Spent an entire day in the zoo: crocs, cassowaries, koalas, wombats and Ruben did really spot a Komodo dragon this time (behind bars)! We thought the lizards had escaped from their cages but the staff said they were just wild ones running about!
That same day we found a beautiful camping spot on Noosa North Shore, just North of the Sunshine Coast, where we camped almost directly on the most secluded, wild beach. Kangaroos, Lorikeets and cockatoos were there to greet us in the morning. The kids rode their bikes along the beach and I went for my morning stroll looking for shells, coffee cup in hand. We stayed 2 nights but weather turned bad, so Jeje went on a mad cooking spree and made crepes and a yoghurt cake in the whale.
One of the highlights was a rainbow coloured lorikeet perching on Ruben's forearm.
France was electing a new president which we followed from afar, watching the debate between Macron and Le Pen at 6am... when we asked the kids who they'd vote for they both said "the man" in unison!
Fraser Island was too expensive so we settled for a sandy beach campsite just South
called Rainbow Beach, because of it's coloured sand dunes. Jeje's hidden desire to have a 4WD forced him to actually believe he was driving one and he headed off into the clearly indicated 4WD campsite with SANDY pitches and inevitably got stuck in the sand! But nothing stops a Jeje in action and he soon had the whale out of the sand again (although this event did calm him down a bit and avoided future possible sand sticking incidents)...
The fact that there was not that much going on past Fraser Island and the week of bad weather we were about to witness led us to drive about 700 kms further North towards Townsville. Our next stop was Magnetic island. We drove straight to the ferry port, where luck would have it, the ferry was leaving in exactly 7 minutes time!
It was worth the extra budget we splashed out to take the whale out there and camp. Secluded beaches, headland walks with beautiful views, wild koalas, a great little backpacker campsite, rock wallabies...there were even 2 possums which came right up close to get food while everyone was cooking in the camp kitchen in the evening. Funny coincidence: as I was stirring my potatoes in the kitchen one night, I noticed that a girl was taking her food bag out of the fridge and on the label I spotted her name: Hester!! She was from North London and we had a good chat. It was funny saying "goodnight Hester" to somebody else. I haven't met anyone called Hester since I was 18! Anyway, an event for us Hesters but nobody else seemed that interested!
We baptized a bird in this campsite to be called the "1,2,3 soleil" bird. It's actually a night curlew, but every time it walks it takes about 2 or 3 cautious, quick steps before stopping dead still as if to say "you didn't see me move, I didn't move a muscle!". Very funny to watch.
On the 3rd day on the island we went off to explore a hard to access beach, except this time we didn't get stuck in the sand, but nearly lost the kids to a hammer head shark! Let me explain: Jeje was in the whale making lunch and the kids had found somebody's paddle boat, which they were playing in just off the beach. I heard some shouting and then a fisherman came running up the beach frantically throwing his line into the water. When I looked out to the water, I made out 2 fins in the water, moving in Alana and Ruben's direction. One was a large fin moving steadily and straight and the other, slightly smaller behind it moving from side to side. It was then I realized it was the same bloody fish! Huge it was! At least 2.5m long. I shouted to the kids to get out of the water and went to talk to the fisherman. He had just witnessed 2 hammerhead sharks killing something in the water, as he had seen a large pool of blood emerging to the surface and the sharks energetically jumping around on a fervent killing spree. When I thought about how I was considering going for a swim in there and how Alana and Ruben were close to the beach, but could have easily drifted a bit further out, I realized how stupid I had been. No more risks were taken from then on!
The further North you get, the more dangerous swimming becomes. There are special netted zones you have to swim within where you are few from marine stingers (deadly jellyfish), crocs and sharks!
As we were driving off the ferry, the guard gave us a tip off to go and stay at Big Crystal Creek....so we did. It turned out to be the best campsite we went to.
The National Park campsites are our favourite ones as they are remote, you can often have a fire there, and they are free. Well you are supposed to pay but there is no guardian and when it is low season, the rangers don't seem to check, as long as you don't stay more than one or two nights. Big Crystal Creek lived up to its name. There was a direct access to a crystal clear river where you can jump in off the rocks and see fish and tortoises/small turtles and even eels swimming around. It was Sunday and there was a small group of lads drinking beer and laughing. They told us one of them had lost his silicone earring in the bottom of the creek so we all put on our goggles and started looking for it. Jeje found it after about 30 minutes and earned one of their beers. About 5 minutes later, he lost it again! And Jeje found it again! A laugh was had by all and Jeje's earned another beer. This could have gone on all day, had it not been for the fact that they ran out of beer and went home!
2kms up the road was a sign saying "Rockslides" which was intriguing to say the least. Wow! We got there at about 8:30 the next morning in the bright sunshine and we're the only people there. It was a Monday morning, and I remember thinking how lucky I was to be there and not sitting in front of a computer in an office! There were large slippery rocks with waterfalls where you could slide down and fall into the pool below. They were small enough for the kids to have a go too, so everyone had fun. Believe it or not, we had a schedule to stick to so we couldn't stay there but we would have liked to...little did we know, we were to return about 2 weeks later, on our way back down to Brisbane to take the whale back.
We left the campsite and stopped off at an amazing ice cream shop called Frosty Mango, where not only did we eat some great ice cream (I had ginger flavor), but we also bought the largest pineapple I had ever seen for 3€ and a strange looking fruit called a canistel, which we later found out was not the kind of fruit you put in a fruit salad! Beurrrrkk!! Yuk!
The next adventure was the next day, when we were looking for another NP campsite and followed a dirt track for about 15kms, when we realized the GPS had led us up the garden path and in fact it was on the other side of the river, along another dirt track for about 15 kms. It was getting late so we had to decide what to do. It is in these stressful moments when the kids play up the most and make it all just a bit unbearable. Until you get to the campsite and then you spend the best evening ever singing and dancing around a huge bonfire in the middle of nowhere under the stars!
We were getting closer every day to our final destination up the East Coast and the memories were flooding back, especially when we got to Mission Beach and found the same little unchanged campsite on the beach at Bingil Bay, where 11 years ago we had met a couple called Becky and Michel, who have become our much loved friends and in whose garden near Cairns I spent 3 weeks on my own in Green Pea when Jeje went back to France to go to his best friend's wedding.
This time we met another extraordinary couple, Glen (from South Africa) and Yvonne (from Oldham), travelling with their children. They are nomads and they live in 2 tiny little dome tents hardly big enough for one person each, except they live in them with their 3 children! From time to time they pick fruit or busk to get some money to rent a car to get around. They move from place to place, in Australia or Asia or elsewhere. Their children are all home schooled. They have just heard of some land they can stay on in Costa Rica where they will now try to move to "for a while"...It is a choice of a way of life so different to anything we can imagine and so far removed from our commercial society. Big respect! This is indeed where hippie Australia comes alive.
When we got there it was chucking it down with rain and it poured all night, so we decided again to head North in search of the sunshine we remembered so well. Our next stop was Cairns and a very emotional surprise was in store...