Of mangrove mud crabs and big city bar tabs, the Mighty Australian Road Trip – Part 2

All, Destinations

Part 2: Cairns – Sydney

(see also Part 1: Darwin – Cairns)

The East Coast. Australia’s string of endless backpacker hotspots, and we find ourselves standing right at the northern end of it, in Port Douglas. There are an incredible amount of things to do and see, so take this as a starting point.

We’ve spent the last 2 weeks driving through Australia’s Red Centre with our trusty Mighty Camper Rhino, filming for THL. 2000km from Northern croc-crazy town Darwin to the heart of the continent at Uluru we backtracked 1000km up the Stuart Highway where we took the only right turn in days and cut 2000km across Western Queensland. We hit the Pacific Ocean, could go no further East, and now saw the windy ribbon of the aptly named Bruce Highway disappear into the horizon.

Leg 3: Cairns to Brisbane

Delving straight into some local aboriginal culture, Juan Walker took us on a bush tucker walk through the mangrove forests, low tide beaches and to a spectacular swimming rock pool in Mossman Gorge. “I’ve come here since I was a kid. These leaves are great for insect bites. These ants taste of sherbet”. We try them, and to our delight, they do. We have some more.

“Oh, look, a mudcrab! Let’s catch it, it’s tasty.” Down goes the bamboo spear narrowly missing his feet and with one stab Juan pulls an enormous buck out of the sea (he’s done this before!). Cooking it up with incredible, chorizo-tasting mussels and snails we collected later, we find out he’s spot on. Tasty doesn’t even start to describe this mouthwatering meal.

Cairns is our next stop, and with its established backpacker culture we feel right at home as we join the Tusa team on a scuba diving trip on the infamous Great Barrier Reef. Marveling at an array of multi coloured fish, turtles and coral was perfectly topped off with an evening’s BBQ at Holloways Beach (just south of Yorkeys Knob. Yep, Knob.) with a bunch of new camper friends. Oh, the carefree life.

About 3 hours drive south of Cairns, the small sugar cane town of Tully has laid its mark on the map by erecting a giant, golden, 8m high gumboot, frog and all, to mark the record rainfall for Tully in 1950. Climb to the top using the inbuilt spiral staircase, enjoy the view of the sugar cane refinery and count yourself lucky to have witnessed the marvel of one of Australia’s famous ‘Big Things’. We did – it was special.

Also in Tully, locals Caroline and Doug took us on a Kayaking trip down Bulgan Creek which was an incredibly enjoyable way to find out all about the local indigenous culture and their connection to the region’s stunning jungle environment and endangered crazy animal Cassowary. Don’t know what it is? Read this.

Further down the Bruce highway we came face to face with these incredible creatures at the Billabong Sanctuary in Townsville whilst furry wild kangaroos and wallabies crowded around us waiting to be hand fed. A short ferry ride over to stunningly beautiful Magnetic Island meant we got to stay at the only van camping ground on the island – Koala Village. And it gets even better as Koala Village is one of the very few places in Australia you can personally hug a real live fluffy Koala – if you promise to pretend to be a tree.

Thanks to the Curlews keeping us up all night with their spooky wailing cries, we woke bleary eyed to a gorgeous sunrise and headed off without breakfast on the next stretch of Bruce. A big adventure lay ahead as the very next morning, we boarded the Derwent Hunter, a 1946 Tasmanian Tall Ship, to sail, snorkel and film the passengers and awesome crew in the famous Whitsundays.

Turtle spotting, lounging on coral cays and jumping off deck, we soaked up as much water as we could, as we were also preparing for our next stop, which was to be entirely different.

In the heart of the Kroombit Tops National Park, about 4 hours drive inland from Rockhampton, we left the beach, big roads and bustle behind to get deep into Queensland’s cattle territory. Owned and run by wonderful couple Alan and Carol with their (grown up) children Brent, Kerry and son-in-law Andrew, the functioning cattle station welcomes campers, backpackers, families and those in desperate need of an anti-rat-race holiday. We helped muster Queensland’s cutes… we mean WILDEST goats, learned to lasso, shoot and square dance and took a wonderful horseback ride around the stunningly beautiful countryside.

With meals cooked over an open fire and billy tea on demand all day we could have easily stayed here longer, but this production is on a tight schedule so we begrudgingly said our goodbyes and headed for Brisbane. Who would have thought a place could have such a great impact after such a short amount of time? We’ll be back.

Brisbane – our first big city! We couldn’t believe our eyes as we drove through the towering skyscrapers, public transport network and people in suits everywhere. People with mortgages, dental plans and proper jobs. We certainly hadn’t seen this since Jakarta, and that was a very different type of metropolis.

Even more surprising than the forgotten-but-familiar city-feel was how close everything was to a huge amount of outdoor activities, from abseiling down Kangaroo Point cliffs in the heart of the business district to kayaking past the skyscrapers and under Story Bridge with our guide James.

Moreton Island, the world’s third biggest sand island, is also only an hour away by boat. Whilst the clockwork-run Tangalooma resort may not be everyone’s cup of tea, they provide great facilities and access to 6 minute helicopter rides and sand boarding on the 200m high sand dunes that are comparable in size to dunes in Iran. And if that wasn’t thrilling enough, you could snorkel around a row of shipwrecks and hand-feed wild dolphins in a thunderstorm. Yes, it was that spectacular.

Leg 4: Brisbane to Sydney

Get your fake tan on, then wash it off. Get your tie die pants on. Then get your pants off completely and moon someone. Basically, do the Gold Coast-Byron-Spot X Surf Camp dance.

So close yet so culturally different and all three completely obsessed with surfing, we swam through the haze of ‘it’ girls, veneers and six packs to hippy heaven and beyond to the east coast’s quintessential surfers dream. The Gold Coast welcomed us with Miami-style shiny high-rise flats and Ibiza style nightlife along an endless beach where we shot for an afternoon and fuelled up on fish & chips whilst fending off a bunch of rogue ibis.

The next day brought the polar opposite in the place everyone seems to get stuck nowadays. We were in hippy enclave Byron Bay, where we couldn’t move without stumbling over either an organic, fairtrade, profit-share hemp café or a group of tousle-haired, guitar strumming fisherman-pant sporting 55-year-old ex-university lecturers and fresh-faced backpackers. We soaked up the incredible views from Byron’s Lighthouse (interestingly mainland Australia’s most Eastern point) as hump back whales cruised past slapping their pectoral fins. No wonder people do yoga here at sunrise.

Spot X, or Arrawarra as outnumbered non-Mojo-ites call it, brought us only 1 day’s drive from our final destination Sydney. Set on a creek mouth, the camp is anything an aspiring or laid back surfer could wish for. Empty mile-long beach, the availability of lessons for those who want to learn from scratch or improve, social dorm accommodation and at least 3 parties a week (if you’re good at inspiring them).

And then it hit us – in a couple of days we would arrive. At the end of not only the Mighty Road Trip, but our entire overland Epic Journey from London to Sydney. As we swung by Port Stephens for some somewhat rushed sand dune quad biking and later that day drove up the windy roads to the Blue Mountains, we found ourselves feeling both excited and daunted by the prospect of arriving and completing such an immense project.

Sunrise at Echo Point overlooking the gorge and Three Sisters rock formation made us inhale deeply, and contemplate the 40,000km of the surface of this earth that we’d covered over the last 9 months. Walking around Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Opera House with Kalkani and Margret hearing all about the aboriginal heritage in the area added yet another layer to the scene we’d seen on thousands of post cards.

We were finally here. It was an incredible ending to an incredible journey. To top it off, Saxon jumped out of a perfectly good plane on his first ever skydive. But it’s not over yet. Keep your eyes peeled for our final Epic Journey post, coming soon. Off to Surry Hills, time for a well deserved beer.

Leg 2: Cairns to Brisbane

Leg 3: Brisbane to Sydney

Of Open Roads and Souvenir Cane Toads: The Mighty Australian Road Trip – Part 1

All, Destinations

Part 1: Darwin – Cairns

40000km into the Epic Journey and we are looking at our last of 19 countries as its enormous expanse hits the horizon and continues for thousands of miles beyond. We have made it to Australia. And if we weren’t excited enough already, we are also admiring the silhouette of our newest travel buddy as he stands against the sunrise. Let us introduce Rhino, our Mighty Campervan, who we will be shooting, driving, cooking and sleeping in for the next month all in a mission to capture Australia’s incredible destinations in a suite of seven films for THL. Filled with incredible destinations, awesome people and whacky animals, Australia has some of the world’s most unique experiences to offer. So without further ado, let’s jump right in.

Leg 1: Darwin to Alice Springs

To say that the Mighty Australian Road Trip started with a bang would be an understatement. Suspended in mid water, with only a thin piece of Perspex between herself and a cold-blooded killing machine, a brave backpacker stares transfixed. Face to face with Chopper, a 6 meter long, human-eating Salt Water Crocodile, she hardly manages to suppress the screams as Chopper snaps his enormous jaws tearing apart his lunch just centimetres from where she’s floating, adding some intimidating scratch marks to the plastic human cage.

This is Crocosaurus Cove, slap bang in the centre of Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory, where the brave and reckless enjoy the ultimate inner-city thrill ride by getting close and personal with Northern Australia’s apex predator. Crocosaurus Cove also gave spectators a unique opportunity to have a really good long look at a few really massive crocs, from above and below thanks to huge viewing windows in the sides of the pools, as well as marvelling at how streamline these enormous beasts move through the water, and how big their tails are (!).

If, just like our Rat, you can’t quite believe that these are real live animals, not some incredibly intricate animatronics masterpiece from the latest Godzilla blockbuster, all you need to do is head out about 2 hours from town and meet up with Morgan and Harry Bowman, who were recently published in the NT News as being two of the 50 most interesting people in the state.

The true blue local pair run daily cruises on Adelaide River, ferrying unsuspecting groups out on a small boat with a chest high wire fence around it just to have real life wild crocs spectacularly jump all the way out of the water to grab chunks of meat dangled by Morgan. Ranging from 1.5 meter nipper Bullet, who did his name proud, to 5.5 meter three legged, shark eating celebrity croc Brutus, the river is also home to stunning bird life, which we learned all about whilst Morgan fed a wild kite and kept everyone safe and happy.

We headed on to Lichfield national park with its beautiful waterfalls and impressive termite mounds, which form eerie fields reminiscent of endless grave yards, especially when you see the towering structures clothed with old t-shirts and hats, peaking through the bush at you like patiently watching spirits. In the US, the hills may have eyes, here it’s the termite mounds who are definitely seeing what you’re up to.

An altogether different magical experience awaited us early one morning at Mataranka. Ask a kid to draw a perfect fairy pool in the middle of the outback, and this is the place we arrived at before sunrise to swim in the crystal clear, hot, calmly steaming, thermal pool of Bitter Springs. Another 1000km and 8 hours down the road, we captured Devil’s Marbles at sunset – huge, round, ochre-red geographical rock formations bathed in golden light, and just 10 minutes drive from Wycliffe Well, Australia’s official UFO capital. All those abduction newspaper clippings can’t be made up…

Our final stretch took us to the huge aboriginal statues of a man and a woman, child and goanna at Aileron, Alice Springs and world famous Uluru, or Ayres Rock if you don’t know the original Aboriginal name for this incredible place at the centre of Australia. Learning some of the stories surrounding the rock on the Mala walk along the base of Uluru put this astounding geographical formation into historical, cultural and spiritual context which added hugely to our appreciation of the best known icon of the Red Centre.

Leg 2: Uluru to Cairns

With no trip to film per se, Rat, Dragon and Rhino re-traced our steps 1000km through the desert along the Stuart Highway to Three Ways, where a lonely roadhouse with great burgers marked the only westward turn off from an otherwise empty north-south running strip of tarmac. Darwin to Alice is a relatively peaceful drive with little traffic, but we were nevertheless greeted with waves by fellow campers and road trains at least 5 times a day. The turn-off at Three Ways marked the beginning of a real desolate stretch of road, and spectacular scenery to accompany us.

Our first stop was Camooweal on the Queensland boarder, which proudly proclaimed to be 231m above sea level with a population of 310 on a painted plaque outside the town perimeters. The road house that hosted us for the night confirmed this was on a good day, usually there are around 170 fixed residents. Heading further west we followed instructions from Camooweal’s petrol station and set our clocks 1 hour and 5 years forward, as we were now in Queensland.

Through wide open prairies and hilly mine country we arrived in Julia Creek, staying at what was possibly Australia’s friendliest campsite in what is definitely Australia’s friendliest outback town. Just down the road in Richmond, we marvelled at the local collection of dinosaur fossils including an incredibly well preserved Kronosaurus Queenslandicus, one of the largest marine reptiles in the world and with 30cm teeth a definite contender for Australia’s most crazy animal list.

And then, after 5000km of driving from Australia’s most northern city, through the heart of the Red Centre outback and west Queensland’s vast prairies and mining landscapes, our journey westwards comes to an end as we hit the immensity of the big blue Pacific Ocean.

We have seen some incredible places already, and were only half way! Keep your eyes peeled for Part 2 of the great Mighty Road Trip adventure. In the words of Monty Python: “Australia, Australia, Australia. We love you. Amen.”

The Mighty Road Trip Hero

Leg 1: Darwin to Alice Springs