CAIRNS

Cairns begins as the last city did - with industrial estate. This time however we're thankful as a couple of crucial things need attending to before we head of to the the festival. Gas bottle – gas bottles have a lifespan of about ten years and ours saw its tenth birthday a little while ago which is making getting it refilled a bit of a problem, as there’s only so many times you can chat up the assistant while they're inspecting the date stamp before you end up in trouble or feeling a little soulless. So, it needs an official once-over and hopefully giving a new lease of life, Vanny's also going back to a garage to have her rear break shoes replaced as recommended by the last mechanic and.. we have to see if the pharmacy here will let us the it as a dispensary over the next couple of weeks so we don't have to risk Jaimies whole stash in the scorching outback at the festival.

Cairns seems like a funny place. The end of the line for most travellers moving up the east coast, boasting to be the place from which to explore The Great Barrier Reef and the capital city of Queensland. It's obviously seen its fair share of travellers though you get the idea not in quite such high density nor quite as wacky and wonderful as the Eclipse crowd. Hilarious to see the Cairns locals utterly bemused by the hippie invasion. Utterly bemused but also rather inquisitive and a little jealous I reckon! 

Colourful people from the world over line the streets and adorn the sea front. Jugglers, spinners, dancers, wasters and chasers, all congregated in preparation for the festival. Lovely to see so many funky people around the place, feels like the party's started!

SWIMMING!!!

So there is swimming to be had, you just have to know whew to look and as it turns out that happens to be in the rainforest. Taking the most surreal drive through sun-washed sugar cane fields, crossing unannounced train lines used infrequently for cain transportation, permanently dwarfed by forest coated mountains on every side. We finally penetrate the forest edge where a gully cuts through the dense growth providing a number of deep swimming holes and shallow river beds. We are not alone, this place has the life of a beach on a hot day but without the intensity of the daunting lobster wall blocking the sea. Here people are spread throughout the forest enjoying the natural shade. Bliss. 

BRAMSTON BEACH

With Cairns on the proverbial horizon and the sun setting we get off the highway and head for the beach, Bramston Beach. A council funded site which means CHEAP! Ok not quite as cheap as free camping but in this heat a shower at the end of the day is worth the fee, especially when there’s no swimming, which by the way slightly undermines the allure of the beach after a while! It's lovely but sitting here we're only putting off edging into the city so after a night we push off for the big smoke... they also don't have a booze shop in Bramston Beach, not that that swayed our decision any.

WHAT LIES BENEATH

So there’s some lethal sea dwelling critters up here this time of year. Jelly fish: obviously we all know and loath and here they're about as nasty as they get! Here the Box and Irukanji jellies are common and taken very seriously. Adorned to every warning sign along the beach fronts are bottles of vinegar for treatment of attacks which beyond being I'm sure, greatly relieving for a victim is bloody marvellous for me because here the fish and chip shops deem vinegar a completely bizarre request! BBQ sauce for your fish? - 'too easy mate'! But vinegar, oh no. I however, consider the application of vinegar to chip the very essence of synergy. So sorry little Timmy, I know your in agony from the severe lacerations covering your legs and arms and death is likely and even the smallest relief from the trauma would be a Godsend but Stormy scoffed your medicine on his mackerel and chips last night! Ahhahahaha. 

Joking and comically concealed, honest sentiment aside they are well prepared for the jellies here where you can easily rent a 'stinger suite' which is even more flattering than a wet suite, if you can imagine such a thing! Ow they also have 'stinger nets' at most beaches too which are essentially small netted areas of the sea about the size of a baby swimming pool which don't actually guarantee safe swimming but if you weren't already convinced.. hold on just a minute! because as an extra little measure of piece-of-mind life guards wade around the enclosure (in full stinger suites) dragging behind them a small net as they weave between swimmers! So no need to worry. Oh, except for the other little nasties lurking in the waters... the CROCODILE. For which even a glorified wet suite won't protect you from, nor any wading net draggers or food condiment! So yes, swimming has become more of a anxious debate.

YEPOON TO AIRLIE

Not an hour out of Yeppoon we're stopped at a service station, which here in Australia invariably means deep fired goods aplenty! Deep dried corn-dogs, hash browns, chips, sausages, prawns, schnitzels... pretty much, if you can die from it - they've got it!

We're not here for the fried delights however, ow no! Vanny has started making a rather disconcerting sound. So, Jaimie's at the wheel revving the engine, a friendly, fryer-loving stranger has got his head deep in it and I’m doing my very best to stay out of it and be helpful which consists mainly of staying out of the way, not reciting my own mechanical vocab (the extent of which is “fan-belt?”) and ensuring that at no time does the gentleman become aware that Jaimie is in-fact the sole driver of the vehicle for fear of being lynched in the Australian outback for crimes against Man-sim!

After a half-hour of greasy ponder, we are none the wiser. The van is however working, so we decide to take it steady to the next town and get her looked at there. The Town (Mackay) is not a town at all but a hellish metropolis in which the Toyota garage wouldn't be able to see us for two days! Not huge fans of hell we creep another 200k up the highway to Airlie Beach, gateway to the Whitsunday Islands ringing ahead to ensure we can be seen first thing the next morning, and seen we are! Three hours, two new front break pads, a flush and replenish of the all essential (here’s what it should look like and here's what yours looks like!) break fluids and 500 bucks later and we're on the road, none the wiser as to what exactly the initial sound (which by this stage had of-course completely ceased) was. Happy nonetheless that the breaks were sorted and Vanny is sounding sweet! Northward.

*Australia has a bizarre fascination with incredibly large edible items. I guess it's the only way to get the message across to the truckies that there's actually a product for sale, as any smaller item may be dismissed as just another wired hallucination.

YEPPOON

It's a miserable days driving out of Hervey Bay. We make it 400k north but it's lots of stopping and starting as many improvements are being made along the pacific highway, great if your planning on using the road in a years time, not so great at the moment. Although the building works and machinery make for good photos in the rain. A little beaten by the arduous monotony of the stretch we call it a day just outside Rockhampton (the beef capital of Australia, which could perhaps explain the pasty fiasco). 

Yeppoon is a half hour detour but the road is stunning. Coming into Queensland we've now lost an hour as we realise when at six thirty it's almost dark, the rain hasn't let off all day. We manage to pull into a beachside park exhausted and agitated just before the sky empties completely. And its Tuesday night again. Yeppoon is almost a pretty bog-standard, beachy place except the beach itself is incredibly long and sweeping and thick, surreal clouds stack high and gather around the rim of the valley basin atop hillsides framing the dominantly hot-blue sky and loom over little Yeppoon like the taunting stalls of a Roman amphitheatre. It also has LOADS of charity shops and as we've now cleared out just about all our junk we have a little room to acquire more. A perfect place to spend a Wednesday.

HERVEY BAY

So Hervey Bay has kind of been our unofficial target destination since leaving Melbourne. Noted as the place to be to see humpback whales and their young before they head south early in November. This year however for some reason they decide to begin their journey a little early and so, alas there is no whales to be seen. A little bummed to have missed them but happy to have made it so far north so quickly which wouldn't have happened had we not been chasing the idea. Next time. There is however a surplus of seals, sea hawks a curious pelican and probably the best fish and chips we have ever eaten so by no means a wasted stop. AND.. we're now in Queensland!

NOTE TO ALL VEGETARIANS: When passing through random little towns such as 'Gin Gin' be aware - a 'cheese and onion' pasty may not be the cheese and onion you have come to expect from a bakery! Now I know the name would suggest that your pasty will consist of good old cheddar (or  'tasty' as the Aussies would have it) cheese and onion but NO. Here in Gin Gin 'all the pies have meat in', as I’m told by a dumbfounded assistant in the bakery as I bravely (and naively) attempt to explain my dietary predicament. For starters mince beef and cheese is wrong regardless of my vegetarianism and If I did have to bite into a meat pasty, which I admit brought brief nostalgia (and probably a little well needed iron) to the system, it could at least have been a nice meat pasty!Anychew I was finally rewarded for the mishap with what I can only imagine started life as a vegetable pasty some ten years previous and has been kept deep in the back somewhere ever since for 'fussy' customers.

MOUNTAINS AND MOTORWAYS

Scenic Route. Sounds nice doesn't it? Well it's not. Not when when the scenic route isn't so much a route but rather a myth uttered flippantly by a 'help' desk assistant at the tourist information centre who didn't think to ask what type of vehicle we were driving, as if the no shoes, long hair and English accent wasn't a big enough clue that we weren’t in your standard Sunday touring, ******* hatchback! So you end up clung to the side of a mountain holding your breath because A) the suspense and fear is simply too much for your body to remember even the most menial of tasks, and B) if you were to breath you'd probably choke instantaneously on the fumes from your breaks and clutch!

We finally made it down from the mountain in a ball smoke terrified we were on fire! We were not, the breaks however were smouldering. We let Vanny rest for a while after her ordeal and sought some council on such mechanical matters (Thank you Ted who gets an early awakening with our woes). Three hours late out of Nimbin we don't make it far that eve, opting for a lay-by on the side of the highway. It's no showground but there's other people camping out so we're not alone and we're in good stead for the morning. Well, we didn't feel like a spliff when we got into Nimbin but we wouldn't say no to one after getting out of the place!

NIMBIN

We slip off the windily pacific highway just before the infamous Byron Bay onto open country road sweeping through an epic valley, encapsulated by high ridges and vast, stretching farmland toward the country town of Nimbin.

Nimbin was the home of the 1973 'Aquarius' festival and by looks of things most of the festival goers never made it home, the town certainly retained the festival vibe, I think I was propositioned to buy drugs on the street less in Amsterdam!

Like Amsterdam or Glastonbury or any other place that has made a name for its self as 'a bit hippy',  there is a great paradox at play in Nimbin. Hippy yes in terms of it's liberal look (or look away) on cannabis smoking (signs in outdoor areas of cafes don't read *No Smoking* but rather *No Bongs*, I guess they're only permitted in doors. But the centre is enough to make anyone not stoned out of their dreadlocks feel rather trapped, rather quickly. Trapped by an image of a lifestyle, the essence of which I know exists within Nimbin somewhere but it's not here, I suspect it's not incense, Bob Marley, semi precious stones, crystals, home made tinctures, chakra juice, rainbows or anything else that can be bought or sold.



Heading out early one morning we manage to catch a little real Nimbin, a local farmers market, less farmers as you might expect and more hobbyists, the locals of the town congregating as they do once a week to pick up groceries, share stories and above all show off their 'home-growns'. Here you got a sense of perhaps what it is to be a Nimbinian, a colourful array of chirpy characters young and old, a little crazy and slightly removed looking yes, but maybe removed is, in some respects just what they’re after here, a place that is a little more accepting of qwerks, a place where community, family and living happily and healthily seem top priority. Perhaps in a backwards kind of way, to sustain that lifestyle here, the Nimbin folk are reliant on the business that the tourisitc centre brings and after considering the Nimbin lifestyle aside from this, just whom exactly is crazy here anyway?

BELLINGEN

Out of Newcastle we hit Bellingen, a beautiful little shire-like village town some five hours north of Newcastle and a further five short of the Gold Coast. It's lush green and shady from huge old trees looming overhead. We kindly refuse the offer of the YHA to put the van in their 'carpark' and seek the towns showground which offers campers a flat, grassy spot with all amenities for a fraction of the usual site cost! As the sun sinks over the horizon leaving with it the remnants of the days heat thousands of bats descend around the showground creating a stunning backdrop to the early nights sky. We take a wander around that evening and stumble across a drum circle and dance performance in the park, too tired to join in we opt to cheer from a small distance supping cold beer, goodnight Bellingen!