It’s a little hard to believe, but we are already a quarter of the way through our trip! 92 days in and we have just today crossed the border to the Northern Territory, ending our time in the sunshine state.
Since my last blog post leaving the Whitsundays, we headed to Townsville and Cairns where the beaches aren’t the best for swimming but there are so many waterfalls and watering holes (sans crocs) we were never dry for long. We actually really enjoyed our time in Townsville, Tim treated me to a fancy lunch at one of the waterfront restaurants overlooking the beach and surrounded by palm trees and we randomly went to a BBQ festival.
Inland from Townsville, Little Crystal Creek was great, lots of cascading waterfalls under a cool old bridge. The water was pretty cold though, even for me! We saw some beautiful Ulysses butterflies 🦋 playing here.
Cardwell Spa Pool was also a nice surprise, we got there early morning when there was no one else around, so did a little photo shoot and then spent the day alternating between dipping in the water and lying out in the sun in the poof (Tims giant bean bag) and reading our books.
Cardwell spa pool
We weren’t originally going to go to Josephine Falls, to quote Tim “you’ve seen one waterfall you’ve seen them all” but after discovering there is a natural waterslide there he was all in. That ended up being one of the prettiest places we’ve been so far and Tim loved going down the slide every which way.
The water at Josephine Falls was amongst the clearest we’ve ever seen
We hoped to see a cassowary in either Mission Beach or Etty Bay but we didn’t really dwell in either place for long on the way up to Cairns. We’ve since seen a massive emu and some wedge tailed eagles in the outback, too shy to grab any photos of though.
Tims family came up to meet us for a few days in Cairns which was awesome. We got to stay in a huge luxury penthouse apartment in Palm Cove which was a great change from the van. As much as we love our van and how much it feels like home now, after a couple of months at a time it’s nice to have a break and refresh – wash all the bedding and all our clothes (some of which I still haven’t worn!) 🤭
A random field of sunflowers near Cairns
After leaving Cairns we met one of Tims old friends from the area at Granite Gorge nature park where the locals are friendly little rock wallabies, peacocks, chickens and parrots. There’s a great walk through the volcanic boulders and we had our first real camp fire. Since then Tim has become quite the pyro and we’ve had lots of fires at our outback camps at sunset.
The cutest Little Rock wallabies at Granite Gorge
After leaving the tropical rainforest it only took a couple of hours driving due west on the Savannah Way to notice a drastic change in scenery – from the lush and often wet green to unforgiving heat and a barren landscape of scrub and red dust. The temps were still high 20s but didn’t dip below 20C at night. There are insanely long stretches of straight road along the Savannah with not much along the way other than roadkill kangaroos and the many hawks/falcons and crows feeding on them. We had to come up with ways to entertain ourselves along the way, Tim decided to try out different ways of waving at oncoming campers – the steering wheel hand flick ✋🏼, the thumbs up 👍🏼, salute, and even the hang ten 🤙 .
Only a few hours drive from the rainforest we hit the outback
After a few days heading west, we hit the coast again in Karumba, in the Gulf of Carpentaria. We’d heard about a sunset bar serving local mud crab so made sure we were there in time so we could have dinner and a bottle of wine with the sun setting over the water. The place was full of grey nomads all trading stories about where they’d been and where they were headed. If I haven’t seen Tim for a while, I’ll often find him wrapped up in conversation with the grey nomads, he makes friends with them wherever we go and has amassed a long list of suggestions for places to visit.
Sunset Tavern in Karumba
After leaving Karumba and the Savannah Way, he headed due south until we hit Cloncurry near Mt Isa. We’d heard about an old ghost town built around an abandoned uranium mine (called Mary Kathleen) so plugged it into Google Maps to lead the way. She led us down a 4wd track that I was nervous about but Tim was all confidence (in his driving abilities and the vans abilities!). After traversing the terrain for 7km we came across a crest which we couldn’t see over the other side, I started to say stop at the same time Tim hit the accelerator to launch over it, but in a van weighing roughly 3 tonne it was no real surprise we didn’t make it. She was beached as on the crest.
Ah crap. Stuck.
We initially tried reversing while I pushed (futile) and then tried to dig, then Tim tried to fashion a winch around a tree – all without her budging. Eventually Tim suggested we use the jack to lift up her front and reverse – when she was freed we celebrated with a foot clapping photo shoot (see pic).
Neither of us operate too well in stressful situations (generally there’s a lot of name calling!) but we are getting better at it
We decided we’d come this far, we better go for a walk to find this mine site. Unfortunately the track wasn’t much of a track and petered out to nothing. So we headed back to the van deflated and with the sun going down, decided not to try the track back and stayed the night in the middle of nowhere. The next morning we found our way on to a tarmac road (thanks for your help Google 🙄) that took us directly up to the mine and we were rewarded with an amazing place that had water a shocking blue like nothing we’ve ever seen.
So beautiful, but so toxic. No swimming here unfortunately.
We stayed in Mt Isa for 3 days, mostly just to fill up on supplies and do some laundry. All of the campsites in town charge around $35/night for unpowered which is the most expensive we’ve come across, and it just gives you a little square of dirt very close to your neighbours. After leaving we realised just how much we enjoy the free roadside camps in the outback with so much space and being able to have a fire.
Since coming down from Karumba the temperatures really drop overnight to low single digits. The next leg of our trip was going to be the long drive down to Uluru, however with the low night time temps and the news coverage about crowds (due to stopping people from climbing it from October this year), we changed our minds and decided to start making our way towards hot and sunny Darwin instead. We might even do a little overseas trip to Asia while we’re there since it’s so close and flights are cheap.
*update: since originally writing this we changed our minds (again!) and are currently on route to Uluru after all – we considered that it’s not really around Australia without it, and we might not make the effort to come back!*
So that’s it from us for now. Overall we are still loving it even though Tim especially is missing the ocean. At the risk of sounding a little cheesy, I honestly wake up every day so happy to be alive, and so thankful to be doing this with my best friend: someone who looks after me, makes me breakfast in bed every day, makes me laugh (a lot), makes me exercise and who, even though we have spent almost every second together for the past 3 months, I never ever tire of!
Distance travelled so far: 7,100 kms
Campsites: $200
Coffee: $165
Kmart: $172
Yoga sessions: 46
Van's Vanlife 