Due to our very liberal spending in Indonesia, we were desperate to find ways to cut down on costs in Australia. One of the ways to do this was to spend less on getting around. We were browsing a website called Transfercar. Basically this is a website that campervan rental companies use to move their campervans around the country in preparation for upcoming rentals for cheap.
We were given six days to get from Brisbane to Cairns, and $100 towards the cost of the petrol. Although we did a quick search to see just how far the drive was (1,700km, for reference, the distance from Lands End to John O’Groats is little over 1,400km).
The pick-up location was miles out of town, so, an hour on the bus and a 20 minute walk in the blazing heat later we arrived at our destination: Awesome Campers. As it turns out, not so awesome. We were informed that our drive did not include insurance, and that we would not be able to purchase any as, technically we weren’t paying anything and therefore we weren’t legally “renting”. After thoroughly running over the damage on the van, both inside and out, we were good to go.
We had driven about 5 minutes down the road when Martin looked at me concerned and said “the dash on this is so dark I can’t even see the speedo”, after a quick glance I confirmed to him that actually, the dash wasn’t clear because nothing on it was working. Both the speedo and the rev counter were firmly set at zero. We promptly did a U-turn and went straight back to the office. They immediately swapped us into a new van, just in case the paying customers experienced any issues and we were on our way again.
Our first leg of the trip was supposed to take us to Noosa, as we had ruled out a Fraser Island tour due to our budget we wanted to take in the stunning scenery around this area. Unfortunately, as so often is the theme of this trip, Travelsty struck again. It took us 2 hours to travel a grand total of 20km (our entire planned distance to travel that day was 200km).
As we were not overly keen on A) spending money and B) driving after dusk (we had been very calmly informed that around dawn and dusk kangaroos are very active and if we hit one with the van we would be ending up with a BIG fine). We had previously downloaded an app called Campermate in preparation for our New Zealand trip and we were pretty happy to find out it works in Australia too. We highly recommend using this handy little tool if you are ever planning on taking a road trip in this part of the world.
Using our app, we located a free campsite not too far off the Bruce Highway, the comments said that it tends to get pretty busy so make sure you get there early. By the time we arrived at 6pm, we parked in what we thought was the last available spot. The 10 campers that arrived after us swiftly proved us wrong. Camping etiquette is apparently not a thing in free campsites.
Free campsites in Australia are actually awesome, by the way. They are usually furnished with flushable toilets and running water and are well maintained and policed.
We were off early the next day, having to skip Noosa due to our traffic calamity the previous day, we were keen to not let that happen again. Our destination this time was The Town of 1770, a cute little spot where Captain Cooke first landed when he “discovered” this country. The drive was long and dull, with very little change in the yellow scrub that constitutes the scenery on this section of the Brucey. After a minor 50km detour, we arrived at our campsite for the night. This time we had opted to stay at a Kangaroo Sanctuary, where a powered plot set us back $30 (about £16.50).
The owner of the sanctuary is definitely more interested in kangaroos than people. It was almost like we were an inconvenience to him, rather than a source of income.
He eventually got chatting though and, although he has some interesting views of the world, he is a genuinely decent bloke who is not shy about being honest when it comes to the changes Australia needs to make to adapt to our changing world. After claiming our spot we headed into town.
The Towns of Seventeen Seventy, and Agnes Water are both pretty quiet and quaint. They boat some beautiful scenery and let you feel like you are literally on the edge of the world. We drove first to the Town of Seventeen Seventy, up to the viewpoint and spent some time wandering around and admiring the vastness of the Pacific. It was too windy to fly the drone but we got a couple of good pictures on our phones. We then drove back to Agnes Water where we spent the rest of the day battling giant waves and strong currents and generally feeling like little kids frolicking on the beach.
The next day we were determined to get up and get going. We didn’t want to leave the lovely ‘roos before we had to but we also knew that we had a long day of driving ahead and wanted to fit one quick activity in beforehand: surfing. We couldn’t help but notice all the incredible surfers riding the waves the night before and we were keen to try our hand at it again.
Needless to say, we sucked. To be fair, it was low tide. But low tide combined with lack of experience, lack of strength and lack of sleep does not make for great wave catching material. I ended up getting pretty disheartened. But I’m keen to give it another go somewhere down the line.
We stopped off for lunch in Rockhampton, where we had giant meals and found out about an Australian delicacy: chicken salt. Imagine that, after cooking you chips, the chef decides to toss the seasoning packet from the chicken flavoured Super Noodles all over them. It’s intensely salty, and packs a punch full of flavour. I’m as of yet undecided on whether I like the idea.We camped outside of McKay that evening, in a campsite we chose specifically because it had a laundrette and, by this point we were bordering on pants repeating territory. The campsite wasn’t quite as fancy as it’s website made it look, but the laundrette was a life saver and the well stocked kitchen was definitely a perk.
Our next stop was the beautiful Airlie Beach. This is the landing point for most Whitsunday cruises. I was very sad that we had neither the time nor the money for a cruise ourselves, but we spent a few hours wandering this holiday resort style town and taking in the heat and the sights.
After a lovely afternoon we pushed on up to Townsville. We had heard that there was a really nice walk to do there and some of the campsites looked amazing. We decided on a free site just 10km North of the city, set on the beach with free BBQ facilities.
Unfortunately the site was absolutely tiny and already pretty full when we arrived. After some sharp words with the owners of several large campers who seemed think they owned the place, we found a spot and settled in.
Not long after we had started cooking, we ran out of gas. Luckily this gave us a chance to make use of the free BBQ, although I’m not sure that using it to heat our saucepan for pasta was quite the use they had in mind when they installed it.
We were up early again the next day to make it to the top of the Townsville Crown Rock before before the heat got too intense. Slathered in factor 50 we started the long trudge to the top of the big pink rock. On our way up we got overtaken by tons of locals, young and old. Apparently they use this hill as a natural workout and many routinely climb it everyday to keep fit.
Hike completed we were on our way to our final destination. We stop off for a quick lunch in Innisfail. We actually had to try about 4 different restaurants because Innisfail is such a small town that places actually close after lunch times. The town was cute though, the high street stretched across the seafront and the views were pretty spectacular.
Our final campsite was in a place called Fishery Falls. The owner was very friendly and recommended all sorts of local tourist attractions.
Unfortunately we still didn’t have the time but we took all the brochures he offered none the less. Our last night’s meal was to be pretty spectacular, creamy mushroom pasta. This meant we had to spend the majority of the night in the kitchen, giving us the opportunity to chat to lots of interesting people who were also staying at the site.
As night fell the campsite came to be completely covered in toads. It wasn’t until the next day when a friendly camper informed us that they were, in fact, poisonous to the touch.
After a stifling night in the van which saw us getting very little sleep, we were up early (quell surprise). We needed to clean the van “inside and our” before we returned it to the rental place. But we decided to first start the morning with a little hike through the rainforest up to a waterfall that the owner had recommended. It was a fairly easy hike, if not very sweaty, and the waterfall turned out to be a water reservoir but it was a great start to the day.
After a quick deep clean of the van, a much needed shower and a snack, we were off on our last stretch. With a brief stop to catch some drone footage of the rainforest, we came to the end of this particular adventure. We had arrived in Cairns.
Drone footage from rainforest.