digging around

We moved quickly down the east coast, through Grafton, Nambucca Heads, Taree and into Sydney.  We camped at Narambeen on the northern beaches – a part of Sydney that I hadn’t been to before and it was equally as beautiful as other parts.  We went into the city to go up Centrepoint Tower (tick).  I think Sydney is my favourite Australian city.  But I don’t think I could stay there too long.  It appeals to my shadow side.  I start envisaging myself starved skinny on a diet subsisting of champagne and black coffee,  racing around in a whirl of work and social activity, wearing stylish clothes and shoes with heels.  As it happens, I suddenly got the giggles when I realised that my current life was so *far* from my Sydney fantasy.  I was there with the only two children in the CBD, and my husband, who I suddenly noticed was channelling Crocodile Dundee in an oilskin hat and khaki outfit, straight off the Gibb River Road.  He was even looking up (in wonderment) trying to spot the Centrepoint Tower.  Ha!  No dark suited squire in sight.

Got caught in a *traffic jam* in Byron Bay – not the beautiful laid back experience I had anticipated – so we continued on to Lennox Head, which was.  Just before we left, we decided to have a quick dip in the tea tree lake.  This was lovely…. but unfortunately on return to the car, P realised that he had been swimming with the car immobiliser in his pocket.  Which then didn’t work.  AND, we subsequently realised, we’d left the spare keys in Brisbane.  We called the RAC (which I had joined in a last minute rush before we went through the Kimberley – on the off chance that we might break down at Mitchell Falls) and while we were waiting P broke into the car with a coat hanger.  The alarm was blaring – but fortunately it was only lights, no sound, as P had previously disconnected the sound, as it was *really* loud and shamelessly beeped everytime you opened and locked the car – in loud camping spots in the dead of night.

Anyway, the point of these details is to say that the RAC arrived in due course and  I can report that true to form, the RAC man was miffed that he had been called out.  Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon?  Presumably all RAC men are aware that their job description requires them to drive out to people whose cars have broken down.  But regardless, they are all, without fail, miffed that someone actually *has* broken down and called on their services.  In particular, the last thing they want to discuss is the sequence of events that led to the problem.  They’d rather remain silent and scornful as they rescue you from your own, obvious, ineptitude.

After much tinkering, he announced that we required an auto-electrician, and called for a tow truck.  After he left, we considered all our unpalatable options….. unpack everything and put the tent back up?  Go into Ballina and hope the car was fixed before nightfall?  Try the immobiliser again…. and YES  it worked!  it must have dried out – yay, yay, yay.  Off we went, and tried not to turn the car off until we reached camp.  Disgusting snack food was consumed the whole way that day.

Stayed in a friend’s family holiday house….. which we also visited six years ago.  Original holiday house built by her Grandad, and the family don’t change *anything* – down to the 1989 copy of Readers Digest that I read last time I was there!  A real holiday.  Also helped by the happy circumstance that you can walk everywhere from here, so we didn’t have to get in the car for three whole days.  Bliss.  I am further inspired to stay out of the car as much as possible on our return.  Biking, here we come.

Sunset at 1770

We camped at 1770, and then passed through Bundaberg on our way south.  I lived a (seedy) life in Bundaberg 20 years ago, and it was like reminiscing about someone else’s life.  The main street where I went up and down looking for work and found three jobs (tomato picker, pizza delivery driver and potential sales assistant at radio rental).  When I regrouped with my boyfriend, he had spent the ‘job hunting time’ playing drums at the music shop.  (He did deign to come tomato-picking on *some* days.)    The convenience store, in front of which my boyfriend was arrested.  The salvos where I had to go for food stamps.   The pawn shop where we hocked our leather jackets and my jewellery.  The pub where we used to play pool in the sports bar (there was money for beer).  The police station where he spent the night in the lock up and on another occasion I went to get directions for the women’s refuge (as he had slapped my face and I wasn’t going to stand for that!  I righteously spent the night at the refuge amongst the poor *real* battered women, and then slunk out the next day, telling the resigned refuge workers that I was going back to him “because he wouldn’t do it again” – in his defence he didn’t.) 

In case you think I’m regretful, I should tell you I am laughing out loud as I type this.  Ha!  What a complete disaster it was, but I wouldn’t change it.  One regret is that at a later time I sold the panel van that we lived in.  I loved that car.

Camped at the Platypus Bush Camp, where we actually got to see platypus in the wild. 

I just had to check the plural of platypus, and you can have platypus, or platypuses, platypi occurs but is etymologically incorrect, and platypodes, while technically correct, is even rarer than octopodes (octopi).

This information was provided in very long list of english plural forms which made me wish that I had never heard of home education.  I mean, I think “English” is my best subject, and I have no knowledge of it at all.

Hydeaway Bay

Arriving here, I was determined to go on some sort of cruise around the islands.  Predictably, this was “not P’s bag.”  He had a hot tip on a beautiful beach about an hour out of Airlie Beach – Hydeaway Bay – and we camped there for two nights, which was very beautiful.  However, this did not satisfy my desire to actually see some of the islands.  My (budget-blowing) logic was:  we’re already 40 – are we really coming back here on a package holiday costing $5000+?   No, so therefore I go now or never.  I’m going now.  Given the option of staying home with the kids for 10 hours or participating in a family cruise, P chose the cruise.

So I am here to report that P was actually right, and don’t bother to go to Whitsunday resorts (with the possible exception of qualia @ $6000 a night).  It must be because they are old, so they have the double whammy of being old and tired, and being unsympathetic to the environment as they were built before the concept of an “eco-tourism” asthetic.  For example, on Daydream Island, we wandered around in stunned silence, before P announced “It looks like Beatty Park.”  Me:  “Yes!  I was just thinking it’s like a 1960’s office block!”  Hamilton Island actually has high rises.  Of course the islands themselves are lovely, so the recommendation would be camping on an island that *doesn’t* have a resort, or sailing.

Our vessal awaits

Spaniard emigrates to Australia in the 1930s, where he makes a fortune buying and selling cane farms.   He then realises his dream by building a castle near a waterfall.  Subsequently mother nature has ravaged it somewhat, with floods, cyclones and fires.  It must be the only “castle ruin” in Australia.  Billed as a “not to be missed” attraction, with promotional material suggesting that it is almost a religious shrine, it struck me as somewhat odd.  I think mainly it seemed a clash of aesthetics.  A mediterranean design in a tropical setting. 

Dunk Island

Three nights here in yet another Queensland paradise.  I was able to talk P into a day trip to Dunk Island, where his worst fears were realised.  Vacuous beach-dwellers!  Water Sports! 

love that blue

Queensland Main Roads - variations on a theme

So named by Lieutenant Cook, as this was where his troubles started.  But really it’s “Paradise Found”.

Two nights camped tucked into the rainforest with the perfect beach 25m away.  Boys collecting coconuts and building sandcastles.

I couldn’t quite figure out why we were leaving, but it’s like a compulsion – onward ever onward.

J on gate duty