Early to Airlie…

Q. Why do all the fish stop swimming up the North coast of Queensland?
A. Because they’d end up in Cairns.

The first day with the campervan was an introduction to all the pluses and minuses of the things. Essentially, this is a white VW van, nearly 3 metres high and 6 metres long, with a shower, toilet, kitchen, fridge, sink, air conditioning and double bed / seats and table. (See Michelle eating toast at a stop above!) It’s very well kitted out in the back, with pretty much all mod cons, but when you’re up the front end driving, it’s a white van. All that’s missing is the questionable attitude and a copy of ‘The Daily Sport’ folded up on the dashboard.

The pick-up is a long winded exercise in which our $5 a day hire goes up to $25 a day after insurances, and after getting there at 9.30am, we finally get going at around 11.00am. We don’t complain about the money, not because we’re English, but because it still represents one hell of a good deal, considering they are also giving us $250 worth of fuel, the sites we’ll be staying at will cost $30 ish a night, and all this adds up to our daily budget not even being half way in sight. Which is clearly a good thing.

We are directed out to the M1, also known as the Bruce Highway (insert Aussie joke here about Bruces and/or Sheilas) and head north. The M1/A1 is the only road that goes all the way up to Cairns and beyond, with all the usual tourist stop-offs simply a branch off to the right if it’s on the coast or the left if it’s inland. For about 10 km it’s a dual carriageway, then it is single lanes with overtaking sections every few kms, which then get less and less frequent. The speed limit is mostly 100 km/h, and the van can do this comfortably, but on the single lane sections a bit of traffic builds up behind you. However, when you get to the overtaking sections, they all just stay behind you, comfortable with the speed you are going. Takes a bit of getting used to, but it makes driving all the more pleasant. It also illustrates the amount of traffic once you leave an urban area. Like I said, this is the main, and only, route north. It’s not exactly like our M1.

The first stop is Noosa, and this also presents us with the first problem. Parking a 6 metre van. After taking way too long to drive round the car park and not finding any convenient double spaces, we end up a mile down the road, and by the time we get back to the beach area we need a drink. The weather is beautiful, the beach is beautiful, the bottle of cold water is… well, you get the idea. Later, when we look at our pictures, the first one we took on Noosa beach is bright, blue and beachy, the last one as we left Brisbane was grey, dull and ominous.

Michelle takes the wheel as we leave to get to Hervey Bay, where we’ve booked a powered pitch at a campsite by the sea. She takes to both the van and the driving like a natural, apart from the first time at a hill start. The handbrake is too low down for her to operate both that and the pedals she needs, so we manage a team operation, and apologise to the people stuck behind us. They seem to understand, and we think it’s something to do with the van being plastered with logos and free-phone numbers for the hire company. Kind of marks us out as tourists, really.

We get to the camp site at around 6 in the evening, reverse into our allotted space next to four other vans with the same logos, and begin trying to remember all the stuff we’d been told 7 hours ago about water, power, air conditioning, give up and walk down the road to the local store, where they sold fish and chips. You know the cliché about Aussies – wife-beater singlets, beer stubbies with those cooler things, vacant stares? And that’s just the women? This is where it started. Probably. We get our supplies and walk back to the site, remembering to book a couple of hours online wi-fi time, which we figure we ought to use up. It’s gone 9.00pm by the time we head to the computer room, which we find shut. We also notice that we seem to be the only people around, so we sit down by the open air pool and surf for a couple of hours. On the laptop, not boards that is. Returning to our van, we notice that every other van, tent and cabin on the site has their lights off, so we quietly put our bed together and sleep as soundly as we ever have.

The next morning we wake early, at 6,30, shower, pack up the van and head the 2 kms along the esplanade to the pier. This pier juts out into the sea for just over 1 km, so of course Michelle wants to walk all the way along it. I’m glad we do, because the view is fantastic, if not the smell – there must be 30 fishermen chopping up bits of fish for bait – and we head back into Hervey Bay for breakfast by the sea. As we begin on our raisin toast the rain begins to fall and the waiters efficiently move everyone inside the restaurant with the minimum of effort.

The next target for us is a place called Rockhampton, chosen mainly because it’s 380 km from Hervey Bay, and we’ve split the journey up as equally as we could, and it’s got a campsite listed in our travel guide.

On the way we call into a supermarket and stock up on pasta, fruit, water and coffee, planning on utilising the cooking facilities on our van, which we do – after going for a swim in the site pool, and then having a beer at the ajoining bar. It’s still only 9.30 when we sit in the van all tidied up, and decide to hit the sack, again, sleeping really well until the rain wakes us at 5.30 in the morning. We cook scrambled eggs for breakfast, tidy up and shower before hitting the road. Now we feel like old hands at this campervan lark, and decide to head for Airlie Beach, the set off point for trips out to the Whitsunday Islands, which we plan on visiting properly on the way back down. It’s a monster 500 km drive, so I do the first stint and by the time we stop for lunch in a little town called Sarina, we’ve covered 300 km. Michelle takes over after our ‘comfort stop’, and it’s my turn to phone ahead to book our pitch at a campsite. After our, by now, well rehearsed and well executed arrival routine, we head for the bus-stop outside the site and take the 20 minute journey into Airlie Beach for some evening food and to check out the place we’ve booked for a few days time.

I’m not sure why, but I was in a bit of a bad mood by the time we got into the town, and as we realised it was Friday night, we walked past bar after bar of loud, obnoxious backpackers – including one who was drunkenly trying to get in a cab, not realising there wasn’t even a driver in it.

We found a relatively quiet bit of town near the lagoon, which luckily also housed the hostel we had booked for a few days time, and had an expensive thai meal before jumping back on a bus and getting out of there. This wasn’t boding well for our return.

The campsite, like all the others, had such excellent facilities that it was hard to see any need for families, which made up the majority of it’s demographic, to even leave the grounds. The shower blocks were so clean, with hot water and well designed cubicles (you could shower in one bit and then dry and dress in another), that I pretty much forgot how much I loathe the concept of camping, and really began to enjoy myself. Our van had become our home, and we had very quickly settled into a routine.

The early morning starts continued the next day as we headed further up the coast to Mission Beach. We had both liked the sound of this place after reading about it in our book, and during the drive up that day elected to not book a site but find one when we got there. Once we left the main road and headed for the coast, the vegetation got much more green and lush, the road much more hilly, and the drive got a lot slower. Arriving finally, we pulled into a site across the road from the beach, and within 15 minutes we were walking along the sandy horse-shoe shaped bay, watching the waves move into the beach, and resisting the urge to run into the sea. This far north, you don’t swim in the sea during summer. At least not without a stinger suit, which is like a thin wetsuit, and protects you from the thousands of deadly jellyfish that take over the sea at this time of year. There is a little netted off area with a lifeguard, but it’s not quite the same, is it.

We eat in the van again, and plan to walk down into the town for a beer later that evening, but the rain falls again, we don’t fancy getting that wet, and so another early night is voted in, with a bit more wi-fi time bought so we can do a bit of banking, uploading to the blog and catching up on the news, except we forget to catch up on any news. We’ve been away for 17 days now, and have no idea what’s going on. Right now, we kind of like that way.

It’s dried out by morning and we pack up the van for the last time, check out and drive down to the village where we look around the local market, Michelle buys a very cool hat, we have breakfast and head off to Cairns, where we have to drop off the van. It’s only 130 or so kms, and we think we know where everything is and have a plan. Cairns seems like a huge place compared to the villages and towns we’ve seen in the past few days, and Michelle navigates us to the hostel we have booked for this evening. We drop off our bags and then set off to the van drop off, near the airport. Once negotiated, a kindly cab driver takes us back to the city, telling us all about how brilliant Melbourne is for most of the journey. When I ask him why he’s in Cairns if he likes Melbourne so much, he tells us that he’s divorced – and this is as far away from his ex-wife as he could get!

Cairns seems like a lovely place, and we head down to the lagoon, where there is a large fresh water pool right next to the sea (remember, too many jellyfish in the sea to swim in it), and have our sandwiches we had made with the left overs in the van that morning. There is a band playing, people walking by the sea, lazing around on the grass, and it seems like an idyllic Sunday afternoon in summer. Which it is, only it’s the 18th December, and these people have shopping bags with pictures of snow, and Santa, and Rudolph, and have to go home and wrap presents.

The only worry we have is how we are going to get back to Airlie Beach tomorrow. We ask around a number of places and it seems that there are no cars available. Not one. Why? It’s Christmas. So, at 9.45pm in the evening, we book two seats on our last resort – the 9.00am Grayhound Coach, which arrives at Airlie Beach at 8.15pm. That’s 11 and a bit hours on a coach. To make us feel a bit better we go and find a $5 special at the local Chinese restaurant, and visit the huge and very corporate looking Irish Bar for a Guinness before setting our alarm for early, to Airlie.