Zelma’s Trip

I arrived in Airlie super early in the morning on the overnight bus.  As usual I managed to get little to no sleep.  As it was around 6AM I had 3 hours to kill until I could collect my campervan so got a taxi to the retail park near to the commercial centre where the collection was from.  After a good while I got another cab to the van place only to be greeted by the owner who appeared to have no idea about the relocation.  Thankfully he was a typical friendly Aussie soul and, having suggested I return in two hours so that he could get the paperwork, offered me a lift back to the shopping centre courtesy of his wife.  Back at the shopping centre I went online and generally faffed around again.  I was on talking terms with a number of the staff at this point and one security guard in particular shared my woes.  When I returned to the commercial area all was hunky dory and I picked up my beautiful campervan which, a short time later, became known as Bernie.  Bernie was a modest but surprisingly large campervan allegedly for two people although it had two double beds so it would have been very comfortable for two!

So Bernie and I started our journey.  The first thing I discovered was that Bernie took a lot longer to stop than I had thought.  I was following a very large lorry which stopped at the same junction I intended to.  Now call me hopeful here but I presumed that my stopping distance might be the same, or even shorter, than a lorry of about 20 metres and probably a similar tonnage but Oh no.  So my first stop in Bernie was a bit of a hasty one.  Then, as I went to pull out of the junction and round the corner I had my second incident.  When the Manager at the car place had given me the tour of the vehicle he had clearly not closed one of the cupboards properly and, as I turned, the entire cutlery tray flew out and smacked against the side of the vehicle.  You can probably imagine the sound of dropping a tray full of cutlery, now multiply that ten fold and add the fear factor of that sound when driving a newly rented vehicle.  After the split second where I thought I had been hit by a cluster bomb I burst into hysterical laughter which didn’t subside for some time.

I was instantly impressed with the countryside.  For some time I had travelled up the coast and, spectacular as the coast had been, I actually had a tear in my eye as I ventured further inland and saw the most amazing mountains.  The mountainscape was magnificant and different to those I had seen previously as all the surrounding land was miraculously flat. 

After a little while I arrived in the town of Bowen where I got out on a couple of occasions to admire and photograph the scenery and beaches.  I carried on with Bernie up the Bruce Highway past numerous creeks called pleasingly Australian names like kangaroo and billabong creek.  As I passed through Home Hill and Ayr I hit sugar country.  I passed a refinery which had the most amazing smell.  It was so like grape nuts it was untrue.  If you don’t know what grape nuts are then just imagine a kind of sugar mixed with molasses smell and also buy some as you have missed out on some great breakfasts!

After a fair old drive I decided to stop at the Billabong sanctuary seventeen kilometres South of Townsville.  I went in quite late as I only got to the place at around ten to four but they let
me in for half price.  It was great as I was practically the only person in there (there were four others I counted).  The way the place was set up was basically a sanctuary with large areas of free ranging animals.  I think largely as I was by myself I got to see some amazing things like a
turtle laying eggs next to the lake and a wallaby/ small kangaroo feeding her Joey.  Actually the latter was a bit worrying as she didn’t seem to appreciate me watching and tried to approach me in an aggressive way.  I thought I might get kicked in the face or something so retreated facing her.  The joey was copying her and following behind.  I also got harassed in the walk through rainforest aviary by some sort of curlew – I forget the name.  I was admiring his plummage and then he started pecking at my legs.  He then followed me everywhere and tried to look menacing before pecking me again.  I wouldn’t have minded but the sign said that he was meant to be timid and only come out at night.  Although it did say something about bizarre mating rituals so maybe that’s what that was all about.  There were also some nearly extinct Australian animals which I had never seen before which was pretty out of this World.  One was a kind of small rodent kangaroo thing and the other had the most beautiful spotted coat.  The koalas were lovely (I’ve developed a bit of a thing for koalas) and as for the wombats, I had no idea how big those guys were, or how comical looking.  There were quolls and pademelons which I don’t remember having seen previously.  The crocodiles were positively huge.  At one point I was looking around an enclosure for ages trying to spot one and then realised it was all of three inches away from my foot which made me jump out of my skin.  The crocs had satisfyingly crocodile type names like Caesar, Snappy Tom, Nipper and Psycho.  I liked the guidelines for the sanctuary too such as, “Objects, such as rocks and sticks, are not to be thrown or poked at crocodiles to provoke a reaction from the crocodile”.  If you saw the size of these beasts you would know why I thought the next warning slightly unnecessary, “Members of the Public are not to enter inside any crocodile enclosure”.  I loved my limited time there, the whole place just felt really special and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone going anywhere near Townsville.

When I arrived in the town of Townsville (is that a truism? if not it should be!) I wasn’t overly excitied.  It looked like Airlie beach but bigger.  That may be a bit harsh of me as I literally drove though but the place did look a bit like another lagoonesque Airlie.  It did look kind of cool and you could see out to Magnetic Island which looked amazing across the sea. 

I decided to carry on further North and it started to get dark.  This led to some slightly unwelcome “duel” like situations with lorries worryingly close to the back of Bernie with their lights reflecting in my eyes from the rear view mirror.  The limit out of town here is one hundred kilometres per hour which may not sound very fast but when you’re in a campervan with a back which feels like a scorpion’s tail, horrendous side winds and things in the road to contend with like level crossings, it feels plenty fast enough without the lorry sat up your backside.  Whilst trying to concentrate and not fall asleep at the same time, my mind was drawn to the various road signs I had passed telling you helpful things like, “Don’t roll in your sleep”.  Actually I thought that one was relatively clever, particularly as I had been speaking to one girl on the bus who had managed to do just that which resulted in her boyfriend having glass growing out of his fingers to this day.

I decided to locate a campsite and phoned a place in Ingham called “Palm Tree” caravan park.  They kindly said that they would wait for me to arrive prior to closing reception for the night.  I did arrive as stated, eventually, as the entire town seemed to be one big diversion around a very small area of roadworks. 

After checking in and driving into my pitch I had the horrible thought that as soon as I opened the side door I would be showered in the cutlery which had so noisily flown across Bernie earlier.  I wasn’t showered in cutlery but the rather filthy ground below was.  I must have looked like such a doofus to all the regular, proper vanning types when Bernie emptied knives and forks all over the show.  I did my best to pick them up and then got into the van.  Once inside I realised how little attention I had been paying to the guy’s talk about the van and its contents.  I took the best part of ten minutes locating the electricity cable to hook Bernie up and then the best part of five actually connecting him.  The real trouble came, however, when I tried to make the bed.  Now, when I say “make the bed” I don’t mean put some base sheet on a mattress.  The table converted into a double bed with the two benches.  Well at least that’s what I had been told but could I see how the darn thing actually did it?  I spent a -very- long time trying every possible scenario I could think of from trying to push the table into the floor to lifting it out of the floor.  I even had the spotlight on my phone on the job trying to see which joints were welded and which could possibly be screwed etc, but to no avail.  In the end I decided to take a wander and saw two other youngish blokes.  I automatically assumed, being the age they were, that they were in a campervan.  Somehow this meant, in my mind, that they must be adept at such things as table to bed conversions.  Much to my delight, as otherwise I would have felt like a prize plum, they weren’t.  The two of them spent almost as much time cursing and scratching their heads as I did but eventually, when one of them had removed the table top I removed the pole and voila, a bed was formed.  After sorting the bed out I realised that Bernie had been particularly loud for a reason, all the top windows had been open!  Having sorted out Bernie, I had a shower and went to bed which was to be one of my best night’s sleep in a long time