Day 66

Thursday 6^th January 2011

………what we’d actually done was hang the bag over the jeeps wing mirror and gone to bed, instead of putting inside the jeep and locking it away, oh dear. Within two minutes a pack of Dingo’s were in camp, when Dingo’s find food, they howl and growl to alert the others to their find. They tore the bag to shreds devouring our scarps and when they had finished with that they took some towels off the trees that other campers were drying and ripped holes in them, I thought that was rather rude.

Luckily I didn’t hear any of this as I’d passed out the moment my head hit the pillow (well, sand) but listening to the rest of the campers, it gave them all quite a fright, at least two sat up for the rest of the night with torches, I actually overslept and didn’t surface until gone eight, when Bryan, who was sick of waiting for us, beeped the horn on the truck, let’s just say there wasn’t a cup of coffee waiting for me.

We’d decided the night before that we would throw all the gear in the jeeps and head straight to a campsite for brekkie, a wash, etc etc, so we did.

We went to a campsite called central station which we had been booked to stay in. This place is a national park and a really nice place with huge trees and lots of wildlife. We ate breakfast, which by this point in the trip we were down to almost nothing, bread, nutella and cereals, there was supposed to be 2 muffins each, somebody had eaten my second muffin and that made me mad!!!

I took myself off for a wash and decided that I would have cigarettes and coffee for breakfast instead. On the way back I spotted a huge Iguana on the tree outside the toilet. Mint!

We made a short trip in the jeeps to the middle of central station, when we pulled up Marco found the missing muffins in the jeep, joy of joys, I have scarcely been happier!

We took a walk through central station which had another unbelievably clear creek running through it, it also had a tree trunk that had fallen across it, well, I just couldn’t resist!

Afterwards we went to the most famous lake on the island lake Mackenzie. This lake was beautiful, green water around the edges and whiter than white sand.

We did some more playing and then a huge black cloud rose above the trees. We gathered our belongings and rush to shelter as the heavens open in fine style.

 

Back aboard the Barbie jeeps Suz took the wheel and after one or two hair raising moments everybody held on extra tight. It appeared that Suz couldn’t manage to drive the jeep in a straight line. At one point she took one hand of the wheel to scratch her face and we went careering towards a tree…. SUZ!!!! Jesus!! I think we were all grateful when we arrived at the lunch spot.

We munched down the remaining supplies mainly nutella sandwiches with coco pops sprinkled ontop. Times were getting hard!

Seeing as everybody had now had a drive of the jeep we drew lots and Marco won the prize of driving us back to the ferry. The weather was now in, the clouds were thick and milky so we all sat inside on the ferry. We got back to fraser roving backpackers and arranged to meet for dinner at 19:30 after a nap.

Sadly the nap never happened – grrrrrr! Back at our hostel we checked to see if our Greyhound bus to Airlie Beach had been cancelled. It had. We were informed that the roads through Rockhampton would be closed for the next 10 days at least. Bugger! We already had everything booked up there – accommodation, a 3 day cruise out on the reat Barrier Reef and our flights back to Sydney. We NEEDED to get there. It seemed we had a couple of options.

The first was a bus, a ferry round the flooded areas and another bus. This was going to take a minimum of 40 hours travelling and cost around 500 bucks. As you can imagine this was not too appealing.

The second involved heading back down to Brisbane and getting a flight up to Proserpine which was about 30 mins drive from Airlie Beach. The next available flight was Sunday night which would just about get us there for our cruise on the Monday morning. This was much more appealing but also much more expensive – 80 bucks to get to Brissie, then 600 bucks for thr flights – and we’d need somewhere to stay until the flight on the Sunday.

It was 8am at home and our travel insurance offices had just opened so we decided to give them a ring to see what, if anything we were covered for. After eventually getting to speak to someone helpful – there is nothing so distressing as being on hold to a premium rate number when you’re calling from Australia –  but it was good news! Apparently we are covered for up to £1000 each to get to where we need to be – this includes accommodation, transport and food!!!! Result! We quickly booked the flights as they were selling out faster than take that tickets did on our wedding day and went out for tea with a smile on our face.

Everyone except Esti met up for tea. We were told this was because she had already made other plans to meet up with friends…. I think it might have been Bryan’s inappropriate jokes. We had been given walkie talkies to communicate between jeeps in case of emergency. Bryan, always the joker, decided that there was an emergency every 10 mins! On this occasion he was addressing Hans – our German guide. ‘Hans, Hans, come in Hans! Why did Hilter commit suicide?’…… no reply……. ‘Because he couldn’t afford the gas bill!’. The realisation of what he had just said sank in in our car and we sat in stony silence…. Bryan was sat in the front of the jeep next to Esti – the Jewish Israeli girl!!!!!

Anyway we had a good meal in the Torquay Hotel whilst listening to the WORST guitarist I have ever heard. Those of you who frequent the Tiger – remember skiffle playing Jim? Well like that – Aussie Jim!!! Suz was almost asleep on the table so at 11.00pm we called it a night and headed back to the hostel.

It was still pouring with rain and the forecast was the same for the next few days. We’d already seen what Hervey Bay had to offer – not much! So we decided to head to Brisbane on the bus and have a couple of days there waiting for our flight. Since the insurance company were going to be footing the bill for this we also decided we wouldn’t be staying in hostels either. I hit late rooms to see what was on offer. We toyed with the idea of a suite in the Hilton but worried that the insurance company might contest that claim so settled on a 4 star apartment over looking the river. Happy that we were sorted for the next leg of the trip, exhausted after 2 nights sleeping in a sandy sweat box we fell asleep.