Trek to Oz

How to stretch a week sitting in a campsite into a blog… It’s going to be a push but I’m going to write in a really big font, use double spacing and put in lots of silly pointless pictures of the car, like this:

 

Since last leaving you in the Whitsundays we have in fact done very little. The weather clouded over again so we have had a week of pottering around a couple of campsites, a few drives, and ever-exciting trips to the supermarket. It’s been quite nice really. The weather has been pretty rubbish again but spirits are high, as it’s warm and we have had free internet, and so managed to download lots from itunes. Megan’s pretty much up to date with Top Gear, and if she doesn’t get her Top Gear fix once every couple of months she’s a nightmare to live with- the toys are thrown well and truly out the pram until she has a dose of the boys and their hilarious, albeit mostly staged, antics. I’ve managed to catch up with Grays and the last season of Sex and the City (oh Carrie, when will you learn?) so all is well in the world. I’ve also been back on damn eBay again looking at Land Rovers and Mercedes 4×4 Sprinter vans as a possible next overland vehicle for the States. Oh yeah, should have told you, we are planning to ‘do’ Alaska, Canada and North America in a couple of years, so if anyone fancies becoming part of the trip I will need a covering letter and a photo. Honestly though, if your photo features you looking good in a bikini I won’t read the covering letter so don’t bother sending one in. (No Nicholas, you will have to submit a letter). We have already been talking about the title of that blog, ‘Keep on Trekking’ is our best effort to date. I know, it’s weak so we would welcome any other titles.

It’s amazing how much there actually is to do when you’re doing nothing, and a day’s pottering passes very quickly. There are always things to do on the car; leak checks take most of the morning, finding a bit of wood to prop up the exhaust pipe, as the last one fell out driving over that speed bump in itself can take an afternoon, and then once you have investigated that new rattle that’s driving you mad it’s beer o’clock and time to start getting dinner on. It gets dark so early down here. Most states don’t have daylight saving so it gets dark around 5pm. The reasons given as to why they don’t embrace daylight saving like the rest of the world go from the silly’ ‘it confuses the cows’, to the ridiculous and my personal favorite, ‘it will fade the curtains’, great stuff.

We have moved on a little since I last wrote. We stopped in Townsville and are now currently in a campsite just south of Cairns. We both thought that this would be a busy stretch of road and since we have been driving on the main road north have been surprised at how quiet it is. I mean, where else in the world would the traffic on the main, and only road north in the whole country be stopped simply by a man standing in the middle of the road with a stop sign….?

 

Or by a toy train crossing the main highway/motorway……..(I said I was going to struggle to fill this blog.)

 

All this free/pottering time has also allowed Megan to produce the best meals ever to grace our trusty petrol stove, we even had pizza a few nights ago! Pizza made from scratch, cooked on just a double burner petrol stove, no oven or anything. It was soooo good, I’m talking ‘3am after a gutful of booze and a night bus home’ good. She has turned out to be quite the chef, and where is the proof in this statement you ask? Well, the proof is quite literally in the pudding. (I’ve been waiting a good two months to use that line.)

 

Unfortunately some dishes haven’t really been up to scratch presentation wise, and have been sent back to the kitchen. Judge all you want but it’s for her own good people, so don’t look at me like that.

 

So yes, it’s a bit grey at the moment, the temperature is all over the place and it’s reported in the newspapers that it’s the strangest and coldest weather in many years. It hasn’t really effected our enjoyment though, and we are off to snorkel on the barrier reef next week, to finally try and find a koala in the wild, and hopefully drive to the very tip of Australia via Cape York. There is no ‘proper’ road to the most northern point of this mighty continent, just a number of 4×4 tracks so it’s a bit of an effort to get through, fording rivers, dodging crocs and earning mega man points as we go. We have heard a number of stories about the state of the tracks, some good, some not so but we are going to have a look and get as far as we can. Speaking to our friend David he rather alarmingly stated that he once drove up to Cape York in a $50,000 car and came back with a $25,000 car. As mine is only worth about $10,00 does that mean I’ll come back with a negative value? The image of rolling back into Cairns with just a chassis, four wheels and us sitting there on bare metal in some sort of comedy film style fills my dreams constantly. But I can’t take the ridicule of not giving it a go.

947 words, not too shabby, and most of it not waffle. One final note though, the comments: we love the comments, it shows that people are actually reading this rubbish, but bar a few people ( Robin, Paul you are not included in this rant) the comments have dried up, even from one’s own family, who should really know better. It’s just, and it’s difficult for me to say this, lately I feel I’m the only one doing any work, putting any real effort into the blog/bloggies relationship, it’s like you don’t want it to work. In the beginning it was all so fresh, you were commenting daily, but how you’ve all changed… I know there was a honeymoon period and all relationships can take a slow down but let’s try and keep it spicy huh? Is it because you are looking at other blogs? Are they younger than mine? I can change! I mean it this time, I’ll write more exciting stuff, break down more, have another run in with customs and write about it all. So if you feel like commenting, on anything good or bad please, please do. Megan is going to be in charge of replying to comments so you might actually get a response!

1166 words. Magic.