Sunday 19th August - to Cairns

Wild Carol does Australia
John and Fiona Fraser
Sun 19 Aug 2018 14:00
16 54.7S
145 45.453E

We had a slow start as we spent a long time chatting with our German neighbour, mother of a 16-month old little girl who took a shine to Fiona (and vice versa). Her husband is French and they’d hired a camper in Sydney and were leaving it in Cairns. They spoke French between themselves and she spoke German to the little girl so she’ll grow up bi-lingual. They live in Hong Kong where he is a teacher at the French international school. The children of teachers at the international schools get guaranteed places at 75% discount and it seemed to us that, if you are a teacher, getting a job at one of the international schools would be a great way to see the world as you could move around to different countries every 2/3 years.

Our truck seems quite empty now. We have finally got the hang of packing it up efficiently but things rattle about when there’s not enough ‘stuff’ to wedge things in.

We weren’t sure where we’d stay tonight. We have to check in to our Airbnb apartment at 1pm so we can’t be too far from Cairns.

We took our time, stopping at the Alexandra range lookout to take some photos. Then we had to get the Daintree ferry across the river, $16 one way. We took a detour into Port Douglas and felt like we’d arrived on a different planet! Fiona started talking about ‘getting her frocks out’.

We got the car parked eventually, and walked back up the street, checking out the barrier reef snorkelling trips along the way. Back up Macrossan street and we found a cafe where eggs Benedict, a bacon roll and coffee were the order of the day. The place was heaving. We wandered down to the Sunday market and Fi managed to find something to buy.

Time pressing, as we still had nowhere to stay for the night, we moved on. We stopped at Ellis Beach campsite but it was too crowded and too sandy. We tried the campsite at Palm Cove but it was full. The reception girl had a Lancashire accent but had lived on the Isle of Bute for some time so was delighted to hear a Scottish accent. She phoned their site in Cairns - also full - but she persuaded them to squeeze us in next to the pool on a sort of overflow spot that she knew about. We thanked her and pressed on to Cairns, 40 minutes down the road. On the way we stopped at another viewpoint where some paragliding types were relaxing in the shade against the wall. We chatted to one whose ancestors, naturally, were from Scotland, made lots of money in the California gold rush and bought several stations in New South Wales. He bemoaned the lack of wind....

The campsite in Cairns turned out to be perfect, although we needed our earplugs for the noise of the traffic and the planes taking off at the airport.

Alexandra range viewpoint

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Daintree Ferry

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Sunday market, Port Douglas

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Port Douglas viewpoint

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Hang-gliders hang-out on way to Cairns

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