So Chris met his rellies Adrian and Bec for the first time following a 30 minute drive from Port Douglas, and we arrive at Wonga Beach! We’re told to let ourselves in as they’re both still en route from work. Nobody locks anything up in this country; luckily as we creep in we notice pictures of Great Aunty Mary on top of the fridge so we knew we had the right house! Adrian and Bec live 100 metres from the one and only local watering hole called the Palm Beach Resort, we made frequent visits over the five nights that we stayed there! During our time there we ventured out to quite a few local sights, most of the swimming holes to cool off in as up there it’s the wet tropics and it can get bloody hot! We went to Mossman Gorge, Granite Gorge, Syndicate Road, The Pinnacles and the Blue Hole! Mossman was our favourite - we jumped on the back of a tour listening in discreetly, we learnt quite a bit! The water was freezing and the jungle perch were on the look out for bread. Granite Gorge was pretty cool too clambering over huge rocks and feeding small rock wallabies, we even saw one with the Joey in her pouch.

On the Saturday a few of the locals from the pub organised a beach barbeque – 5 bucks all in. There was a sofa, a quad bike and kids catching small reef sharks off the beach, two of which we chucked on the barbie! Needless to say there were many bevies consumed too. Towards the end of the night Wonga’s traditional sand wrestling competition came about as the drunkenness kicked in!

On Monday Bec had managed to get us out on her boat for a cut price fee. Her boat is a Chinese junk called Shaolin which ventures out to Low Isles each day. According to Bec this is the place Steve Irwin was brought to after being stung! It was the closest point to Bat Reef where he had been diving for a helicopter to land. While we were snorkelling we saw an abundance of fish, some giant clams which Bec stuck her arm in to close it up, and best of all loads of young turtles. We reckon we must have seen about 6 or 7 of the little blighters! It was a really cool trip and one that we won’t forget in a hurry.

The day after that we drove to Cape Tribulation, the most northerly point you can drive to without a four wheel drive. Cape Trib as it is affectionately known is where the rainforest meets the reef. It was a very slow and picturesque drive where at first we had to cross the Daintree River which is full of crocs (which we also managed to blag free ferry tickets for). We visited the Discovery Centre which had a tower taking you up the different levels of the rainforest explaining it as you go. We pretended we were locals from Wonga and received a 10% discount…..ha ha!

Also during our stay we ventured to the mountain village of Kuranda up a steep winding road to the top. It was a real hippy town where we purchased our didgeridoo from Didge Mick! He got us playing a few types of didge’s and tried to teach us some different sounds before we handed over the money!

We left Adrian and Bec’s on the Wednesday after a few drinks on the Tuesday night, we travelled inland so we could check out the Atherton Tablelands. We followed a waterfall circuit and stopped at Miranda for lunch at the Dairy Café in front of their famous dairy factory before heading to Cairns. Cairns wasn’t what we expected, too many shops and not enough bars!! But we found an Irish bar called PJ O’Briens where there was a coyote ugly dance off with the male and female winners receiving a $120 bar tab! Sadly we did not enter the competition for lack of peer support. We did get lost on the way home though which was quite funny, rolling in at about 2am having left the bar just after midnight!! But it was ok as we found a pizza place to replenish the munchies. It probably wasn’t the best idea as we had to travel 560 km’s the next day…..whoops!

So we arrived back at Michelle’s in Yeppoon by Friday with plenty of stories and adventures. But we think the funniest one has to be what happened to us on our drive back on the Thursday. We were travelling down the Bruce highway at about 70 mph when this green lorikeet bird flew above the car. At the same time a huge ‘road-train’ lorry was travelling in the opposite direction. There must have been another lorikeet flying behind it that we hadn’t seen, as suddenly there was a huge bang, a cloud of feathers and suddenly there was a dead lorikeet in Chris’ lap!! The lorry must have smacked into the bird, deflecting it off our wing-mirror and in through the open window sending feathers everywhere!!! Luckily Chris managed to keep control of the car, and picked up and launched the dead bird out of the window whilst still driving. We were in shock for about 20 minutes, while we were both crying with laughter. Gem was in fits of laughter especially and Chris just kept shaking his head saying... ‘I can’t believe that just happened!’

What a fantastic end to our road trip…. RIP poor Larry!!!!!