The worst week and a bit ever (well it's all relative) part 2

...following the rain of the day before, the night was not terribly wet but we woke to pretty dark clouds though no rain, this changed soon after making our way into the zoo, it started to absolutely tip it down with healthy cracks of thunder and a bit of lightning at irregular intervals, this was ok as there were plenty of places to shelter, though by the end of the day my birkenstocks - never great wet weather shoes - were a virtual wreck** . The zoo itself was dedicated predominantly to Steve Irwin's favourite creatures - crocs - though there are a good dose of other creatures there too, kangas, snakes of course, spiders, wallabies and really cute echidnas among many others. It's a tad cheesy as Steve's daughter Terri (?) looks like she's a bit of a Disneyesque phenomenon with lots of tacky merchandise and from the looks of things she's a bit of an icon for Oz kids which feels a tad troubling for one who I don't think is yet 10 but still the zoo is big on conservation and education so personally I could handle the cartoon aspect of it. The 2nd mishap I spoke of occurred as we exited a great aviary full of smaller birds, in it they had many little finches, one of which in particular caught my eye, the Gouldian finch, which are the cutest bird I think I've ever seen, and as ever (ask Claire!) I was clicking away with our digital SLR camera. The aviary was damp but at the time there was no rain so I thought nothing of piccie taking but then suddenly the screen went blank...I switched it on and off a few times (a bad move when an electronic camera is wet I have since discovered) and nothing...it was about now that I started to worry. Having already dropped our waterproof camera into Doubtful Sound early in our 2nd stint in NZ - something I felt sick about at the time but I'd just about gotten over - I now felt really sick. Even though we'd bought the camera and lens 2nd hand it still cost what felt like a fortune and certainly to replace new would cost over four figures, it all didn't bear thinking about. I put the camera away and tried to do exactly that. The situation was not good, we were now completely cameraless, if anything good came out of it, we could now do more things as time lost taking pics was time gained in walking etc but that didn't make me feel particularly warm inside. At the end of our day at the zoo we went to our free camp site and were pleasantly surprised to find that, although the camp site was no more than 10km down the road from the zoo, it had hardly rained there at all. We were pleasantly surprised because in a move borne of paranoia we'd gone down the road to pitch the tent BEFORE we went to the zoo - to ensure we bagged our free pitch for the night - and given the torrential rain at the zoo we'd spent a fraction of the day worrying what our tent would look like when we got to it. The camera episode thankfully does have a happy ending, a week passed with the poor thing just sitting in it's bag not even being looked at as to do that would bring up all sorts of images of pyres of cash going up in flames and the like. It was only when we reached Bundaberg, the next big town with a camera shop, that the camera came out of it's bag. As it was Xmas eve we'd just bought ourselves an Xmas present, a new waterproof camera from a very helpful and informative sales guy. I'd also mentioned our 'big camera problem' to him and explained that I was concerned about whether the issue was with the camera body or the lens - replacing the lens was going to be way more expensive than the body - and he said bring it in and I'll see what I can do. So having left Claire in the bottle shop (off licence) buying our Xmas supply of booze - a move I wasn't sure was a good one - I wandered back towards the camera shop when I thought I'd just try it once before I go in, so I flicked it on and lo and behold we had lights, camera and action! Even though the waterproof camera was a good present, I couldn't have wished for more for Xmas than seeing our Nikon brought back to life, (bad religious joke alert), it really should have been an Easter present but I'm glad it didn't wait that long as we'd still be waiting!!

Our good luck was to end fairly abruptly after a lovely Xmas spent in Bargara (near Bundaberg) testing our new snorkelling gear (a slightly smaller Xmas present to ourselves), swimming in lovely warm waters, eating way too much Stollen (thank you Aldi!), clearing ant infestations out of our car on Boxing day and seeing turtles lay and bury their eggs in the pouring rain at Mon Repos turtle sanctuary. We drove further up the east coast on the 27th and stopped off just off the highway at one of many overnight rest stops, ('Driver Revivers' as they are called), that are dotted all over Australia. For anyone whose driven any significant distance in Oz will appreciate, there is a definite need for them and we have taken advantage of more than one (and only partially cos they are free to stay at!). They tend to be operated by 'local' community volunteers (scout groups etc), I write 'local' as you are often left wondering where the people who man them have come from as there is no apparent settlement within 50 or so miles! Anyway I digress, on the drive from Bargara we saw some pretty nasty looking clouds in the distance that we were driving straight towards. As night fell we were still driving, which is never clever given the amount of kangaroos and the like that can stray onto the road and do way more damage to your car than you can to them, especially in Gary the little Hyundai Getz, so the clouds were forgotten about while we focussed on spotting/avoiding random creatures in the road. We finally arrived at the rest stop and set up camp on fairly damp tree detritus beneath a big tree and proceeded to the driver reviver shelter to eat some tea and chat to the guys who were running the tea and biscuits that evening. As we sat with them I saw the potential for a comedy sketch based on these 2 guys just chatting about everything and nothing in the middle of nowhere with sundry characters entering and leaving the set. The screen play of which may one day be realised but I'm not sure it has much of an export market, I reckon Steve Coogan should be one of the guys, and maybe Rob Brydon the other. Anyway we went to bed with full tummies and feeling pretty tired got to sleep quickly, I slept well until just before daybreak then it began, just light pitter patter on the tent at first but it didn't take long to get going. As you've probably already guessed it absolutely tipped it down. If you've ever slept in a tent you will appreciate that sometimes when it rains on a tent it sounds terrible but on sticking your head outside you find it's drizzling, alas not this time. I recognised this sound from Glastonbury 2005, a vintage year for Somerset bogs. For 5 or 10 minutes I tried to ignore what was going on and then I felt some drops on my sleeping bag liner (no need for sleeping bags in Queensland in December, way too warm and humid) and thought I should probably see if our 2nd hand tent was maintaining it's integrity. To my disappointment it wasn't, the seam between the porch and our haven was a bit like a faulty Thames Barrier and one of the corners was shipping water too. It was then I felt I had to wake Claire (she had slept through most of this!) and get up way earlier than we otherwise would have done. Luckily the shelter for the rest stop was still open so we moved the undeconstructed tent and the rest of our gear in there and scratched our heads while it continued to tip it down. It was a good hour before there was any sort of let up during which time some young European airheads on their way to Airlie beach and the Whitsundays had popped in on the hope of a tea and asked me if I thought it was going to stop, I tried not to be too blunt with her but most likely failed in my emphatic no! While we waited for the rain to abate we cursed ourselves for the ridiculous idea of camping in Queensland during the wet season and wrung various bits out including the clothes we were wearing. Once it had abated slightly we got on our unmerry way and wondered if the rest of the east coast was going to be like this.