All photos related to this blog entry can be found at Grant & Julie

Cardwell

After all the business of packing and sorting we are finally on the road and at last we managed time to stop at the Cardwell Range look out to view the Hinchinbrook Channel.
Townsville friends provided accommodation, entertainment and company. We walked a lot, mainly allowing us to drink at night and walk it (and the cake) off. It was good strategy, however, walking a 6km round trip in the dark with a belly full of food and wine tested our stamina. We survived!

Proserpine and the Whitsundays passed by. We discovered that free camping in 'rest areas' (aka Grey Nomad style) provided not much less services that some of the paid campgrounds on offer.

These rest areas have become our target. It is truly and excellent indictment on our society that these services are provided for the traveler.

Bush Camping on the Highway

Bruce ‘The Goose’ Highway, The A1, Coast Road, whatever you like to call it has been a challenge. Speed limits start at 100 km/hour , if you are lucky, dropping to 60 km an hour, jumping to 90 km/hour, plunging to 40 km before rising to 80 km per hour and any combination in-between. This is all in the name of road works and improving the highway. Coupled with a good stiff head wind we were unsure of why we chose this route altogether.

Our ride to Brisbane took us just over a week and several things shook down in the shake down.

Jules managed to lose her scarf and break her sunglasses. Our air mattresses died on the third night camping – strangely both valves failed at the same time (damn you), we bought a cheapie double bed air mattress and a 12v pump to blow the enormous thing up with... the pump failed so we had to blow it up by lung. The front tyre, which was quite well on-the-way-out when we left Cairns started behaving poorly – tracking etc and needed replacement earlier than hoped for.

Brisbane has been wonderful to us. We re-connected with our friends Hanka and Erik Forkert and their children Mika and Liam.

We met Hanka and Erik whilst they were on their RTW motorcycle trip and in New Zealand. They came to Australia and visited us while we were living in Gordonvale (near cairns) and planning our 2005 trip.

They returned to Australia in 2008 on a research mission looking for a place to immigrate to. This time they has son number 1 in tow - Mika.

The caravan park in Mareeba, where we were living, did not make the grade as a new home, however Brisbane did.

Now with son number 2 - Liam, they have settled in Australia in a seaside suburb of Brisbane.

Camping in their back yard and using this as our base to visit the big city we enjoyed the museum, QAG and GOMA, parks and city life. It was a great time walking, what seems like, every square inch of the city and on occasion using the city cycles.

It has been a pleasure to reconnect with Hanka and Erik and to see how wonderfully they have made a new life in a new country. And it has been most fun playing 'au pair' to Mika and Liam.

Another great surprise during our time in Brisbane was catching up with our dear friends Frank and Brenda from Oregon in the USA.

We met Frank and Brenda in Mexico in 2005 and our paths crossed as they backpacked around one of our favorite countries.

They happened to be in Australia visiting family and Brisbane at the same time we were. We were so fortunate to have the day with them, catching up on events spanning nearly 10 years.

Time was pressing and plans were changing. We stayed a final night with our friend Peter and left Brisbane with fond thoughts of perhaps a new life there after our travels.

Selfie's! gotta love em'!