Not only were things crazy outside of the Kill Bunny but it was chaos inside as well. In addition to our clothes and food, we were hauling CD’s skis, poles, boots, and winter clothes. It turns out that sleeping next to a pair of K2 Off Piste while using snow pants as a pillow is not particularly comfortable.
A hostel in Sydney agreed to store CD’s skis. It was like a weight was lifted. Now I could freely roll six inches to the right without taking ski bindings to the ribs. What a relief!
A clinking noise showed up. Once it started, it was consistent and did not change as we shifted or turned. Clink, clink, clink. We turned up the ipod to block it out but it continued. We eventually found the source. I had left the spare set of keys in the passenger side door lock. Easy fix.
By this time, we had listened to nearly every song we own. We met some people. A truck driver cleaned bugs off our windshield with a fancy window bug scrapper. We ate cheese and crackers at least once per day. We chatted with a few bar tenders and drank wine with Kill Bunny at our side.
We weren’t sure where we could camp. We slept near other campers in rest areas and parking lots but did’t really know the rules. We slept in a campground that was a grassy field in Port Macquarie.
Sometime around this we bought an atlas of free camping along our route. This book changed our lives! We had a plan and felt informed! It turns out that camping in Australia is much different than in the US. Many parking lots, fields, and town parks welcomed car campers. One our of best spots was a parking lot on the beach with an ocean view, flush toilets, hot showers, picnic tables, and easy foot access to pubs and restaurants. According to our book, we were welcome to stay there for free for up to 7 days! Wow! A couple of families with kids and a few other couples joined us there during out stay. It was the best!
Our whale watching trip was cancelled due to strong winds and high seas. We happened across a free spirited boat captain that wasn’t deterred by the weather. I called him “Captain Ron.” The first thing he told us was that his boat had a bar. The second thing was: “tell me if you feel sea sick before you embarrass yourself.” The third thing was: “hold on”. Well, Captain Ron was our guy. We boarded his boat with a couple of other people and hoped for the best. He said things like: “Come on whales, show us what you’ve got.”
Well, it worked. Thank you Captain Ron!
I thought the whales were a highlight, until my mind was blown the next day. Do you know how pineapples grow? Apparently, I didn’t! Ha!
Hi from cairns!the kill bunny made it, we dropped it off earlier, and oddly enough I really miss it already. we also discovered that many of the basic wicked vans are far more offensive than the kill bunny and I am just glad we didn’t have to drive around with x-rated sayings or pictures painted on our van. (some of these vans I wouldn’t even have been able to take a picture of for this family style web page!) we ended our time with kill bunny by finding the perfect camp site. A beach a few hundred km south of here – 3 or 4 other people were camping there as well – some totally set up with televisions, comfy chairs, and everything. Geoff was amazed at how far we have driven, since he left victoria in may and is just here now. anyway, there is nothing like free and legal camping at a beautiful beach.By the way, I have this new habit of checking the restrooms for snakes and spiders before getting too comfortable there — well, this morning I checked high and low and did not feel there were any creatures too close — then, when I flushed the toilet and looked down — an usually large frog was clinging to the INSIDE of the toilet bowl! I even had to stop to take a picture of this …. now, I just have one more thing to check for!oh – I had an encounter with a crazy killer brush turkey – these guys look like turkeys and are called turkeys but run around picnic tables acting like seagulls and instead of having beards they look like they are wearing a yellow hawaiian lei.I don’t know if I have mentioned – there are huge electric barbecues everywhere and they are similar to a griddle and used often for cooking eggs and such. also, many vehicles have snorkles and it has taken us three weeks and a couple conversations to really figure this out – apparently flooding can be quite a problem — kill bunny did not have a snorkel and would never have made it.I still haven’t found tyler – he was in cairns when I was in surfers paradise and now we are playing phone tag and I feel like we must have passed somewhere on the road this morning … we are checked into a huge hostel — the hostel experience here is completely
different from my experiences in europe – these are more “hotel-ish”, less quaint — Overall just completely different from my past experiences – but I didn’t spend anytime traveling by wicked camper in europe so I really don’t have a good comparison.The wind is at about 30 knots today and is supposed to be again tomorrow … several people recommended that we do not try to take a snorkeling trip to the reef until the weather improves — so we will gamble and try to schedule one for thursday or friday. now, I think cd is making his birthday margaritas and we will take it from there!– hopefully will get some pics up within the next couple days.
hi againall is well here in cairns. we booked a tour up to daintree rain forest … really went crazy, spent a bit more money, and went for the tour that only holds six people. We were lucky again — no one else booked that day and we ended up with a private tour … our driver, Jim, came out of his shell right away … I knew we would all get along when he started a sentence by saying something to the effect of : — “back when I dropped out of society for a while” … we covered politics, human rights, the environment, mexican food, hot sauce, tequila, … he told us where to get the lemonade fruits and the mango wine … as well as where to get a pint with the locals … we even got the benefit of hearing Jim tell us about his years living in an australian commune. he warned me of the aggressive 8 foot long snakes that live in the sugar cane fields, as well as the cassowary birds that will use thier massive feet to disembowel you if you get between them and thier young. the sugar cane factories smell like the best fresh sweet corn and we learned about the beaches stinger nets and how a crocodile bit through one last year and the stingers came in. we saw the sight of steve erwins death, saw the movie set where steven speilberg is now and learned about how bill clinton was evacuated from port douglas on 9-11. we did see 3 crocs, 2 treen snakes, and a few other things …today we took a boat out to the reef finally … beautiful day for it … we snorkled on two separate reefs and three sites … kind of like swimming a huge aquarium but I did find the depth of the valleys/gorges throughout the reef really amazing … cd was happy that I did not see a reef snake, killer shark, sting ray — or a number of other things. we did see a reef shark and tons of bright colored fish …last night I ate “traditional lasgna” which was served with french fries and cd had fresh barramundi … we have learned that most of the time your cold bottle of beer is served in a coozie (sp) — how great is that … and in cairns it is illegal to take your food from a restaurant home with you … you can order take away but if you eat in they can’t give you the leftovers to take home … a foot long sub at subway is ~ eight dollars and it is impossible to buy homewade fresh squeeze lemonade here – but you can get any variety of meat or veggie pies in filo dough and pumpkin in one of the most common ingrediants in anything … don’t even think of trying to find edible mexican food … there is such a thing as “tree kangaroos” — but we did not see one … oh, and stinger season starts in november and special stinger suits are needed to swim outside of stinger nets …
Rambling Footsteps 