We had to get up very early to meet the Oz Experience bus at the Esplanade, and it didn’t seem like a very good sign when it turned up over half an hour late. Phil (who was a new Oz Experience driver – this was his first trip) had, it seems, broken down covering the mile or so from the place where he’d picked up the bus to the Esplanade where we were waiting. This guy was about to drive us over 2000 miles.

Oz Experience is a hop-on, hop-off bus service covering routes throughout Australia. The route we had chosen, which would take us from Cairns to Sydney, had a minimum of 8 overnight stops, but the bus would also stop in several places every day where people would be able to get off, spend time in the area, and then board another “Oz-Bus” when they wanted to continue their journey. We didn’t have much time, so we were planning to only take advantage of one of these, stopping overnight in Brisbane (normally just a lunch stop), and otherwise only stopping overnight when the bus did.

Once we had stowed our backpacks and settled in, Phil explained that this was his first trip as an Oz-driver. As the day progressed, it became obvious that the explanation had not been necessary – he took every opportunity to demonstrate his lack of experience. First stop for the day: Kuranda, home of the scenic railway and rainforest skyrail. I had been looking forward particulary to that, since we had seen the rainforest from the ground and I imagined the view from above was spectacular. However, enterprising bus driver saw opportunity to catch up on lost time:

ah, guays – it seys ere in me book that we stop at Kuranda for the Skyrail thing. Does anyone actually want to see that?

Nobody wanted to be the only one to say they wanted to see it.

Sweet

And with that the Kuranda stop was swiftly erased from the itinerary.

The second ‘stop’ of the day was at Innisfail crocodile farm, where Phil did actually stop the bus. A tour of the farm had been organised, and was quite informative, although being phobic of reptiles I did not find any of them very appealing. Much more fun were the tame kangaroos and wallabies which roamed the farm. Unlike the crocs, these creatures were not penned in and several were hopping around the tour group as we walked across the farm. Bread rolls were distributed at the end of the tour so we could feed the roos, and this was definitely the highlight of the day (see pictures). The Kangaroo would take the bread with it’s front paw and hold it while breaking bits off to eat one piece at a time, showing remarkably humanlike behaviour which always raised a smile. One roo even posed with John and David for a group photo, which has since become infamous as the “Andrew kidnapped and replaced by roo” shot.

After Innisfail, the bus drove non-stop to our first overnight stop, Mission Beach. Problem was, Phil couldn’t find it. It took several members of the group to collectively point at the relevant road sign to persuade him that he’d already driven past it twice.