7/1/09 After a day's driving from Airlie Beach, we spent the night at Gladstone; on the way there our front left tyre burst! - meaning we had to buy yet another spare tyre at the next town along. Gladstone is quite industrial, with a power station and not much to look at, and we travelled around for ages looking for somewhere to stay, as the town isn't mentioned at all in our guidebook. We didn't come across any camping sites, and we were getting quite worried wh...

4-5/1/09 We set off on our long journey towards Brisbane. We spent the first night at Mission Beach; this was beautiful, but it was raining when we arrived and continued on and off all evening, night and morning, before we continued our journey - and even if it had been dry, we'd been put off swimming in the stinger enclosure in the sea because the owner of the campsite told me a crocodile had been seen swimming around in it the day before! We arrived at Airlie B...

3/1/09 The day began early, at 6.30 am, when we got up and got ready for the 7.15 bus down to the reef terminal by the marina in town. The day before had been our last day of working, so we moved our stuff into the car for safekeeping while we were out at the reef. We went through a brief bit of rain on the way out to the first reef, but by the time we arrived it had stopped and the sun came out. En route, those of us who were diving that day were briefed on divi...

22/12/08 As we travelled the coastal main road from Townsville to Cairns the next day, the landscape became absolutely spectacular! As we drove we passed several mountainous National Parks, and in some places the road was only separated from the mountains by fields of sugar cane and another crop I didn't recognise. The mountains and the land between them were covered in rainforest, the peaks were cloaked in clouds, and it all just looked so beautiful, I was const...

19-21/12/08 The journey from Capricorn back up to Tennant Creek was uneventful. The day after that we took the turnoff onto the Barkly Highway, crossed the border into Queensland after a couple of hours, and after another very long drive spent the night at Cloncurry, having passed through the town of Mt Isa. The landscape became incredibly flat as we travelled down the Barkly Highway; first of all it was just bare earth dotted with scrub, but then it changed to ...