Leg 1 - Cairns to Mission Beach
We arrived at Britz depot in Cairns at bang on 10:00, however, so had a large number of other people looking to relocate campers. We had a wait of two hours before we actually got our hands on the keys to the camper and could start our journey. We had ended up with a four berth Toyota Hiace Campervan, which was easily the largest vehicle Nicola or I had ever driven; my car history being a 1litre Nissan Micra and a 1.6litre Peugeot 106 and Nicola’s a Vauxhall Tigra and a Mazda 3…babies in comparison to the campervan we had been given. Instead of towering over our vehicles, we were now having to pull ourselves up and into the front compartment! We were not given much of an introduction to campervan driving, the exchange literally consisted of the lady given us the keys and saying enjoy. I did make sure they noted down the huge scratches alongside one side of the campervan as if the vehicle is damaged you lose a $1000 bond, which we decided to insure at a cost of $64 to reduce the liability to $100 – I’ve never been in a crash but I wasn’t willing to bet $1000 that I would still remain crash free after four days of campervaning across Queensland.
I opted to drive first, and it took a little getting used to the size of the vehicle but after a few minutes I found it pretty easy and we were on our way. The campervan is an automatic (also the first automatic I have driven) which made things a little easier as I didn’t have to mess around getting used to the clutch. Our route towards Brisbane was fairly straight forward…1700km along the Bruce Highway; I kid you not, it’s actually called the Bruce Highway.
Upon nearing Mission Beach we saw a sign informing us we were in the Cassowary Region of Queensland. A Cassowary is a big flightless bird, like an emu but blue (that’s not a joke btw, they are actually blue skinned). We were lucky enough to see a Cassowary running at the side of the road; well, Nicola spotted it and I spun my head to see it forgetting I was driving for a moment. Neither car nor bird were injured in my attempt to see the Cassowary and after a few minutes crawling along taking pictures of the classic Australian wildlife signs warning us of “Cassowaries for the next 5km” and so on we arrived in Mission Beach.
The original plan was for me to do a skydive at Mission Beach. However, the skydive company didn’t return my email so that was on the back burner and I’ll do the skydive later, at another location. Mission Beach was just one road with a number of shops and holiday cabins but it is a stunning location. The beach was flat and stretched for miles, the sand was fine and nearly white, the sea was a lovely blue - but due to stingers you couldn’t go in the sea other than in a netted off area - and a number of rainforest covered islands bobbed on the horizon. We couldn’t stay long unfortunately, so we headed back to the campervan and had a crack at cooking our dinner for the first time using the on board facilities. You’ll be relieved to hear it went smoothly, no burnt off eyebrows when lighting the stove and no burnt food. After our lunch Nicola took the wheel and began the rest of our journey south.
We arranged through a website called standbyrelocs a campervan hire for four days (well, really three full days) at a cost of $5 a day. The premise behind standbyrelocs is that a campervan is required in City A on a certain date, but the campervan is in City B and needs to be driven to City A by that date. Due to the solar eclipse in Cairns there were a million campers kicking around the area, all of which had to be driven to cities across Australia and we opted to drive basically the length of Queensland from Cairns to Brisbane; a whopping journey totalling over 1700km. As Britz (the hire company) need the campervan in Brisbane and we are in essence doing them a favour in driving it there, we only have to pay $5 per day as opposed to around $50. We also get a fuel allowance of $250; which I’m sure will come in handy. The only catch is the time scale; from 10:00 on 21 November to 15:00 on 24 November to drive over 1700km.
We arrived at Britz depot in Cairns at bang on 10:00, however, so had a large number of other people looking to relocate campers. We had a wait of two hours before we actually got our hands on the keys to the camper and could start our journey. We had ended up with a four berth Toyota Hiace Campervan, which was easily the largest vehicle Nicola or I had ever driven; my car history being a 1litre Nissan Micra and a 1.6litre Peugeot 106 and Nicola’s a Vauxhall Tigra and a Mazda 3…babies in comparison to the campervan we had been given. Instead of towering over our vehicles, we were now having to pull ourselves up and into the front compartment! We were not given much of an introduction to campervan driving, the exchange literally consisted of the lady given us the keys and saying enjoy. I did make sure they noted down the huge scratches alongside one side of the campervan as if the vehicle is damaged you lose a $1000 bond, which we decided to insure at a cost of $64 to reduce the liability to $100 – I’ve never been in a crash but I wasn’t willing to bet $1000 that I would still remain crash free after four days of campervaning across Queensland.
I opted to drive first, and it took a little getting used to the size of the vehicle but after a few minutes I found it pretty easy and we were on our way. The campervan is an automatic (also the first automatic I have driven) which made things a little easier as I didn’t have to mess around getting used to the clutch. Our route towards Brisbane was fairly straight forward…1700km along the Bruce Highway; I kid you not, it’s actually called the Bruce Highway.
But to call the Bruce Highway a Highway, is a little unfair to motorways, freeways and highways in other countries. Almost the entire journey from Cairns to Bowen was along a two lane road, and two lanes as in one lane heading south and one lane heading north. Nicola had cleverly tore several pages containing maps out of a magazine we had rented from the campsite we stayed at in Cairns (ooops, sorry) so we had an idea of towns we’d pass through on our way. To call the places we passed through towns would be unfair to towns in the UK. As I understood it, in order to have a dot on a map (i.e. a round circle with a town name on an atlas) the town must be of a certain size. Some of the towns (or in fact nearly all of the towns) we passed through started and ended before we could finish saying the name of the place. Some were so small that you couldn’t even call them “blink-and-you’ll-miss-them towns”. It appears to be considered a town worthy of a place on a map, a “town” in Australia (or maybe just Queensland) needs to have a hotel and a shop, preferably next to each other and at least two residential houses. Some towns didn’t even have a road, they just existed along the Bruce Highway.
Introduction over, back to the driving. We left Cairns at around 12:00 and drove approximately two hours to Mission Beach, our first stop. The drive to Mission Beach was picturesque (as Australia has that habit of being), taking us through farm lands and tropical mountain-scapes reminiscent of Thailand. It was a fairly straightforward drive, the traffic was minimal and aside from road works (which we would soon become very much accustomed to) there were no real delays. We cranked the air conditioning on full, turned on some music and cruised at a leisurely 80kmph. We would have liked to have driven faster but, despite being a huge landmass, the wise legislators in Australia decided to impose very civil and leisurely speed limits on it’s roads; so, for the majority of the journey from Cairns to Mission Beach we cruised along and didn’t get very far very quickly. We also soon tired of Australian radio for a number of reasons: one, the signal was appalling; two, most of the stations were talk radio; and finally, Australian talk radio is painfully dull and as funny as sitting in a pile of dog sh*t.
Upon nearing Mission Beach we saw a sign informing us we were in the Cassowary Region of Queensland. A Cassowary is a big flightless bird, like an emu but blue (that’s not a joke btw, they are actually blue skinned). We were lucky enough to see a Cassowary running at the side of the road; well, Nicola spotted it and I spun my head to see it forgetting I was driving for a moment. Neither car nor bird were injured in my attempt to see the Cassowary and after a few minutes crawling along taking pictures of the classic Australian wildlife signs warning us of “Cassowaries for the next 5km” and so on we arrived in Mission Beach.
The original plan was for me to do a skydive at Mission Beach. However, the skydive company didn’t return my email so that was on the back burner and I’ll do the skydive later, at another location. Mission Beach was just one road with a number of shops and holiday cabins but it is a stunning location. The beach was flat and stretched for miles, the sand was fine and nearly white, the sea was a lovely blue - but due to stingers you couldn’t go in the sea other than in a netted off area - and a number of rainforest covered islands bobbed on the horizon. We couldn’t stay long unfortunately, so we headed back to the campervan and had a crack at cooking our dinner for the first time using the on board facilities. You’ll be relieved to hear it went smoothly, no burnt off eyebrows when lighting the stove and no burnt food. After our lunch Nicola took the wheel and began the rest of our journey south.
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