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This is a sign we saw in a lot of pubs in the outback. I love the dress standards here.

We spent 4 days in Cairns. For those who have been keeping up, Me, mike, jenny and barry attended a 90min timeshare seminar in Surfers to get free tickets to a theme park. We also purchased 4 nights in Cairns and this included a seafood buffet dinner cruise worth $150. It was really nice. Only thing was we had to attend another 90 min timeshare seminar. We told them up front we werent interested and they let us go. So only 30 mins of our time wasted. It was nice staying in luxury accommodation and having a TV.

We did a snorkel trip out to green island but it was one of those freak tides that was so far out the coral was sitting out of the water. So the snorkelling, putting it politely, was crap!

Other than that, a cruisey few days and lots of nice eating out.

The last few days have been spent chilling out in Port Douglas, with a day trip to the Daintree Rainforest. We decided not to camp in the Daintree due to the bird eating spiders there.

Marina at Port Macquarie

Daintree NP, where the rainforest meets the sea

We spent two days in Townsville. The weather was nice so we did a cycle ride along the esplanade and had some brekky and visited the markets.

Almost finished!

Again,you need to join the blue lines where the GPS has failed.

Click on picture to enlarge.

There are bush fires everywhere. They were a little scary at first, but they are everywhere and apparently normal for this time of year.

It was just a short drive to Mataranka Springs and we arrived about lunchtime and set up camp. We did some well overdue washing and set off for a swim in the thermal pools. The water was crystal clear and 34 degrees. It still felt a bit cold compared to the outside temperature.

They used to have a smelly bat problem here (isn’t that a Phoebe song) but they have got rid of them by planting water sprinklers up in the trees.

It was a pleasant place to camp, very chilled out, as we were the only campers. All the caravans were away from us on the powered sites. I think we have been really lucky with our slightly off-season travel and there has been hardly any people around.

We finally dragged our shrivelled bodies out of the hot pools, drank some beer, cooked lamb chops with tzaziki for dinner, and then went to the bar to watch the live entertainment. It was a girl singing slightly off key but it was better than going to bed at 7pm.

We departed Darwin and headed for the famed Kakadu National Park, or as I now refer to it as Kakapoo or Crapadu. I don’t know what I was really expecting, but it was boring wetlands, with little or no bird life. A lot of the roads were still closed from the wet season, so we didn’t get to see Jim Jim falls. We did an 80km detour on a dirty rutted road to the Gunlom Falls. They were very nice, but the ones in Litchfield NP were just as nice if not better.

June/July would be the better time to be in Kakadu.

We departed Kakadu as quickly as we entered and made our way to Katherine for the night.

We dusted the cobwebs off our bicycles and set off to explore Darwin. Our first stop was the wharf district where Mike did a tour of the WWII oil storage tunnels. These tunnels were competed just as the war ended so they were never used. They are now getting their moneys worth from the tourists.

We rode along the esplanade and out to Cullen’s Bay. A brochure had mentioned harbour side eating places there so we went to check it out. There was a marina, expensive houses on waterways with boats parked out front, and the harbour side restaurants as mentioned. The place seemed nice enough but it had no soul. To me, it was a cross between Canary Wharf in London and the Pauanui waterways. We decided we didn’t want to eat here and continued on.

We rode along a cycle path that followed the coast. We cycled past Mindil Beach, where they have sunset markets. We were a bit early so we continued our pleasant ride along the coast, past Bullocky Point, Vestys Beach and Fannie Bay for about 10 kms and ended up at a military museum at East Point. We bought a couple of Gatorades to re-hydrate – portapotti blue for me, and urine yellow for Mike. Then we turned around and rode back.

We had showers and hit the town again for drinks then dinner.

That was day two.

My preconception of Darwin was a dusty hick town, full of dusty men drinking beer in dusty outback pubs. It is not that at all. It is a modern town, which had to be rebuilt twice in the previous century. Once after it was bombed by the Japanese in WWII and again in 1987 after it was destroyed by cyclone Tracy.

We blew our budget and stayed in a hotel. Our room was huge and modern. The bed was bigger than our entire sleeping quarters for the last 3 months. Within 5 minutes we had our clothes spread from one end of the room to the other.

The Treetops restaurant at the hotel is supposed to be very popular with the locals and everyone checking in seemed to be booking dinner there. We hopped on the bandwagon and booked dinner as well. When we rocked up for dinner we had a quick look at the menu. It was a fussy menu that used words like “jus” and “confit”. My experience of eating at these places is that the food is ok. I think when you are spending over $100 for a meal; you’d like it to be better than “just ok”. So we cancelled our table and headed out on the town.

We found Mitchell St, which seemed to be the main street for bars and restaurants. Darwin was buzzing. The open-air bars were spilling over with Friday night after work drinkers. The bars had no inside area, just a roof, no sides. It would be fantastic to live somewhere you could rely on the weather being warm all year round.

We found a Thai rooftop restaurant, which also had only a roof, no sides. It also had an outdoor area for smokers. It had a really good vibe. We had an incredible meal, and for half the price that pretentious hotel was going to cost.

That was day one.