Back to Cairns We departed Port Douglas at 0800 driving towards Cairns.  After filling up near our destination, Kim dropped me and our luggage off near our accommodation at 0900 while he returned the wreck which we had rented. In Cairns, we’re booked for three nights at Global Backpackers in a private ensuite room.  With […]

Above:  Big crystal geode At Atherton’s Crystal Caves for AUD8380. Spending money on things like this does not facilitate my lifestyle of world travel.  Mine is one of non-attachment to objects like these! At Port Douglas, we’re near the northern limit of our rental car permitted travel zone.  With nothing better to do, we thought […]

Above:  Freeform pool at our Port Douglas accommodation, by night. Mossman Gorge After breakfast we headed out in our car, first to Four Mile Beach around the corner from our accommodation.  The sandy beach was lovely but again, the water was stirred up with sand. Text continues after this gallery.     We continued to […]

Above:  Freeform pool set amongst concrete blocks and old trees at our Port Douglas accommodation. Involuntary Extension We begin the involuntary extension of our Queensland stay today (or arguably yesterday), with return to New Zealand impossible until further notice due to Covid-19 restrictions. The additional stay is somewhat welcome as we can have a relaxing […]

Above:  2393 km of driving in ten days. Finishing the road trip Today we drive up to Cairns where we finish our road trip.  Our original perfect plan had been to fly out midday but that flight was cancelled possibly due to poor loads.  The second version of the plan had us flying out last […]

We have the day free to explore the surrounding areas.  Our first idea had been to go to Paronella Park, a fairy-tale castle built by a Spanish immigrant.  But at AUD50 for the visit, we thought we’d be wasting money on things we have seen before. Instead, we took a late morning drive from our […]

Above:  Kurrimine Beach. Continuing north We left Airlie Beach about 0810 for Kurrimine Beach.  We had wanted to overnight at Mission Beach as a substitute for Townsville which was now in lockdown due to Covid-19.  But due to accommodation reasons, we ended up booking for Kurrimine. The driving time was meant to be 6h.  The […]

Bad start So, we had decided against an excursion out to sea yesterday because the forecast wasn’t good enough in terms of temperature, sun and wind.  But we instead committed to a trip for today as the forecast looked better. We woke to on-and-off rain and 100% cloud cover, seemingly far worse than yesterday’s weather.  […]