Two days in the big smoke (population of only 147,000 by the way) is enough. We find Cairns, despite the transient colourful influx quite a charmless place. No swimming is one thing but Cairns has no beach! Just a board-walk above the mud-flats of its front and a small swimming pool (you can call it “a lagoon” all you want but it's still just a small swimming pool) oh and more keep-fit fanatics than is surely healthy! So we creep just a half hour (and six large roundabouts) north to a little camp-site on THE BEACH! and what a beach. Instantly reminded that we are in a magical tropical part of the world. Tropical beach, tropical blue water, tropical islands, sand, seclusion and fresh mangoes falling at your feet. Funny how easily you can forget your surroundings in a city. This is Ellis beach, Palm Cove was lovely except for one particularly grumpy woman..
Note to all campsite managers: When a friendly young person enters your office and explains how he and his girlfriend arrived the night before and the office was closed (at 6pm), so he'd like to pay you for last night and another night.. - Do not ensue to tell him off for not coming in first-thing and that “other campsites simply wouldn't allow it” (Allow what exactly?! We've already camped for Christs sake, I’m simply trying to pay you woman!) Because he may just tell you to go 'fluff' yourself and leave without paying for anything. This riled me for a number of reasons - 1) when we arrived at the site “after hours”it was Tuesday night, which as we know means injection night for Jim. So all we really wanted to do was set up and have a quick shower before Jaimie had to cram an inch of needle into her thigh. But of-course.. it's after hours so we don't have the combination-lock number to access the facilities - no worries I thought, I'll simply get it off some friendly campers... 2) Turns out the white-van mob don't like to hand out the access codes to someone who isn't yet officially a patron. Well thanks a bunch! In the end we have to make do with being chaperoned into the toilet facilities by Mrs Snoot whilst she conceals the code from us as if she's opening up the school tuck shop during detention time as a special treat for bad kids because it's Christmas or something! And I'm sure the only reason she did this was because she suspected I was some form of dangerous Spanish gypsy who would surely put a terrible curse on her and her family if she didn't, “well just look at that lovely young blonde girl with him, she's obviously under some form of spell!”.
No comments:
Post a Comment