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Todd & Fletchers Travels
So here we are in far north queensland and thought we'd update you with our travels continuing from Sydney wehere we left off....
Best buys so far for us have to be the expensive travel towels from blacks (walking shop in the UK)...they seriously work and take up the slightest of room, washbags with hooks-perfect for running to shower rooms and finding things easily, oh and a universal sink plug. No worse buys yet altho i suspect i will have a fair few items of clothes that i wont have worn by xmas but not admitting this till at least 3 months have passed!.Andy and kelly beware to leave space in your suitcase for a bit of ferrying for us (love ya;-) ) A note to Phil here, cheers for the sorting the ipod out-seriously it works a treat, the car (this story comes later) only had a tape player but after buying the cassette lead changer thing for the ipod we now have music and plenty of of it to choose from i especially love the East17 tracks-thanks xx
So where did we get to in keeping you all informed in our Aussie adventures? Ahh the bar crawl in sydney (Route 69 as our tour was called)-drinks galore, free tee-shirts, end of the night aussie kebabs and you guessed it a drunken hangover to follow the next day! Still had a fantastic night-met some great fellow backpackers, hi Steve and James if you are reading this? We ventured to such highlights of coogee beach, and the lows of Kings Cross (well not so low - good nightlife, just very seedy areas), and in between as always a great irish bar which i suspect was for the bar crawl organiser Brendan also a fellow backpacker-PERFECT! So now we know some great bars to revisit when we get back to Sydney...eventually.
So besides the drinking in Sydney and getting used to calling a pint a 'Schooner' (which isn't as big as a pint?) If you are interested a half is a Midi or Pot as it is here in Queensland...not that either me or Nathan need to know this, we visited all the haunts you would expect us to, the full length of George and Pitt Street (girls the shops on these could keep you going all day!), The Opera house, The Rocks, Darling Harbour, the cinema-Pirates of the Caribbean2, come on guys you could be anywhere in the world and you'd have to take time out and watch it-cant wait for the 3rd! The free Harbor Cruise we managed we get from our Hostel was even better than we anticipated seen as we got on the wrong boat-yep only me and nathan could get something so simple so wrong but it all worked out. Our original cruise should have been an hour and 15 mins, but we managed to board a boat that was going 2 hours and 45 minutes with free tea, coffee, muffins and biscuits, only down side was you had to pay for the drinks at the bar lol. It took us all the way round the harbour entrance to Sydney and all the bays along-absolutely amazing sights and views. Speaking of food when we got back to the hostel they were sending a tannoy (remember how we mentioned it can be a little 18-30's in style) about a free Roast dinner at a pub called the gaff, only catch you had to buy a drink...5 minutes later we were there! The hostels called Footprints west end if you are thinking this is too good to be true lol.
Just a footnote really, lol means 'laugh out loud', i suspect most of you will know this but for the odd few that don't it doesn't mean 'lots of love' as i thought for many months!!
Food for Nathan is a big issue, boy can this boy eat, and the fact that we are on a budget does not help as most cheaper places put less on your plate as you'd suspect so we only end up spending more on snacks-but we are slowly learning the tricks that only backpackers know to keep his belly full and now as we are in Queensland he is moaning that he's getting a belly on him-can't win really. We did make it up for our free breakfast, me once and nathan twice as he keeps adding, mine was a good opportunity to borrow 'steal' if you would prefer the proper word' some teabags as you have no idea how much i crave a cuppa tea and it is quite frustrating when the only boxes of teabags are sold in 100's!
So as we were getting ready to leave Sydney is was inevitable that we would do the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb thanks to the guys at DFF (my old work place) , booked in for Monday at 1.55pm there was no going back, harnessed up, breathalised (oh how i would have preferred a stiff drink), scanned and checked away we were. the only comforting part was that our good mate Steve had joined us and was i think equally as worried about the bridge collapsing as me, Nathan as you might have guessed was front on the queue and away...no stopping him. Hats off to our leader though, he was absolutely full of calming influences and interesting stories to keep us laughing the whole way up and down, including calling us 'Pommies' which i must admit we do get called alot (Aussies even say it in sentences like, god dam this pommie rain) so we soon learnt to take no offence lol, anyhow the bridge climb is a must do in Sydney i insist if only for the novelty factor of saying 'you've done it' hey Steve?! So we've posted the photos back to my mum and dad as don't want to be carting them round for the next 12 months, and don't worry DFF, my sister has instructions to get proof to you as soon as they arrive in the UK, and don't forget in return i must be the 'thing of the week' on the website! www.digforfire.co.uk if you guys want to keep checking for us?
Speaking of DFF, hia peeps, just wanted to say Sue W great advice re what to pack, and although i miss straight hair, leaving the straightners behind was a good thing, the frizz bomb that i now have is fairly trendy in the backpacker crowds so i'll stick around them haha-so sally mock all you want haha (how was the hol?). Hope you all all well and happy. Helen how's the wedding preparations going and has anything been said re it being the same date as the ball?
On we move, our flight to Cairns, getting used to this flying lark now what can i say except we were ready for some sunshine, its amazing what you do to keep yourself amused in between flights etc, once you get past the game of cards and general chit chat it all falls back onto the simple game of 'eye spy with my little eye', now i know you are laughing but come on it beats 'how many 'yellow' planes can you see?'...i think!
So as some of you know some of the places we plan to work at are hosted through a website called, www.helpx.com basically in exchange for free accommodation and food we do a few hours work at whatever place it may be. Our first stop is The White Cockatoo' a family resort May to September, then a nudist resort for the summer months so as you can see we don't work naked, well unless we stay end up coming back and you count the fact that we had to spend a few afternoons with the curtains shut in the chalet while we were naked due to sunburn and the ease of not wearing any clothes?. The website is www.thewhitecockatoo.com if you feel you need to check it out? Tony one of the owners collected us from cairns airport (nath was really chuffed as we had our own banner with our names on it-its always the little things that please some people, secretly i was chuffed to ;-) ) and drove us back to Mossman, about an hour and 15 mins away along a beautiful coastline 50meters to one side a glorious beach and 50meters the other side complete tropical rainforest. Did i mention we are staying in the wet tropics of North Queensland? Once we arrived Lenore, Tony's wife took us to the supermarket gave us a trolley and said i'll meet you in 20 minutes or so get what you want for a week (with the exception of treats (chocolate, chips (Crisps!) and alcohol)) so off we went. It was really bizarre as we didn't want to overspend and everything looks so expensive here in Aussie land compared to British prices. Still we had a go, plenty of fresh meat, fruit, salad noodles etc an absolute whale of a time :-) We spent a modest $78, as i'll tell you in a bit we decided to stay on and the second week spent a little more extravagantly, $138. We were being polite the first time hey. the only thing we didn't get out of our budget money was banana's, after hurricane Larry destroyed 90% of the banana plantations the prices are $9.99 dollars a bunch which is around 4pounds!! Obviously we declined on the bananas. We were shown to our extremely comfortable chalet and left on our own, only to be told work starts 8am the next day but get this...we finish at 1pm. Our chalet over looks the tropics off Mossman Gorge and is truly beautiful (sorry if that sounds corny but seriously you cant picture staying anywhere so fab. This is of course unless you count my first encounter of a huntsman spider-big, as in effin big, hairy and piercing eyes-the only plus thing to this thing was that it was on the outside of the window, don't worry nicola i have since managed to get a spider out of the shower, admittedly it was tiny compared to to the huntsman, but still an achievement if i don't say so myself. OOh and with the help of Tony and Lenore in the weeks that follow i am slowly becoming bug immune (well i wouldn't go too far with this statement but better than i was!).
Ok we will share in our disappointment the first 5 days were typically as the name of the place the 'wet tropics' no sun yet, we were seriously questioning whether the postcards of Australia are true (no panic though besides the fact it was wet it was still warm and as im typing this the sun has finally arrived and boyo is it nice hmmm) so we decided to not let the news that you guys are having a heat wave without us be too upsetting, although i hope the BBQ's are out and the beer is swilling!
The boring bit...work, well nathan likes to say im doing a 'maids service', im not sure what images he wants you to conjure up but i can assure you its pretty much, towels, rubbish, checkouts and room cleans, some people can be soooooooo scruffy, i swear i'll try and be as tidy as poss in future when i stay anywhere, and what is it with guys not flushing the toilets after yourselves-come on please enlighten me? and nathan well he's doing general maintenance around the place and loving it, getting old chalets up and running, painting, pool cleaning, etc. But besides all this h we are having a ball with tony and lenore who are a great couple, once the works done its clocking off time and they are giving us great advice about places to visit and tips on the area etc. Ohh and at 10 am everyday we have half an hour break named 'smoko'! Cuppa tea and a different cake everyday mmhhh (Lenore you've turned me into a sweet tooth and i can no longer moan at nathan having huge dentist bills, but i wouldn't change it lol)
So having done our first 4 days Tony made us a proposition, if we could stay 4 weeks (this has now changed to 5 weeks as we are so hard to replace but means we get to see a little bit more)the same goes for accom and food, but he guaranteed us free trips to the Daintree river, tablelands, Cairns and Great barrier Reef, hard to resist when you think of the money we are saving, along with $100 which basically covers our own treats (happy hour beer!) Did i say we get a day off too-perfect. Along with this Tony's been fantastic with helping us get our brand spanking new car! And of course Lenore's been great too aa she does have to look after the resort when we were gone and definitely with all the creepy crawly while on duty.! so im used to geckos (small lizard things), rainforest frogs in the loos-not nice to be chased round a table with one, but im ok looking at them now and have learnt to keep the toilet lid down, jumping spiders (lets not even go there), large cockroaches (in all fairness I've only seen the dead ones so far!!), green ants which are apparently full of vitamins in their ass-Lenore insists im going to lick an ants ass but im nowhere near convinced this will happen and the list goes on including some fantastically colorful and large butterflies and birds, but getting back to the car....
So off Nathan and Tony went to view a car in cairns (a morning trip that turned into an all day tale and a car!) Initially we had been told about a car place called Travelers Auto Barn which offers really good deals for backpackers on all types of cars. The deal is you pay more than the car is worth but in return get all your slips you could possibly need for any state, roadside recovery, parts covered etc, all the camping gear and a guaranteed buyback at the end of your trip from any Auto barn in the country, sounds good hey. So please remember here that we are dealing in dollars so it isn't as expensive as it looks, if you want a good currency converter try, www.xe.com/ucc/ . At around dinner time, Nath missed chocolate and turkish delight muffins at smoko, nath calls me to say we are buying a $5000 white ford falcon station wagon, i get all the spiel about how good a deal it is and that we should go for it...so a bit more than we wanted to spend but what the hell we need to get round Aussie and the roads are soooooooooooo long-lets go for it!
Now here comes the tale...he didn't come back with that car, now this will make you laugh sarah, as nath was heading to the bank for the deposit, him and Tony spot a couple of young welsh guys with moody faces coming out of the Autobarn and heading towards exactly the same car (although newer!) with a for sale sign on it. To cut this story as short as poss, it turns out Autobarn would only offer them $2000 and they wanted at least $3000 (it was priced up at $5,200 in their window, so sensing a sale, tony (an ex marketing sales manager) goes in for the kill.....its newer than the one they saw, after the test run its running perfect, has 2 camping chairs (sod the camping gear we can pick that up cheap-and as it turns out tony and lenore have given us most off their stuff-we're laughing here!) and all the road slips we could possibly need, the bargaining starts......and sells at $2,600 to us, 2 defeated welsh guys just clinging onto their sanity that they got more than autobarn was offering, a very p***ed off man at autobarn for having seen the whole thing as it was parked right outside the sale place, and a brimming tony and nathan at a new car and fantastic tale of being at the right place at the right time!
After a service back at mossman the total cost for a perfectly running aussie backpackers open road adventure car (we haven't given it a name yet!) the total cost was $3,010 which is one thousand two hundred and twenty pounds and 66p (NO POUND SIGNS on aussie PC's!!!!!!!!) Total bargain :-)
So having our automatic (i still keep going for the clutch!) adventure wagon off we go to adventure which is where we are going to end installment number 3. Included in our new car is all our camping gear (yes that's right you heard right, lindsay is camping!), special thanks again to Tony and Lenore who have managed to fit us up with all the essentials, tent, stove, mattress, sheets, utensils-all the mod cons, and with an afternoon in Cairns to top up (kettle-real camping name a billy?, table, gas cylinder,shower (hell yeah who said anything about living rough?) etc there is no stopping us, well unless we spot a group of unlikely looking huntsman spiders on route! Also by the time we leave Mossman we will have pre tested all our gear in another fantastic location that im sure we'll email about once we've been. So now we'll just tell you a little bit about some of the places we have visited in the far North Queensland;
Atherton Tableland - this is 1000m in altitude and a great drive up and down a cliffside mountain (this was actually on a ford performance car day which i think nathan has emailed a few of you about-boys n their toys!) We went to Morreeba a real country town, Cairo, Tinarroo Dam-fantastic forests, creeks and man made lakes that seriously don't look man made-it was here that i saw my first kangaroo-dead! Also saw alot of the devastation that Hurricane larry had left behind-sad really?
As you know we have been to cairns, along with Port Douglas which is basically an up market version of cairns-we only went to see the beach and use our free $20 dollar coffee club voucher that i won in a raffle at the local pub here in Mossman (a chocolate muffin and hot chocolate never tasted so good being free haha). We've had a night out in Cairns staying at our 2nd backpacker resort, again including a free meal. We ventured out to the world famous Gilligans nightclub only to be greeted with thousands of backpackers, small dance floors and a rubbish DJ-give us Henries anytime lol...seriously but im sure we'll find better places. We went a little out on this trip to Cairn's as we've been working 4 weeks solid and haven't seen a restaurant/cafe in a while so no expense spared, the pizza was cooked on firewood bases and the wine came in a bottle not a glass hehe-ahh to be a non cheapy for a night was goooooooood!! The Mossman pub is fantastic, $5.60 for 2 Schooners of Toohey's-life doesn't get any better (or cheaper) I also won a travel rug and cool bag at the ford car day-my lucks in hey? Beaches-you only have to drive along the coast to find a stretch of unused beach just calling for you to come and spend a few hours on, i keep pinching myself to check they are actually there-of course i know they are when nathan has thrown me in the sea and im dripping wet for the rest of the ride home!
Mossman Gorge is beautiful-running waterfalls, clear creeks that you can swim in or fly in from dangling vines if you really want to?(no crocs!) set in idealistic rainforest-although i wear my walking boots as not too sure about the snakes, trees that are like years old and amazing to look at and all only a 5 minutes drive away from us.
We also visited the Barron Gorge and National Park, waterfalls that fall from 243 meters high, and a river that was just calling out to be canoed on.....yep 2 man canoe, a river and me and nathan-we had fun trying to compete with the steering but once we'd settled into the fact that we may actually fall in we saw some fantastic sights.
On one of our days off we ventured to Cape Tribulation, a car ferry's ride away over the Daintree River into rainforest that meets the ocean. We drove all the way up to Cape Trib along steep winding tracks with waterfalls at one side coming onto the roads, then ventured back down slowly exploring all the trails and beaches along the way (Myall Beach, Noah beach, Thornton Beach, CowBay, Walu Wugrigga look out (there's no point trying to pronounce this as there's loads of silent letters so it actually doesn't sound anything like it looks like-why we don't know?), and finally Cape Kimberly) Of course we stopped off for the world famous Daintree 4 flavors in one pot ice-cream-awesome! On the way back we stopped at Daintree Village-why we don't know as there was nothing there but we suspect there will be quite a few places like this lol.
The Daintree River on the other hand is something else entirely-unbelievable would best describe this place, surrounded by Mangroves Trees that grow neither in land or water it was something else. Not to mention that we were in Tony's speed boat so sod the Cruises that you pay for we did this trip in style (and free!) We saw in total 6 large crocodiles-all as scary as you'd imagine and Tony took the boat far to close to the edge for my liking especially as one them climbed in the water and had his eye on me??? The size of some of the birds was crazy and all totally undisturbed by the fact that we were there-this was their territory! we sped (and i mean sped!) across to Snapper island which is an unhabited island, all national park, surrounded by reef that belongs to the great barrier reef, of course we had a quick snorkel and got a real taste of what our day out on the barrier reef is going to be like. Good job really as i had trouble using the flippers-these things really weren't made for me?? The only plus side to Nathan being able to use them and him taking the mick out of me was that his snorkel was a little too big so he kept getting a mouth full of salt water-a little satisfaction but not much lol. Its OK though apart from looking really silly in the resort pool, I've had a practice and am feeling a little more confident...the barrier reef is the next trip. On the way home we anchored up on a secluded beach at the mouth of the daintree River, had a walk on the beach amongst all the driftwood and new creek that had been created by all the rain this season. (By the way its sunny now and hot!) we drank a bottle of bubbly and left in awe at the nature australia has to offer-sounds corny but seriously special-we can honestly say we 've seen nothing else like it.
Ok so this is most probably the most surreal day we've ever experienced-a day snorkeling on the great barrier reef. To begin the day we were say 20 meters away from a great humpback whale that jumped clear of the water in front of us-you have no idea how amazing this was, and how worried i was that it may try jumping over the boat-it didn't of course! We snorkeled over 3 very different parts of the great barrier reef all closer to the outer edge. NOw that i had the hang of using flippers it gave me more time to actually look around, the fishes were so undisturbed by us, and at one point we had a batch of quite large (as in not able to eat us large but large!) fish actually swimming around with us, it was about this point that i started laughing at them only to be greeted with a mouthful of salt water-lovely! We swam directly through millions of fish all colors and shapes and saw live clams (living coral) and starfish. After a break for lunch we headed over to a near deserted sandbank in the middle of the ocean ( a helicopter had landed also with a small group of people) and anchored onto the most amazing beach we've ever seen surrounded by the clearest bright blue ocean. So beer in hand we speed back over to Snapper Island to anchor up and explore the beach area, on the way we were followed by 5/6 dolphins that just wanted to play with us and show off their own skills, flipping in and out of the water , swimming on their backs etc, they only disappeared when nathan decided to jump in with them-they didn't want to play then lol. Back at home and now the suffering starts-yep you guessed it-SUNBURN!!! Oh my god-yes we lathered up before we left and yes we know we should have put more on and yes we know that even though it was breezy and cold in parts of the ocean that we should have kept an eye on what was happening to our skin-we didn't and its a lesson well learnt (i know most of you are tuttin g now-especially you mum!) Seriously guys we were in pain, the only bit of compensation was the fact that Lenore filled us in on a tale about tony nude sunbathing and actually burning his bits (the small round ones) so bad they blistered-that eased our pain a little. So just a tip for anyone planning to visit Aussie lands-FACTOR 30+ all the way and regular topups-its much more attractive than a back full of peeling skin?
Just a little note before the end-im sure most of you have experienced a power cut-well imagine driving back into a town (Mossman) that has had a complete power cut and is as you'd imagine pitch black-it could have been pretty scary if we were staying somewhere shocking but as you know we aren't-the tea lights were lit and the sky was so clear that the stars felt like you could reach out and touch them, the southern cross was in full light, so out came the pack of cards-i think i mentioned earlier that we have to amuse ourselves somehow and away we played-well until the lights came back on which was 5 minutes into our first game-typical hey!
And finally Home and Away for those of you who watch it (so thats you mum and Rach!) Now bear with me here as i don't know names-i only know this as it appears to be when we sit down for tea? Amanda has a daughter who happens to be the ex of the young lad that lives with sally and his now girlfriend at the same house, they go missing in the bush and Amanda foots the money for the search-they all get found safe n sound, and the daughter of Amanda tells the girlfriend of the boy that loves with sally that she's gonna get him back-ooh the tension. Also there's a girl with blonde hair who is preggers, the babies dad is the teacher so the boy whose the son of the bloke beths dating says its his to protect her but that doesn't go down too well with his girlfriend who is secretly bulimic. Eireen's still the same, and sally's already had another tragedy as she ends up trapped in a fire at the school-but survives. Whatsername that got taken in by that cult is also preggers and not in the cult anymore. There you go no need to watch it-get ya self out in the heat wave!
Take care, we expect gossip from you all, and hope you enjoyed this installment which we hope keeps you going for a while seen as it took me a few days to write lol. We'll send the next in a month or so and hopefully hear form a few of you in between. Our next plan is to head out to the Whitsunday's, then into the bush and back out at Mackay, and onto Brisbane to find a wee bit of work.
Finally, we have become a bit technical and created our own web page, not sure how this will work as we may use this instead of msn or maybe both-who knows, to follow our journey check out, www.statraveljournals.com/toddfletcher and if we fail to get used to this way of doing things we'll be here on msn.
Love ya heaps and heaps
Lindsay and Nathan xx
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