Road Trippin’ Aussie Style

After a late arrival in Australia due to a delayed flight we arrived in Cairns a bit later than scheduled and a wee bit wrecked.

Unfortunately we did not have time to enjoy a day in Cairns as was planned and instead picked up our Jucy camper and got on the road pronto. Our plan was simple. Get to Brisbane with a few small stop offs along the way.

Our route was as follows:

Cairns – Mission Beach – Townsville – Airlie Beach – Rockhampton – Bundaberg – Hervey Bay – Brisbane

It has to be noted that our campervan was a “relocation”. That means that we were given the rental for free as we were returning it to its original rental location. The catch – we had 6 days to do it.

When looking at this route on a map while planning we thought hah! Easy! So cheap, loads of time. Wrong!

Mistake 1 – Campervans are insanely heavy. Therefore all the money saved on accommodation was spent on fuel. Campers are thirsty beggars!

Mistake 2 – 500km per day is a lot of driving – particularly on Australian roads. Australia is HUGE!

Mistake 3 – Always have a break day between towns/cities – consecutive driving is feckin tiring. On arrival in most places all we wanted to do was sleep.

Mistake 4 – It gets dark at 5pm in Australia in winter. Not a lot of sight-seeing to be done in the dark

All of these negativities aside we did manage to make the most of our road trip by finding things along the route to stop and see.

DCIM100GOPRO

We made it to our final destination of Brisbane and after 6 nights of sleeping in a campervan we were welcomed into the home of Loretta, Garth and Quinn. We spent a lovely evening with the guys and were also taught about the unusual Australian phenomenon of “Drop Bear”. Cheers Garth.

The next day was spent in an amazing petting zoo filled with koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, emus, Tasmanian devils, dingo’s, platypus, alligators and snakes. Pretty much every animal you could think of with a weird ozzy name. Funny though, No Drop Bears???