Australia...

Just when you begin wondering whether there’s anything more to Australia than beaches and stunning coastline, a region like Atherton Tablelands rejuvenates your spirit of adventure and somewhat restores your faith in the country. With the worry of the dodgy alternator behind us (apparently the brushes had gone – Dad, I’m sure you understand that more than me) we head inland to the elevated and wonderfully green Atherton Tablelands.

Camping at Speewah

 This area has a red volcanic soil and once past the wet tropic rainforest fringe, has a dry climate suited to tea and coffee growing.

Atherton tablelands

We paid a visit to the Mareeba coffee works – a potentially awful tourist setup that turned out to be a wierd and wonderful introduction to coffee, coffee tasting and coffee paraphernalia. Oh, and chocolate tasting aswell

Mmm chocolate....

After a couple of hours of coffee drinking we bounced our way round the rest of the tablelands, visiting numerous waterfalls, a giant Fig tree (apparently one of the most popular tourist attractions of the area) and some wildlike spotting. We managed to see a Musky Rat Kangaroo but not the elusive Lumholtz Tree Kangaroo. Ach well.

A N Other waterfall

Waterfall

Laden with photo after photo of waterfall, we aimed ourselves south and put our foot down. We had restored spirits and a schedule to keep. Plus: What’s the point of a beautiful coastline and beaches up north when you can’t swim in it for fear of stings and subsequent cardiac arrest. We needed to get south again to the surf and the sea.

Pelting down “The Bruce”  (the Bruce Highway) is not fun. Infact the best thing about it is that it makes writing the blog easy as nothing happens. The only thing to report is passing a white van similar to ours which could only manage 60 kph on a 100 kph road. Makes us feel better about Betty the rust bucket.

Quick stop off at the Capricorn Caves to do the tourist thing. Limestone formations and all that. More a safety guide than a guided tour – can’t you do anything in this country without being warned first???

Capricorn caves

We hit Moochydore on the Sunshine coast for some surfing. The waves were more than sufficient, probably 8 ft face but very choppy. Like I know what I’m talking about… There wasn’t a chance on earth I was going anywhere near them with a 9ft hunk of polyurethane under me – it’s like tying an angry thrashing crocodile to your ankle.

Nige and his 9ft clanger

Though the humidity was dropping, the temperature was begging to pick up as we headed further south. More reason to stick on the coast and search out some great beaches. We paid a visit to Coolangatta on the Gold Coast to treat ourselves to flick at the movies (The boys are back – good film) a Friday night curry and then on to a rather more sedate little place called Red Rock, where there were really only two businesses. The multi-purpose camp site/post office/general store, and the multi-purpose bowls club/bottle store/restaurant/bar. Enjoyed (another) bottle of wine on our own beach and some deserved downtime.

Nige at Red Rock

Heading onto the Pacific Highway we reached a place called Crescent Head that we had promised ourselves that we would visit after driving through it on the way up. It was a nice enough place but didn’t really live up to our expectations. It appeared that the place was popular with big flying / dive bombing beetles – enough of them to make sitting outside your van a far from pleasurable experience and to keep Fran up all night as she tries to locate the couple that manage to get past our anti-bug-infiltration measures in the van. At least we managed to enjoy some good surf at a beach round the corner, and take Betty for her first (and likely to be her only) bit of real off road in order to find the beach. She lives to tell the tale.

Fran pro boarder

Crescent Head

Guess what? We went to another beach - Hawk’s Nest. Spent more time body-boarding and chillaxing. Seemed that there was a golf tournament on as some of the entrants were staying at the campsite, it gave us a chance to experience just how opinionated and racist some of the old-school Aussies can be. Well, we left him busy telling us all how “Australia is the best country in the world – I’ve been everywhere and I’d always come back” – “Couldn’t live in England ‘cos there’s too many blacks”… “Nor France, full of Muslims”. OK then, enjoy your steak, see you later. Hopefully not.

So where was I… Oh, heading south. At this point, we turned Betty onto the Hume highway, a 110kph asphalt trunk-road between Sydney and Melbourne. Not pretty, but very effective at getting you south, quickly. The main stop en route is Canberra and we stopped at the nation’s capital to see if we could find some cultural heritage and pride. Indeed we did – the Museum of Australia in Canberra is probably one of the best I’ve been to, and we easily killed a few hours finding out about the early Aboriginal cultures and the subsequent quashing by the European settlers. Good ole Brits eh?

Anzac Parade Canberra

Founded and built in the early 20th century as a new Federal capital, Canberra isn’t a particularly picturesque place, but there is certainly enough there to make it a worthy visit despite it being in the middle of nowhere. The Anzac Parade is particularly impressive and the geometric arrangement of the parade, the war memorials and the parliament buildings makes for some impressive vistas. We spent the evening in Kingston – a nice little suburb of Canberra where you can try and escape the heat with a bottle of white wine in a little bar on the side streets.

Though we managed to escape the heat in Canberra, we drove straight into the heat as we head towards Melbourne. Albury greeted us with a 40 degree heat! Apparently this is the hottest heat wave that the region has seen for around 100 years. That with the drought conditions has left the landscape parched and uninviting. There was only one thing for it. Go to the air conditioned cinema and watch the longest film you can find on the schedule. This happened to be the hollywood blockbuster “2012″. The most entertaining load of American twaddle I’ve seen for a while. The long film meant large popcorn however, which was good

Surviving the day, we left the blistering heat of regional Victoria and set our sights on the coast – Melbourne. I can already feel the breeze…

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