From Northern Queensland to New South Wales

Howdy!

Almost years past since I wrote the last time…
Sorry for that, but we were pretty busy and had only internet access in internet cafes – no wlan for my notebook. :/ poor thing.

Ok, I try to make it as short as possible:

After our awesome diving trip on the Ocean Quest we decided to stay another night in Cairns and then start driving up north on the next morgen (that was when we rented our camper).

While waiting in the queue for the camper we met 3 germans who are doing the exactly same trip than we. First up to Cape Tribulation and then down to Sydney in 3 weeks. They also have to be in Syd on the 25th. Pretty funny. Since then we met 2-3 other guys who are crazy enough to do the same.

Anyway, we drove on Saturday up to Port Douglas to stay the night and start on the next morning to Cape Tribulation. Btw Cape Tribulation is approx. 250 km north of Cairns and “it is one of the few places in the world where the rainforest meets the ocean” (Lonely Planet). Not THAT spectacular for me as I had the same already in Wilsons Promotory with Stefan and Chris, but there it is not that popular.

On the way to Port Douglas we stopped at a beatuiful place called Palm Cove – full of palms as the name already says
We had a small Cornflakes-tea-break and watched a few guys fishing more or less big fishes on a pier.

Our first time shopping after picking up the van. Value of 150$.. :/

Beach at Palm Cove

Jochen at Palm Cove *roar*

Funny dog at Palm Cove

Hm….. warm

Palm Cove from the pier

Lookout on the way to Port Douglas

Awesome shot…

As we arrived in Port Douglas we tried to be stupid german tourists and parked on the Esplanade drectly at the beach. Normally you are not allowed to camp “wild”, e.g. (not i.e. ) staying the night on a public car park etc…
Paddy already wrote a few funny things about that
And guess who we met on the Esplanade. Our german friends plus an austrian cuple with an DHL Wicked camper (painted yellow with red DHL letters).

Jochen and me had a beatiful dinner on the beach Quote Jochen: “If we now had a candle everybody would think we are gay”

The next day, after sleeping tooooo long we drove up to Cape Trib. We stopped on the way at a nice National Park called Mossman Gorge where we went for a 2,4 km bushwalk and a swim in a f*cking cold river. Of course we met a few germans and 2 guys from our diving course. Australia is small….

Blardy cold!

The street between there and Cape Trip was awesome. Reminded me to the Great Ocean Road. You are driving along the ocean. Every few km nice beaches and beautiful sunsets

You have to cross a river full of crocodiles to get to Cape Trib. Unfortunately we didnt see any. I wanted to leave the car to take some pictures of the not existing crocs but a friendly speaker voice reminded me to please stay in my fucking car and dont move if I dont want to get eaten (like Wally).

At the Cape Trib camping ground we met our german friends again. The Camping site was only 50 meters distance to the beach and we tried to get some coconuts first by climbing a palm and than by throwing stones, sticks and old coconuts. We ended up with 2 coconuts but they were not really ripe. i ate it anyway it was a bit like chewing gum but still tasty

Funny birds on the way to Cape Trip. They have they balls hanging on the neck Someone told us that they are really dangeros. The can run damn fast and have sharp kind of clings on their feet. If they dont like you they just play surgent and do it like Hannibal Lector… (“stomach in or stomach out?”)

Hunting for Coconuts

The next day we wanted to climb the Cape Tribulation lookout. Unfortunately the way the this lookout was closed due to maintainance works…. whatever. We decided after getting a hint from a person in the tourist information (“I didn’t tell you that, ok?”) to walk along the beach and climb the cliff/stones and then try to reach the lookout by walking through the bush.

Yep…didn’t work out really. We reached the beach – easy. We reached the stones – easy. We climbed the stones – pansy. We got to the rainforest – hm… heaps of trees everywhere, nasty bushes with spikes and I shouldn’t forget the deadly snakes ans spiders of course
We didn’t see any of them (except 2) but its kind of strange to walk trhough a spider web not knowing if you’re dead 30 seconds later
That was fun.

After 1 1/2 hours of playing Mik Dundee (searching the lookout) we gave up. FUll of dirt, trees and blood (remember the nasty spikes). It wasn’t so bad, but we were still a bit disappointed that we could’t find this bloody lookout. We reached the top of the mountain though but there was no lookout.

ON the way back we had to climb around the hole cape on the rocks next to the ocean (because we crossed it in the forest).
That was another challenge and took us at least another hour. We almost died again Had to climb a 4 meter tree down etc… fucking awesome! I’m glad that I had such good rockclimbing teachers @ steph & Bryn.
In the end we survived the probably most spectacular walk to a lookout ever – It was worth it though!

Thats the actual Cape Tribulation. You can see the stones/cliffs near the water. And we climbed up to the left.

Still all good – enthusiastic rock climbing – Jochen

Me

Not that excited any more

Excited again – Yeah we did it!

Climbing back the rocks…

Jochen left our warning for the next person who wants to reach the lookout. In the top right you can see a small “map” that shows where we walked

Jochen leaving our “signature”….

…and get beaten by the sea

More beaches….

Nice shells are lying around everywhere…

Lookout over Cape Trib National Park – on the right you see the “(no-)Croc river”

After that we drove all the way down back to Cairns and even further to Mission Beach. Mission Beach – as the name says – is a beach. That’s all we could find there. We stayed for the night on a car park next to the beach.
It was the only car park that didn’t have a “NO CAMPING!!!!” sign – so we took it

After spending half the day on the internet (we booked a rafting tour for the next day on the Tully river and got free internet access) we drove down to Tully (~100 km) and stayed the night on a caravan park.

Tully camping ground

The Tully Steam Factory. It’s only there to produce clouds for the rafting team. The more clouds, the more water is in the river and the more fun is the rafting. (As a small side effect it also produces sugar)

The Rafting the next day was awesome!!
We were on the extrem team, what means we had the possibility to swim down level 3 currents and jump from 4 meter heigh rocks and stuff…. jsut awesome!
Just a few words about level 3 currents:
We jumped out of the boat before the streams and swam maybe 100 meters in the currents to get picked up again at the end. They told us: “It’s like a kind of ramp. You go down and then get pushed up again a few times. So just hold your breath and everything’s fine” – fuck… that was the first moment in my life where I really thougt that I will die. You haven’t even the chance to breath and spent most of the time under water (maybe 20 sec) trying to swim against the current to the surface – no chance. It was soooo awesome. I think I have never had so much adrenalin in my blood. Not even after/ during skydiving. I was totally flashed after that. Couldn’t move at all for a few seconds after I got back to the land…. then I did it again

Skippy also wanted to go rafting. But to prevent any holes or permanent damages we locked him in the van – poor thing.

Rafting the Tully River.

From left top to right bottom: Michael (Netherlands), Kate (Aussie), Simon (Netherlands), Aaron (Korea), Ben (Frangn), Jochen (Frangn), Peter (Netherlands).
We certainly had the best team (all the other boat were full of girls loosing there paddles all the time) and the best guide – or guidess…

The Extreme Team!!!

We drove down from Tully to Townsville on the same night and stayed on the esplanade called “The Strand” I bet it was a german who called it that. (Strand is the german word for beach)

Relaxed driving…

The Strand of Townsville

Yeah what a cool sign… @ Chri
I should have stolen it – but probably too big for the van

The next day we wanted to take a ferry to Magnetic Island, an Island just a few minutes ferry ride away from Townsville. But the ferry was 30 bucks and we just missed it and had to wait for 2 hours. So we thought “fuck it” and drove down to Airlie Beach, the connection point to Whitsunday Islands.
The way down to Airlie Beach was really cool. You drive most of the time past huge fields of sugar cane. On the left side you sometimes see the ocean, on the right side you have huge green mountains coming through the clouds. It’s hard to concentrate on driving with such a view.
They also have some funny signs up there in Queensland. One for example said “tasty bugs! Only 10$ per kg” – Hmmmm… some people say that all people that live in Queensland are crazy

Another thing thats really popular in Australia is to admire the drivers to make breaks. In Victoria you see signs like: “Make a 15 mins powernap and avoid an accident” or “Make a break – safe lifes”. In Queensland I saw an awesome one just saying “Tired drivers die!!”. I did a break after that

Unfortunately we arrived to late to book a sailing tour on the same day so we stayed for the night next to the local lagoon. The lagoon is pretty much a big swimming pool with public toilets and showers. Perfect for us.
The showers were next to a bar and a cafe. The faces of the people watching two guys in shorts having a shower at 10 pm were pretty funny

Our Home in Airlie Beach

The lagoon

Dinner for three…

The “airlie” beach.

Two days later we started a 2 days 2 nights sailing trip around the Whitsunday Islands. Just awesome (again!!)
We and 25 other guys (mostly girls) stayed on a small racing boat (called Maxi) – the second fastest in Airlie Beach called “The British Defender”. We sailed around the Whitsundays, stopped at Whitehaven beach where the sand is 99.something % silicone. I haven’t seen such white sand.
The boat was pretty small (around 25 meters long) and “downstairs” it was just one big room and 3 toilets. So everybody slept really close to each other. Except baning my head several times on Jochen’s bed, that was located 20 cm over my head I slept pretty good .
We met some crazy irish girls that gave Jochen his new nickname(s). First it was Bambi then Blondie. They couldn’t pronounce “Jochen”

Max – funny german guy

Choull it

Parts of our 4-men-crew

Karin and Chris a german couple studying medicine in Ulm.

More sunset pics…

We went to land and went to a lookout and to Whithaven beach.

?

Whitehaven beach…. awesome!

And FUCK! There is NO PHP on Whitehaven Beach!!! Damn…

Jochen down under

Last man standing

Jump

That hurts

Back on the boat

Sailing in the sunset

Straight after arriving back from the sailing trip we started to drive down to Rainbow beach to start a 3 days 2 nights tour to Fraser Island, the biggest Sand Island in the world. Sounds impressive

We stayed the night in a small town called “Town of 1770″ but we were a bit in a hurry so we couldnt really see it. On the way there (we drove at night) we saw heaps of Kangaroos beside the road and tried to steal one of the “Kangaroos next 15 km” signs… It didnt really work but we will try it again

Cruising through the bush…

In Rainbow Beach we got 2 nights free accomodation in a nice hostel called “Dingo’s” that organises 4 Wheel Drive tours to Fraser Island that we booked from Airlie Beach. We stayed the first night and got to know your team for the next 3 days. There were teams from A to E and of course we were the A-TEAM!!

From left to right: Shamos, Elena, Ivan, Catherine, Meri, Nadja, Michelle, Celine, Ronald (McDonald ), Jochen, Me

In the 4WD (4-Wheel-Drive) fitted 11 people. 3 in the front and 8 in the back.

ON the ferry – on the roof are all bags and food for 3 days

We got stuck somewhere in the bush trying to take a shortcut. Another team (lets call it Team Irish) followed us and got stuck as well

After hard pushing and pulling we got the car out and had to walk back… (once it’s out you don’t want to stop again)
Jochen, Elena and Nadja

Snack/Breakfast at Eli’s Creek

Shamos

And the most important…

Every few kilometers there is a landing place for planes and helicopters

Nadja

One of the hundret cars that got stuck in the sand and we helped to push out. Funny if 20 guys try to push and nothing happens

Indian Heads… funny cliffs.

High cliffs!

I like this picture – and now a small earthquake

And another one

We stopped for the night on one of the hundrets camping grounds along the beach. There we met Team Irish again and fuck… they really drink a lot.
Jochen, Meri and me had 2 slaps of beer (30 cans and 24 cans) plus 1 bottle of wodka for the 3 days. Team Irish (11 people) had 14 slabs of beer (14 * 30 cans), 2 slabs of Bourbon-coke and I dont know how many litres of goon (wine). And they finished everything.
Ok, we didnt do that bad. We drank all our beer on the first night and stayed sobre on the second
We played an awesome irish drinking game the whole night… no wonder that we haven’t had any beer left

If you fail… your ass hurts

Meri

The next morning

Jeep on the “road”

Jochen having breakfast

Meri and Shamos doing the dishes. There is no fluent fresh water on the island – except some lakes and rivers – so you have to do all your dishes with salt water. Doesn’t really matter because its full of sand anyway You have sand everywhere. Still now, 4 days later some of my clothes and bags are still full of sand.

One of frasers biggest attractions – an old ship wreck called Mohina (I think…)

We did a 30-45 mins bushwalk to a nice lake. Actually it wasn’t that nice. It looked and smelled green (I didn’t know before that something can smell like a color but it certainly did ) We went swimming anyway. Everything is better than beeing full of sand, salt and sweat.

More sand…

We camped near the entrance to Lake McKanzie for the other night.

At night we had a bit of wrestling in the sand with some other german guys. Jochen lost!
One of the german fellows fell on his color bone and it broke with a loud “crack”.
Dont wrestle drunk!

The picture was the next day. The guy on the right is the bonebreaker called Benny. Cool name *g*

Jochen full of pain sleeping on the beach at Lake McKanzie

Meri

Awesome Lake McKanzie

On the way back to the beach.

After arriving back from Fraser Island we tried to find a doctor in Rainbow beach. No doctors after 5 PM. We tried to reach a hospital somewhere not too far away to get an xray for Jocen. No xrays after 5 PM in 5 hospitals around Rainbow beach. The nearest hostpital was in Nabour, 3 hours drive away. 3 hours drive with a normal car. Not with a 50 years old wicked camper.
We were low on fuel when we started and wanted to fill our tank up. No fuel after 5 PM in Rainbow Beach.
The next service station was “only half an hour drive away and it opens 24 hours!”. Half an hour with a normal car. It took us probalby 1 1/2 hours to get there because I didn’t want to drive faster than 50 kmh to save fuel (the gauge showed “EEEEEMPTY!!!!!”). After getting overtaken by millions of cars and pissed of truck drivers we arrived the service station… finally. But.. .guess what…no fuel on this day on Matilda Service station. To make it short: We woke up an old lady to ask for the way and drove to 3 other service stations… all – of course – closed. In the end we reached Gympie and went to a service station. We had 1,5 liters left in our tank. Bloody fuel gauge.
After almost 6 hours drive we arrived at 12 am in Nabour at the Emergency station. It took us 5 hours to get an xray for Jochen and get a nurse who told him what the docter said.

Jochen eating Nutella bread (dinner) in the emergency room.

Nice kilt

When we finally got out all that changed was a sling around Jochen’s arm and a small piece of paper that has written something like “dont do sport for at least 6 weeks – should be fine after that” on it.

We stayed the night on a small car park next to the high way and started the next day pretty early to brisbane.
On te way there I saw a sign saying “The big pinnaple”. The guys who have read Bill Bryson will laugh I had to laugh again and set the indicator.

The big pinnaple is just a big pinnaple… thats pretty much all you can say about it There is a small cafe and a pinnaple shop next to it where you can buy small pinnaple souveniers and postcards. You can climb the pinnaple inside and get to know everyting about the procedure of growing, harvesting and producing pinnaples in Queensland

And again – there is NO PHP at the big pinnaple!!!

Sooo…another endless entry found his end.
There are still a few days missing. We went to Brisbane for one night, to Surfers Paradise and at the moment we are in Byron Bay. More about that later!
Here it’s raining like hell and the Teepee we stayed in last night got almost blown away. I was freezing my ass of the whole night in there and didn’t sleep too much.

We’re now driving down to Newcastle where we stay another night, see a friend and then drive to Sydney on Thursday morning. If the weather is ok, we are going to see the Blue Mointains.

More pics coming!

Have a great time!
Catch you later

Jochen & Ben(ny)