They say it's a dangerous business, going out your door. You drive along the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.
Okay pardon all the nerdy quotes from Lord of the Rings.
It’s finally time….after all the car modifications, last minute purchases (which included a trailer), planning, wrapping up work, cleaning, moving and farewells we are on the on the road!
Our first leg of the trip was to get to Cairns in 3 weeks for the start of our tag along 4x4 tour to the tip of Cape York.
I'm going to skip adding a map of where the journey roughly was, as hopefully its not needed!
First things first, one last stop at the storage unit, then we were off up the east coast, to see family in Newcastle and friends in Kendall.
After that was our first camping stop, two nights in Cathedral Rock National Park. Which is a National Park, just east of Armidale and west of Dorrigo on the New England Tablelands.
https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/visit-a-park/parks/cathedral-rock-national-park
We hiked up through the boulder strewn bushland to Cathedral Rock look out. The last section required scrambling over some rocks using a chain, which Claire gave a hard "no". I still ventured on however.
The following photo was from another near by hike to a waterfall.
We had a good shake down of our cold weather gear as it was only 3 degrees overnight for our stay! And we also spotted some Wallabies.
We also encountered a bit of local traffic.
The next leg of the journey was a free camp site in Dorrigo for two nights. Dorrigo is near the Coffs Harbour area and is surrounded by World Heritage Listed Rain-forests, Bush and National Parkland.
We got up to more hiking! Mostly around Dorrigo National Park and some nearby waterfalls. Of course there was also more freezing weather! We also had an interesting fellow camper that loved to do "Cooee's" all day.
On one of our hikes we had our first Snake encounter of the trip, which i wrote up here -> https://fatdunky.travelmap.net/posts/first-snake-encounter .
Next stop Ballina to see a friend, also stopping off at Coffs on the way, to get mandatory tourist pictures:
Then we had a short stay with more friends in Doon Doon which is between Nimbin and Byron Bay:
It was then on to Caboolture for a quick lunch with some long lost family (my Aunt, Uncle and Cousin).
Then we were onto a caravan park on the Steve Irwin Highway next to The Australian Zoo. From which we had a great time exploring the Glass House Mountains. The mountains are several isolated peaks towering above the bush-land about an hour outside of Brisbane. Again we did some hikes, even getting to the top of a few of the peaks, as well as some scenic drives.
Onwards we ventured to our next stop! Deep Water National Park / 1770. What an amazing camping spot we had behind the dunes on a beach a little south of the town 1770. We explored the beach, went swimming, did some small sandy 4wding tracks over to 1770.
Once in 1770, we did some more hikes where we had another snake encounter (we started loosing track after this one) which is detailed here -> https://fatdunky.travelmap.net/posts/its-a-bird-no-its-a-plane-no-wait-its-a-another-snake
After all of the exploring we had a tour on a LARC! Err... whats that you ask? Well a LARC (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LARC-V) is a retired amphibious military vehicle from the Vietnam war, use for transporting cargo up beaches or harbours. Ours was pink!
We had a blast, it drove / boated across the bay to a sunset view across Eurimbula beach. We also had a few speedy splash downs getting back into the bay on the way back.
After all that we trucked on further north for a quick stop over in the council camp / race grounds in St Lawrence. We checked out the local wetlands and ended up in the local pub afterwards.
We also had a nice spooky walk back to our trailer from the pub!.
Next Stop: The beautiful Airlie Beach / Whitsundays. Were we stayed in a big 4 for a few nights, whilst we checked out the area:
One of the highlight was a day trip out to the magical Whitehaven beach, which has the whitest sand in world! Well according to the tour guide at least.
We left Airlie Beack in the morning and sailed to our first stop, an island with a look out over WhiteHaven.
After that we sailed over to the famous beach. It certainly lived up to it reputation with pretty much every photo being one for "insta"
Yes, i have applied to be on Bay Watch. They told me to apply for "Dad bod" watch
After our photo shoot, it was back onto to boat to go snorkelling around some small coral reefs, and Claire didn't even freak out! (Yes, she loved it).
Finishing up we sailed back to Airlie Beach. I did get roped into reefing a few sails (i filled all 3 volunteer positions), though they gave us a few free beers, so maybe i was actually working :D
Claire also commandeered the ship!
Up next: Townsville / Magnetic Island, Not far from Cairns now! For this stay we camped a few km's outside of town in a free camp called Bluewater. From there we did a trip over to Magnetic Island. Which is an island about a 20 minute ferry ride from Townsville. It has some old WW2 fortifications and gun sites, as well as some nice bushland and beaches. It also has a colony of wild Koalas!
We hiked up to an old WW2 observation point.
Then on the hike back to town we found a wild Koala. I think that's only the second wild Koala I've ever seen in my life. We also spotted an echidna (no photo sorry).
Then we went on exploring the islands beaches
Saw some sweet hire cars.
I also found a swing / wrecking ball.
We also found some rock wallabies
And after all of that, we spotted another rare beast. A mythical beast from Ireland's past.... the bearded bog monster.
(Okay, we just had dinner back in Townsville at an Irish Bar).
It was time to say bye to Townsville for our next destination, Paronella park, but on the way we had a lunch stop at Cardwell:
It was starting to feel a lot like Far North Queensland:
Now we made it to Paronella Park, a place we loved so much we extended to the stay for 2 nights. It was built by a Spanish immigrant in the 1930's. He built it to be like a European castle in the Queensland jungle. Today it is overgrown and partially collapsing due to time and events like floods and fires. Giving it a Jurassic Park / Lost World feeling.
Onwards to Cairns! Which is our final destination for this leg but only the beginning of our year long adventure. We stayed for a few nights in a very crowded free camp on the south edge of Cairns called green patch. From there we check out Cairns and Kurnda / Barron Falls:
We also camped for a few nights next to Badinda boulders, and got to hike, swim and explore around the breathtaking river rock formations that are surround by tropic jungle.
So that's it for this leg of the story of our year long journey. However, the next leg, we are on a tag along 4wd tour to the tippy tip of Cape York (The triangle bit on the top right of Australia). Hopefully it wont take me another year to write!