Day 12

Leaving Bargara, we continued to journey south. We were now entering ‘big stuff’ country. I give the area this name quite simply because the residents seem to like building enormous copies of fruits and vegetables for no apparent reason. This habit would continue for several hundred miles, but today we saw the first such construction, at the aptly named Big Pineapple Service Station. I’ll leave it to your imagination to work out the details of this one.

Day 11

I didn’t sleep. Dingo may still officially be in the tropics, but the ventilation in the dorms was a bit too good for my liking and no duvets were provided. Not having brought a sleeping bag, I froze in my bunk.

Day 10

Otherwise known as “the day Phil got arrested”. Leaving Airlie Beach behind, we continued our journey south, next stop Dingo. Dingo was to be our first real taste of the outback – a cattle ranch considerably inland from the coast road we had been using up to now. The plan (as conceived by OzExperience) was to arrive by about 4 or 5 pm, and have a tour before the evening entertainments began.

Day 9

Otherwise known as the day Phil couldn’t count. Lots of stops today, one significant one where the bus would pick up or drop off passengers: Townsville. On arrival, we got off to have our one-hour break in the town, and arriving back found the bus was a scene of chaos. There were about 50 seats on the bus, and about 70 people wanting to take them. Musical chairs was out of the question, and Phil was trying to decide what to do. He decided to board people one at a time after checking their reservation slips. The problem with this was that almost everyone had a valid reservation slip. After weeding out the three or four that didn’t, Phil re-boarded the bus triumphantly to find that about fifteen people were standing in the aisle.

Day 8

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.

Day 7

After the activities of the last couple of days, my body and wallet needed a break, so I spent today reading, doing laundry, and catching up on E-Mail.

Nothing much

Day 6

You can’t leave Cairns without a visit to the Great Barrier Reef, and we had no intention of missing out. We got up early and arrived at the pier by 8 am (virtually all the day tours start this early) to meet our boat. The crew were of the fun-and-lively tour guide variety similar to the guy we had had the previous day, but there were a great deal more people on the boat, so we pretty much had to entertain ourselves for the one-and-a-half hour trip to Hastings Reef. On the way, everyone was issued with the appropriate equipment – a mask, snorkel and flippers at the least, and also a wetsuit if so desired.

Day 5

Today was to be our first organised tour. We had to be ready for 8 am, and in our ignorance decided to have breakfast in the hostel restaurant, not knowing that took over 40 minutes to get served a cooked breakfast. We got it about 30-40 seconds before the bus turned up.

Day 4

Our accommodation is a ‘holiday village’ which translates roughly as a motel/hostel. The facilities are very good – we have a triple share apartment with en-suite bathroom, TV, fridge, kettle, and of course air conditioning. Everything you could need, really. I got 11 hours sleep and was pretty much over my jet-lag.

Day 3

Our first day in Australia does not start well. All my own fault, of course – I just can’t sleep on planes. 3am finds us in Darwin – the right country at least – waiting to board new passengers before continuing to our final destination, and starting point: Cairns. In order to do this, everyone is required to leave the plane. This seems faintly ridiculous, but I’m far beyond any ability to complain, and so obligingly trudge off the plane, only to trudge back on again 30 minutes later. I suddenly realise that this is day 3, and we’re not actually there yet.