Day 1
Just a bit of mud
Dec 26th 2009
Christmas wasn’t quite Christmas this year. Not like I have been much of a holiday person in past years, but still, Christmas means cold, hot chocolate, sugar cookie decorating etc. This year it was about 80 degrees, and I worked. I wasn’t complaining since that meant double wages, yes please and thank you. After work LJ and I drove to Inverloch where her family’s beach house is. After a lovely Christmas with the MacArthurs we left around 10am on the 26th. The first day we drove 7.5 hours to West Wyalong where we planned to camp. Being on a very tight budget we split a less then average café burger and decided to find a side road to camp on. In the process of this we saw a potential spot just off to the side of the local footy ground. By this time it had been raining for a good two hours and everything was quite moist to say the least. Our source of transportation on this trip is a very small mazda purple bubble that we have now named as “Bubsie”. Half around the footy oval we got stuck in the mud. EFF. We called road side service and even they told us that we weren’t getting out.
We made the most of our situation and accepted that this is where we had to sleep. Conveniently the footy field had a three-sided shelter over its bleachers, with one open area at the end big enough for our tent and out of the mud, rain and wind. We even had hot water left in the thermis for some tea, perfect.
The next day we woke up early, the rained had stopped and most of the puddles were gone. LJ and I put our brains together and after a mix of sticks and some sand we found we manage to get ourselves out of the mud! Pretty impressed with ourselves we were.
Just a bit of water
Day 2
Dec 27th 2009
The rain hadn’t left us yet. We were caught in numerous rain storms along the way, even being turned back and having to take a different road. We finally made it to the Warrumbungle national park where it was all blue sky’s. Beautiful camp ground with showers thankfully to wash the mud off from the night before. I was pretty excited about how tame the kangaroos were, so I slept with the kangaroos. Around dinner time the rain started again and so did the lighting, anddddd didn’t stop until the next morning when we found ourselves flooded out. The creek (which was now a river) had risen almost a meter over night.
Nothing we could do about it, so LJ took a nap in the car and me on the picnic table. I attempted a friendship bracelet from my camp counsellor days and failed, not to self: even number strings not odd. After using all my phone credit calling every ranger in the area we finally had two rangers come rescue us around 1pm. It had stopped raining for a few hours and the creek already went down. They cleaned the debris from under the bridge and the water dropped even lower. They joked about grabbing the surfboards we had on top of the car if we got swept away, I didn’t laugh. Luckily we made it across and drove for the rest of the day to catch up on time. Day 3/4
Lots of driving, but it needed to be done. Not gonna lie, it made me smile every time LJ slammed on the brakes not to hit a kangaroo crossing the road. Hah, a kangaroo, crossing the road, amazing. We stopped in another one store, one pub town for breakfast and started chatting to an English guy who now claimed Australia as his home. When we said our good bye he gave us his address and phone number and offered his front yard for us to camp in. We were pretty happy about this because Airlie Beach is a pretty spendy place.
The environment changed slow, but I was happy to see some real outback at the end. No towns for miles, red dirt and short trees. Ant hills in thousands, as high as my waist, cows with lots of skin and kangaroo road kill.
Day 5
Dec 30th 2009
Finally!! After a short 4 hours drive we finally made it to Townsville, Queensland. It’s extremely tropical, rains off and on, but warm enough to take a shower in. Lots of palm trees and plants I’ve seen in Hawaii, not to mention an ocean that you can’t swim in because of the jelly fish. Tonight we are staying in a hostel, and head out early tomorrow to magnetic island for new years!! Full moon party on the beach, should be pretty incredible.
Day 6
Dec 31st 2009
Happy birthday Ben O’neill!! A new years eve baby, you are, have a good birthday.
New years eve! New years eve!
It absolutely dumped rained the night before and still continued through the morning. LJ and I had done laundry the night before which didn’t matter now, where it hung wet as ever on the line, so not wanting to add to the collection we threw on our bathing suits and took it down.. haha. We took the ferry over to Magnetic Island in the morning and got to our hostel at base backpackers around noon. This hostel is amazing, huge bar, dance floor, pool, kitchen and laundry. Not to mention its literally ON the beach. I sit here now writing this blog next to the pool which is also next to the beach. Although the ocean up here is packed with jelly fish, which means no swimming, it’s still nice to wake up to the sound of the ocean and look off into the beautiful turquoise water. 
We made friends with the other guys camping next to us and had pre drinks outside their tent. After yelling at the Japanese girls that they were lame for going to bed before midnight, we went down to the party around 8pm. The byron bay native we made friends with managed to score some VIP passes for us, which meant access to the pool all night. I wore a dress with a bathing suit underneath so pool time was easy access. Pool toys some how meant the game of who can stay on the longest. Somehow I managed to drown a few skinny Swedish boy but overall I lost at this game often. I met people from France, Sweden, Germany, Malaysia, Canada, Japan, England, Denmark, Switzerland. It was quite global, and it felt great. *btw Rena, sawatsksdf is a province? I didn’t believe this Canadian until he showed me his license. I was stereotyped all night once again, but I’ve gotten to a point where I think its hilarious. Yes, if you don’t shut up I will go get one of my 8 guns and shoot you. We danced, drank, swam, drank, danced, swam and at 5:30am when the sun came up, it decided it was bed time. Happy New years, from Australia.
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