Cairns

After a 3 hr flight from Alice Springs we arrived in Cairns, Queensland the “sunshine state”.  Cairns is the start of our journey down the east coast and our last 6 weeks in Australia and if everything goes to plan we will be spending our last week in Sydney.  So from here on in, this part of the trip will differ from the previous journey in that Emma has done this part of the trip before (east coast and NZ) so with her expert knowledge we will be doing the best this coast and New Zealand can offer and missing the rubbish bits, no pressure Coates!

When we arrived at the hostel at 20:30 and proceeded to check in with a mad old woman (too many drugs when she was younger me thinks or maybe not enough now) we found out that we had a free evening meal included within our daily rate, so with a map and vouchers in hand we sped off to find the Woolshed bar.  The Woolshed is famous in Cairns for being the party pub (back when Emma was travelling it was known as the local meat market and by all accounts nothing has changed) and the free food was an obvious ploy to get people in who will hopefully stay to drink the cheap beer.  Tonight’s offer was to pay $10 and get 5 drinks.  We had our food and sat for a while drinking and watching the music videos on the big screen.  It was a Tuesday night so not exactly busy but for us it was heaven as it was a night out. 

Cairns is only really about two things, one being a departure point to visit part of the great barrier reef and the other as a party town.  So the next day, ready to hate it despite Emma‘s praises for the place, we went for a wander around the town, and you know, the place has a lot of charm.  Its full of European backpackers but compared with what we had seen on the west coast it was fairly large with some older stone buildings to break up the modern metal clad buildings.  Cairns is right on the sea but its sea front is just mud flats so they have built a free swimming pool in a park to laze around in and to take a cooling dip which gives the place a very laid back feel.  The town is surrounded by mountains covered in tropical rainforest and with the temperature in the high 20’s it made the place look more like parts of Asia than Australia.

After two nights in the hostel having to listen to other peoples conversation on their mobiles through the paper thin walls and having herds of flip flop wearing elephants clomping about at 6:00 am in the morning, we happily checked out to go and pick up our campervan.  The original plan for the east coast was use the bus and stay in hostels, but with our new knowledge about costs and the quality of hostels in Australia (basically they haven’t been updated in any way since Emma was there) we decided to go back to a campervan.  The other benefit was that we would be able to stop where and when we wanted, a freedom we would not have with the bus.We had booked a van with Cheapa Campa because going with Apollo again would have been more expensive, but when we got to the depot we realised that Cheapa Campa was basically the older vans in the Apollo fleet hence being cheaper to hire.  So we checked in and due to certain vans not being in the right place, they ended up giving us another Apollo van that was actually newer than the one we had on the west coast!  They also threw in some extras for free and so for almost $1000 less we had the exact same van.  Obviously valued customers now.

So after we had filled in the paperwork we moved in to our new home for the next 5 weeks - a Toyota Hiace Hitop.  The Hiace is basically a converted mini bus with a high top roof and designed for 2.5 people (the .5 being a small child weighing no more than 50kg).  When in transport/eating mode the back of the van has a table just big enough to seat 2.5 people and in sleep mode the table/seats convert to a very comfortable double bed.  The .5 would sleep in the roof space on a thin piece of chipboard which pulls out over the kitchen space, so making it impossible to move around with it in place.  As we have no .5 (except perhaps Emma’s rucksack) we use the area to store our clothes.

The kitchen area is just big enough for one person to stand without moving much, and the other has to be either sitting or “out of the bloody way”.  Washing up is achieved, not via a dishwasher as we would both prefer, but by a very small sink with cold pumped water from the onboard water tank.  For cooking we have 2 gas rings which means most of our meals have to be achieved only using two pans.  Power is provided by a 12v house battery (separate to the engine battery) which runs the fridge and the internal lights and when you are connected to the 240v mains (if you have paid for a site with that facility) you can run the microwave, electric kettle and toaster.

This small space can only be navigated by two people by using a pre-rehearsed dance routine, which makes cooking a meal extremely interesting but somehow it still feels like home.  So by the time we have finished this little adventure we will have spent a total of 15 weeks in a space no bigger than a downstairs toilet, a space the size of which would be illegal to keep a cow in.  Any bets on whether we will still be talking to each other? J

Once safely ensconced in a campsite close to town and loaded up with food, we unpacked again.  Being experts at campervanning now we knew exactly where everything needed to go.  With the jobs done, we tripped the light fandango and made a curry, accompanied by a box of wine and toasted our new home.

Whilst still in Cairns we took the opportunity to go to the cinema and see a movie (Ghost Writer, not bad at all) and it made us realise just how much we were missing watching a bit of TV now and again.  Not since Singapore have we sat and vegged out in front of the old goggle box.  So to try and break up the future monotony of campervanning and to save on the cost of going to the cinema, I hatched a plan.  Our laptop does not have a DVD player so I made some enquires into an external DVD drive and after some research on the internet about the feasibility of the plan with our particular laptop, we purchased said drive along with 3 bargain basement DVD’s.  Our first movie night in the van was a old classic….Borat.  Since then Emma has been constantly repeating some of the funniest lines in the film in a semi-Kazakhstan stylie voice.  Maybe Borat was not such a good choice considering the confines of our home….future purchases will be more considered! 

Next:  A little trip north before our journey south.