Campervan Diaries Day 1 – Leg 2 – Mission Beach to Bowen

I thought I’d split the journey into different legs because the post was getting a bit wordy. So, where were we? Right, we left Mission Beach with Nicola at the helm…and we crashed almost immediately and our journey ended right there and then, Australian AA picked us up and we flew to Brisbane.

But seriously, that didn’t happen, Nicola took over driving and despite not driving for over a year took to it like a duck to water, driving is just like riding a bike I guess. It took a few minutes for her to get used to the size of the campervan but soon enough she was relaxed and confident and we were cruising towards Townsville (which I have to say is the most unimaginative name for a town I think I’ve ever heard) which was the next largest town on our way south. All that can be said for driving through Australia is that it’s a big place, very beautiful very easy to drive through. With next to no traffic we were under no pressure and with only one lane we didn’t have to think about overtaking etc. It was just a case of foot down and break now and again. We had agreed to split up our driving, so neither of us would be lumped with driving the whole thing on their own.

Nicola drove for around two and a half hours until we got to a lay by near a place called Rollingstone. After that I took over again and drove us the 100km or so to Townsville where we filled up on petrol which cost us $67 to fill our tank with petrol - $1.43 a litre, cheap as chips compared to UK! By this point it was now around 18:30, and the sun was setting but we decided to press on to the next town Ayr. We had a Plan A of Bowen and a Plan B of Ayr depending on how tired we were.

Ayr was around 80km from Townsville and by the time we arrived it was pitch black. We stopped off at a Coles supermarket (I believe Coles is owned by Tesco and its basically just Tesco, but more expensive) to stock up on food and we treated ourselves to a Domino’s Pizza which only cost $15 for two medium pizzas; bargain. By this point I was pretty tired and we swapped driving duties near Home Hill, which is 10km outside of Ayr and Nicola drove the remaining 120km to Bowen.

On the way to Bowen we drove through an area where there were a number of forest fires, some of the flames got so close to the van we could feel the heat licking the sides. I say forest fires, they were probably controlled fires but it was dark, really dark, and all we could see were orange flames against a black backdrop – like driving along a highway in hell – or so I imagine. Smoke covered the roads and visibility was poor, however Nicola drove us through in one piece and we finally arrived at Bowen at 22:30; tired and ready for bed. We found a rest stop that said it was free to camp online, but when we arrived we saw a number of signs stating that camping overnight was prohibited. Unperturbed we slept there anyway, although due to the humidity and the hot and bothered state we went to bed in after trying for ages to find all the pieces of the fold out bed, we had a terrible night’s sleep; we worried about getting caught sleeping in the rest stop as it carried a $2000 fine and we struggled to get comfy. Nonetheless, we did manage to get some sleep, and probably a comfier night sleep than the three German boys sleeping on the concrete floor outside their jeep did!