Waverly Creek Wayside to Cairns
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We got a little bit more sleep last night and felt a bit more human this morning. It’s 900 km to Cairns. Our longest driving day, yesterday, we got 725 so it seems a bit out of reach but we head out feeling a bit optimistic.
We’ve switched back to shorts for the first time in awhile. It was warm at 8:45 when we set out. And by midday it was seriously hot and muggy. Yet we saw numerous people out working in long sleeves and long pants. Odd. There was a guy at a gas station cutting the grass in long black pants and a long sleeve shirt. I guess avoiding skin cancer is worth a little sweat but he must have been dying.
We girded ourselves for another long slog and headed off. We caught a very brief glimpse of ocean early on but then nothing for quite some time. In one of the road pictures I took, I accidentally got a picture of one of the telephone poles here. They’re very humorous in that they aren’t straight like we’re used to. They just find the straightest trees they can find and do the best they can. Actually for a good chunk of the drive between West Australia and here, the telephone poles were thin metal things that looked kind of like I-beams. But now we’re back to the crooked tree versions.
The landscape has changed from what we were seeing in NSW. Still agricultural but now it’s sugar cane and plenty of it. Fields and fields. But also occasional banana trees and something we’re guessing is a mango tree. The reason for the suspicion is we came across what is now becoming the traditional large piece of fruit, in Bowen. The Big Mango was out in front of the information center. We stopped for photos.
Across the road was a bay where we got our first really good look at the South Pacific Ocean. There were trees and shrubs growing in the water along the beach. They were so thick it was hard to see through them.
Above Bowen, we passed through Ayr and into Townsville. We had briefly toyed with the idea of heading out to the reef from Townsville and avoiding the crowds in Cairns. But now we were only 350 km from Cairns and it was still mid afternoon. We decided we could make it and we’d rather be done with driving, so we headed on.
We made one more stop, in Cardwell (winner of the Most Improved award in the 2000 Clean Beach contest), where there was a stretch of ocean you could actually see. Unfortunately, at this particular point it was pretty muddy. But very warm. Should be excellent for snorkeling. The beach was very rough, just a series of small rocks. The first beach we’ve been on that wasn’t a fine white powder.
For most of the way, there had been a line of hills, or small mountains off to the west (on our left). As we approached Cairns they became even more dramatic and a couple of them were quite tall. They looked to be 5000′ or more which is higher than we thought the highest point in Australia was. Guess we were wrong. It might have been psychological but they seemed “tropical” in that they struck me as looking like the high mountain that’s often in the center of South Pacific islands, like in Cast Away. The last 100 km or so, as the sun was going down, was quite pretty.
Around 8pm we made it! 907 km in one day. A new record by a long shot (and one hopefully never to be repeated). And since it’s somewhat late, and very hot, we decided to stay in a hotel. An excellent choice. It’s very cool in the room. The AC works well. And it turns out the hotel receptionist, Penny, is a former dive instructor on a reef tour and she gave us all the info on how best to go about our snorkeling trip. She hooked us up with the company she used to work for and booked us. She also gave us a bunch of ideas for things to do while we were here. Very helpful. We designated her as our tour director and took her picture for the website.
We had dinner at the hotel restaurant and even got a load of laundry in. Tomorrow we begin 3 days of not having to go anywhere. A luxury. And kudos to our faithful van, that noble warrior, who carried us over 11,000 kilometers without a hiccup.
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