29/03 Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz

Mrs B has to work so Mr B takes me on a trip around the area. First stop is the Merc garage as the hood and the electrics on his CLK have stopped working. This means a 40 minute drive to the garage in sporadic showers (yes, the weather has followed me down here but least there are sunny intervals) with the top down (the car’s). I have to put the umbrella up at one stage, and I must like a right dipshit sitting in the front of a car with an umbrella. As it turns out, the reason the electrics are not working is because someone, who shall remain nameless, has not put the batteries in the remote in properly.....

Our next pit stop is lunch just before Monteville overlooking the countryside and the sea in the distance: it is all rather pleasant even though lunch is interrupted by heavy showers. Apparently, this area is the wedding capital of Queensland but I don’t read too much into this and besides, there is something in the air that brings on my hay fever so it is highly unlikely that I will be settling here!

I have a look around Monteville and it’s expensive shops and art galleries whilst B sits on a bench and has a smoko, before we head back to the ranch to see Mrs B who is now back from work. It has been a fantastic day and I’m glad that my plans were changed so that it meant that I was able to fit in a visit.

p.s the reason I had my photo taken outside Hilltop Toes is that my paternal grandparents' farm in South Wales was called Hilltop.

28/03 Hippie hippie shake

I leave Cairns amidst sporadic showers and I am disappointed that I didn’t get to snorkel the GBR but there might be an opportunity to do some snorkelling in the DR when I visit Ig and family. If not, then there are always plenty of other reefs in the world to look at!

B & B pick me up at Brisbane airport and I am whisked off to Maleny which is about an hour and a half’s drive North West of Bris Vegas (as the locals call it).

Maleny is a lovely little ‘hippie’ hamlet situated amongst rolling hills and farm land and most of the countryside reminds me of England. B & B live in a house overlooking the Glass House Mountains and the view from the house is quite spectacular. It is nice to have my own room, bathroom and a home cooked meal (a Sunday roast with all the trimmings: sweet, mate!)

Dreamtime Painting

Here's a picture of the painting I bought. Answers on a postcard, please.

26/03 & 27/03 Rairns in Cairns

I am in better spirits today and despite the rain and the swimming pool outside the front door of the hostel, I brave it and head towards the local shopping centre in search of free Wi-Fi and a cinema. I have decided to head off to Maleny on Sunday and to wait and see if the rain subsides tomorrow to allow me to get to the GBR. The shopping centre is, thankfully, close by and I soon find a cafe and type up my blog and check emails etc. The trouble with hanging out in a shopping centre is that it encourages one to spend money on clothes and I treat myself to a pair of shorts but I resist the shoes.....

By the time I know it, it’s 6.30pm and I head back to the hostel and the rain has eased off a bit. I am joined in the room by a friendly Dutch girl who tells me about her travels in NZ over dinner in the hostel (dinner is free as part of the deal but it’s a 15 minute walk into town and I don’t fancy coming back in the dark and the rain, so the local supermarket provides me with some exciting cheese rolls!)

I have decided not to book anything for tomorrow as the weather forecast is bad for the next 7 days and I don’t want to spend £75 and not be able to see anything. I am disappointed that I won’t be able to see the GBR but things happen for a reason and maybe I can come back some day.

I sleep better and it’s raining when I wake up but I head out when it stops and I go for a walk on the front and it’s none too exciting , so after a cup of tea I head back to the shopping centre and treat myself to a massage to sort out my neck. I recognise some shoppers in the centre from yesterday which brings me to one conclusion: there is nothing to do in Cairns when it’s raining (or not raining, for that matter)

I’m off to Maleny tomorrow to visit Dad’s skool friend and he is picking me up from Brisbane airport.

Headed to the Woolshed pub to take advantage of the free meal and it wasn’t bad: a choice of 4 meals and I opted for the spag bol. Who says there’s no such thing as a free dinner? I walk back to the hostel and luckily it’s only spitting but when I get back, we have been joined by two young English girls who have turned the already minuet room into a laundrette. Nothing dries in this climate and apparently they have had some stuff stolen from the communal washing lines. I am feeling a little claustrophobic and am pleased that I only have one more night here but everyone soon quietens down to read or sleep.

25/03 Exit Alice

It’s my last day in Alice and I cannot say that I am sad to see the back of it. I join some of the others and we wander into town to have a coffee and to find some of the locals selling art but there are nowhere to be found. We head to a local park to have a picnic and coincidentally, there are some women in the process of painting. I like one of the painting and am told that it’s for sale for 50 AUD and it will be ready in half an hour and I wait in the park whilst the others head off. Mavis is one of the women painters and she comes and sits next to me in the bench. I cannot really understand what she is saying but I get the gist that the painting is about a male dreamtime and it has some women in it too: I don’t think I’ve done the story any justice but there you go. She then tries to extort an extra 30 AUD out of me for the painting as she “ thinks it’s now worth that” but I tell her that we agreed a price and refrain from explaining the principles of offer and acceptance to her.

My flight to Cairns is about 2.5 hours and we land in torrential rain but it’s very humid and apparently this is the tail end of the rainy season (note to self: check this next time!). The yoff hostel (described as ‘small and quiet’) is ok and I am the only person in a four bed room but there is no en-suite and I am feeling a bit miserable and want to check myself into the Hilton! It continues to rain through the night and I don’t sleep very well.

23/03 & 24/03 Picnic at Ayers Rock

It was another early start to the day before getting my first sighting of Uluru. As I mentioned, I managed to get a good night’s sleep in my swag under the stars and even managed a trip to the dunny in the middle of the night without running into any dangerous animals. We went for a hike around Kata Tjuta which is near Uluru before having a look around the Aboriginal Cultural Centre. The ACC is a tourist rip off and whilst the paintings are lovely, they sell for around the £800 mark. I am curious about how much the artists actually make from having their paintings brought by galleries and why there aren’t more traditional galleries set up by the community itself.

We get our first taste of the rock with a small walk around it to have a look at some rock paintings before setting up to have dinner and a beer whilst watching the sunset and the changing colours on the rock. This turns out to be a bit of an odd experience as bus loads of people turn up to do the same thing and it becomes a bit too much of a circus experience for me. A bunch of Koreans next to us are having the expensive sunset champagne experience but they only stay about 20 minutes but that may because drinking champagne whilst trying to swot the flies away from your face isn’t quite what they had in mind.

After sunset, we head back to the camp site and have a well deserved shower, some chat around the campfire and then off to sleep in my swag, which I have become quite attached to.

Another early start to catch the sunrise and our tour leader manages to set us up somewhere away from the madding crowds. Sunrise is not as spectacular as the sunset but still, it is nice to have had both experiences. The flies are starting to gather and we head off the Uluru for either the choice of a 9.8 km base walk or a climb. Contrary to popular belief, you can still climb the rock but the Anangu prefer that you don’t out of respect for their law and culture. This seems fair enough to me and when you see the 60 degree climb with only a flimsy rail to assist you, you’d have to be bonkers to attempt it. Our guide tells that at least 80 people have died from losing their balance and the Anangu traditionally have a duty to safeguard visitors to the land and feel a great sadness when a person dies or is hurt.

As it turns out, the climb is closed due to high winds (yesterday it was closed due to the temperature being above 36 degrees c) and this helps in the decision making process (not that I was contemplating climbing it anyway!)

The rock is a monolith and apparently they reckon that it goes on for miles under the earth’s surface and has actually been turned on its side due to tectonic plate movement millions of years ago. I am very impressed with it and I didn’t expect it to have as many ‘holes’ in it, caused by wind erosion.

We head back to Alice via the Camel Farm (yes, there are loads of camels in the outback but now they are causing havoc by munching everything so they have had to cull a lot them). Having just been to the Middle East, I’ve seen my fair share of camels and luckily no one else in the group seems particularly interested in hanging around the farm.

Some of us are staying at Annie’s and we share a room, which makes life easier.
Two of the girls were bitten by bedbugs the last time they stayed there and I am paranoid about being bitten and instantly develop psychosomatic itching! Fortunately, it is only psychosomatic and we all head out for a pleasant evening.

Alice has a big problem with drunk Aboriginals (this is a little biased as to me there seems to be an equal problem with drunken backpackers and local Aussies) and we are advised not to walk around at night alone and to either walk as a group or take a taxi. We pass a number of them on the way back to the hostel but they are ok and both sets of groups exchange ‘hellos’ and I do not find them menacing or aggressive in the slightest.

22/03 – There are flies on the windscreen

I survived my night in the yoff hostel despite one girl snoring like a beast and I think it would be rude not to thank the person who invented earplugs. Everyone staying there is really friendly and I had dinner with two German girls and another girl called Fabian who is sharing the same room as me and she is also from Germany. In fact, everyone seems to be either from France, Germany, Austria or Holland and there are no Brits. Of course, the Europeans all speak perfect English and speak English to each other as one of the reasons they are here is to learn English (learning Australian English?!). Most of them also seem to be incredibly tall so for once in my life I feel diminutive!

‘The Rock’ tour starts at 6am and there are 21 of us (one English couple from “ull”; Danish, Germans, Dutch and some Aussies: mostly in their 20s). The Aussies are a brother and sister in their 60s/early 70s and an Austrian woman in her 60s who has lived in Oz for 33 years. The brother now lives in Canada and is as mad as a mad thing. He runs a retreat in Vancouver and is here on a spiritual journey creating a ‘rainbow’ of peace, love & abundance etc. You get the picture. Actually, I cannot be too cynical about him as by the end of the tour he and I had had a good conversation and his new-age life was borne out of losing his wife to cancer 10 years’ ago. Our tour leader is a typical Aussie male and makes Bear Gyllis look like a sniveling girl guide.

I cannot get over the amount of flies and they are the uber annoying small ones that do not shift when you try and swat them away from your face. I have had to purchase a hat with a fly net and it turns out to be the best purchase of my life (well, not really because if I’m honest that was probably a pair of shoes or a handbag)

Our first designation is Kings Canyon and we arriving at 12 noon to start our 3 hour hike. I personally think this is bonkers as it is so hot that you could fry an egg on the rocks and only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun. I join the oldies as my knee is still bothering me from my marathon victory and we head off on a shorter, less challenging hike and have a swim in the creek. The geology is quite spectacular and a lot of the rocks are petrified and come in all sorts of shades of red and the contrast of the green vegetation and red makes for some good photo opportunities. The area is greener than I expected and has had more rainfall than usual and we pass a lot of river beds along the way that have been washed into the road. The weather here has gone from one extreme to another and where they have had drought in most places for nearly a decade, other parts have had more rain than the average.

After an exhausting day of hiking (not me!), we have dinner around the campfire at Curtin Springs and sleep in swags under the stars. For the uninitiated, swags are a large canvas sleeping bag equipped with a thin mattress. Now, as you will be aware, I am not a camping girl and the prospect of sleeping in a swag directly on the dirt and having to piss in a long drop doesn’t really appeal to me. But I have to admit that I had the best night’s sleep in my swag under a non-light polluted sky and waking up to seeing shooting stars was ‘awesome’.