A long time on a bus...and a lovely stop at the end of it.

The night of the 24th of July 2010 will be forever be lost to us, spent as it was on a greyhound bus making it's slow, slow way down the coast between Townsville and Agnes Waters. I really don't recommend making 14 hours on a bus part of any Australian trip you may, but if it has to be done (and the place is so huge, it probably will have to be), ask for Colin the driver. An old guy in long socks and shorts (most older men here dress this way.. it's unsettling at first, probably because men in the UK are, perhaps correctly, allergic to wearing shorts), his commentary was the most surreal I've encountered. He would describe all the things we could buy at a rest-stop, with little sound effects for 'eating', 'drinking' and 'having a smoke' (coughing), and rambled off on little, slightly abstract descriptions of places we passed through ('Airlie Beach: home of sun, sand and sin... I like a bit of sin, myself'), delivering it all in a wonderful, soothing, late-night DJ style tone. Thus he was the perfect accompaniment on a long, disorientating and mostly uncomfortably bus journey. Alas he left us as Rockhampton, but we were mostly asleep by this point, so it was ok. Apart from Col, the journey was mostly a blur of rest-stops, trying to find a comfortable sleeping position across chairs, and suppressed Are-We-Nearly-There-Yets. Still, one guy was stuck on the bus for 28 hours from Cairns-Brisbane, so we could consider ourselves let off lightly!

We'd decided to spend two nights in Agnes Waters, both to break up the bus journey just a little, and also to make ourselves feel less bad for skipping a quite hefty section of the Queensland coast. We weren't really bothered about missing the tourist spots, but Agnes Waters, a tiny beach community revolving about sun, sand and surfing, was probably the perfect place to recover from the bus journey and get ourselves sorted for our next wwoofing place. Our hostel, Cool Bananas was a leafy oasis - when we stumbled in sleepy eyed from the bus we were greeted with a peaceful hostel, hammocks, free tea (and milk! this is very important. very, very important!), and even two dreadlocked guys plinking away on an acoustic guitar and ukulele, respectively.

It was another beachy-stop... we spent most of our time on the long sandy main beach, walking down it, spinning poi on it, reading on it. We caught a nice sunset at the historic town of 1770 (the first place in QLD that Captain Cook struck upon in...1770!) too.

...And that was it, really... very nice to do but fairly boring to read about, probably!

From Agnes Waters were moving on three hours further south, to our WWOOF hosts in Childers, and perhaps justifiably nervous about it, after our last experience!

written by

LizIsHere on July 25, 2010 from Seventeen Seventy, Australia

from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010

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