Road-trip to Cairns

The van

Does this explain the $1 a day rental price?

Well a campervan came up at the last minute and so the holiday was on. They let us hire it for $1 a day and as long as we got it from Sydney to Cairns in 8 days they'd throw in $210 worth of fuel as well. Can't complain about that.

Crossing the border

We put another 3500 km on the clock which had already done over a staggering 360,000 but despite this the van was great. Apart from the fact that the rego was out of date making it illegal, the van was super and made for a very pleasant place to stay.

Surfers Paradise (?!)

Howard feels at home in Noosa

We set off north and did pretty much all of NSW in one go stopping a couple of hours short of the border in Yamba (rubbish). We then stayed a night in Byron Bay (hippy town but pretty nice), Lamington NP (could have been a bit quieter) and then arrived in Noosa. This place is magic with great food and lovely people so we stayed a second night meaning we had a real slog up to Mackay the day after.

Fishing in Noosa

From Mackay we headed onto Townsville, which is a good place to go out of an evening, before arriving in Cairns 8 days later on time.

A long day's drive

We then had two full days in Cairns to visit the reef (snorkeling with turtles!) and recover before the flight home.

Cairns at last

Out on the reef