Hello Everyone!

We are alive - and sorry that it has been such a long time between blogs and photos! It has been hard finding internet cafe's in some of the out of the way places we have been staying!

When we last wrote we were in Sydney about to fly to Cairns. Our flight went fine and we arrived in Cairns late - It was still much hotter than Sydney was! We stayed at a place called Floriana Guesthouse which was so old fashioned you would not believe. There were rules everywhere - "you must whisper after 7pm", "you must tiptoe" etc etc etc. The old lady who ran it, Maggie, was quite a character and proceeded to tell us that our travel plans were no good! haha! Our room was "kooky" and we got screeched at by her pet parrot on the first day!

There wasnt much in Cairns, but it was a really nice, quiet place. We walked along the beach promenade each morning and saw crabs in the mud flats! Apparently there are alligators in there too! We went to the cinema to see 'A Single Man' which was very good, but we were the only people under 80 in the audience. The old ladies seemed to find everything in the film hilarious, even though it was a serious film! We also saw flying foxes hanging in a tree and had a delicious chinese takeaway (GREASY!) - which we had missed despite so many months in Asia.

After a couple of days we went to pick up our campervan (who we have called Leonard!). Tom bravely agreed to drive, and we first went to pick up some groceries! We came back laden down, sweating and almost 200 AUD lighter! We started to tackle the roads to get up to the highlands, but it had been a stressful day so we pulled into a Cairns campsite and stayed the night!

The next day we set off for Kuranda, the village in the rainforest. We reached there easily within about half an hour and the village itself was lovely! We ate pies for lunch (we have eaten many now) and looked around the colourful markets! We also took a very frosty swim in the campsite swimming pool and saw our first wallabies in the wild just outside the campsite!

The next day, when we tried to start our campervan, it was dead! We could not beleive it and had to call the camper company, who called the RACQ. They arrived to fix our dead battery after about half an hour, and we were back on the road soon after! We drove up to Mareeba, which was quite a small, nowhere town. We took a walk down to the river there and just relaxed.We also befreinded a cat we called Barry!

The next day we headed off to Lake Eacham! On the way there we stopped to see the 'Curtain Fig Tree', a huge fig tree which has engulfed another tree in the middle of the rainforest! Lake Eacham was absolutely beautiful - a huge crater lake in the middle of the rainforest! We initially tried to walk there through the rainforest on a path, but aside from seeing a snake and me thinking i'd been bitten by a snake when I got impailed by a thorn (dont worry, Doctor Tom was on hand with his first aid know how), we were unsucesful in reaching the lake! We decided to drive to the carpark instead and parked whilst we took a VERY frosty dip in the lake! As we were running low on cash we tried to get some out of 3 seperate ATMS in dairy town Malanda! We got rejected by all of them and so had to drive 30 KMs out of our way to a bigger town, Atherton, to get some cash! In our campsite at Lake Eacham, we befreinded some resident chickens and fed them bread!

The next day we drove down through the stunning mountain scenery to Millaa Millaa. Millaa Millaa is literally a middle of nowhere, one horse town. It has a pub, a cafe and a church and that is about it! (St Marys?). From Millaa Millaa we were able to drive around the 'waterfall circuit' - a drive on which you get to see 3 waterfalls of varying size! Our favourite was Millaa Millaa falls (which is where the Herbal Essences shampoo advert is filmed ((see photo for re-enactment)). The scenery around the tablelands is literally so beautiful that you feel you need to take a photo every 3 seconds! The hills are really green and it always reminds us of postman pat hills, or Lord of the Rings!

The following morning we drove to Innisfail, back out on the coast. We were quite sad to leave the mountains behind. Apart from driving around in circles when our Sat Nav couldnt understand that a bridge was closed, not much happened in Innisfail. We stayed in a lovely campsite, took a swim and burnt some burgers in the microwave! We departed Innisfail the next morning to head to Paronella Park - slightly inland. Paronella Park is a beautiful old castle, built by a Spanish man, which has been wrecked by fire, floods and cyclones. It is now just ruins, but they run guided tours around it, day and night - and we went on both. It really was fantastic! We stayed in Paronella Parks own campsite that night.

The next day we drove from Paronella Park to Cardwell, a small coastal town along the main highway. We took a stroll on a breezy beach and took a walk around the small town. Although there is not much to do in some towns, we enjoy the peace and quiet and relaxing by our campervan on our pop up table and chairs!

From Cardwell we continued down the coast to Ingham, which is home of Australias largest Italian community. We stayed in a nice campsite there where there was a bird who seemed to really love us. He perched on my chair above my shoulder and put his foot on Toms arm. He was a completely wild bird - so it was really odd!

We left Ingham to head for Townsville, the regional capital. It was quite a long drive to get there and once we did we parked in our campsite and went across to the local shopping mall. We saw that there was a community market on later that evening, and I got a bit excited - as I love Markets! My hopes were quickly dashed when I noticed the monster truck parked outside ontop of two smashed cars! The market itself was much like a carboot sale, without any of the good bits! Luckily, it was right next door to our site so we didnt have to go far out of our way. We also caught the bus into the centre of the town, ate some more pies, and had a wander around. We also found there, a shop which sold all kinds of sweets, past and present, and we found some Golden Nuggets bubble gum - tiny pieces of gum in a small muslin bag which I vividly remembered having when I was younger!

This morning, we departed Townsville after a breakfast of pancakes with golden syrup and drove up the Bruce Highway to the Billabong Sanctuary. This place was absolutely amazing. We bought a small bag of seed at the entrance for 80c, and did not expect that we would be able to hand feed kangaroos, walabies and pademelons! They are so gentle and soft chinned! We also paid to get the ultimate 'PHOTO OPPORTUNITY' and had our photos taken holding a koala and a wombat! I held the koala (Mallee) and Tom the wombat (Wilhemina)! We also saw dingoes, crocs etc etc before leaving to continue up the highway to Ayr, a small farming town where we are presently!

We just tried to walk into the town, but as it is Saturday, everything is shut! SATURDAY!?!?! We are going to cook burritos for our tea and we will update the photos as soon as possible. At this computer there is nowhere to connect the camera! Tomorrow we are headed for Bowen, a seaside town and in a day or two we will be heading back into the mountains for a short time to try and spot a platypus!! :)

Everything is fine with the campervan and we have adapted to life on the road quite nicely. We do all our cooking outside on a one hob gas stove and havent missed TV yet.

We will write again very soon.

Lots of Love

Lucy and Tom xxxx