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Chris and Charly Down Under

a travel blog by chrischarly

Bye bye tuk tuks
Bye bye negotiating
Bye bye, 'Hello Mister'
Bye bye long bus rides
Bye bye heavy backpacks
Bye bye savings...
And G'DAY 'down under'!

After plenty of time spent in South East Asia, we have just left Australia after having an amazing time driving around for almost 3 months in a camper and are now in New Zealand doing the same :)

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The Olgas

Uluru (Ayers Rock), Australia

We couldn’t be bothered to wake up for Sunrise this morning but still got up early and went to Kata Tjuta which is still in the National Park and better known as the ‘Olgas’.

A scary-looking spider

Chris climbing up

Me a little behind

We spent the morning walking around and exhausted ourselves once again before driving out to Kings Canyon National Park for another long walk tomorrow, staying once again in a paid campsite with pretty rubbish facilities compared to other paid ones we’ve stayed in for the money spent, but it was nice to go for another swim though in the pool although it did have some weird biting beetles in the water.

written by

chrischarly on October 24, 2011 from Uluru (Ayers Rock), Australia

from the travel blog: Chris and Charly Down Under

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The beautiful Kings Canyon

Kings Canyon Resort, Australia

Over looking the Canyon

Chris climbing up

Got up early once again to go and see The Kings Canyon.

Getting pretty tired now!

Another nice view

It was a right mission of a walk that took 4 hours at the top of the canyon and to the bottom of the Garden of Eden.

Standing on the edge, or at least close to it!

So amazingly beautiful!

But it was so worth the effort and the views were outstandingly beautiful.

Fantastic view!

Then, off we drove the 500kms back to Alice Springs, did a little shopping and then headed off to the West MacDonnell ranges but unfortunately missing the turn and went the wrong way! Long, long day and we are very tired people.!

written by

chrischarly on October 25, 2011 from Kings Canyon Resort, Australia

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Donkeys, Spiders and Mice

Tennant Creek, Australia

Fantastic cool off

Drove back on ourselves and finally ended up at the MacDonnell ranges and went to Ellery Creek Big Hole for a nice refreshing early morning swim. By refreshing, I mean bloody freezing! Many other people went down, dipped their feet in the water before running off scared, Chris and I were the first and only people in the water all morning before some other brave people joined us.

A great water hole

Nice relaxing morning before we continued driving for the next few days. In the evening we made it further than we thought we would staying 100kms south of Tennents Creek. The campsite we chose was recommended in our Camps book, but we can safely say that it was our worse one yet…

The ground was almost swimming with ants it was impossible to sit outside or even go outside without running, a ton of mosquitoes, a wild donkey that attempted to kick Chris, but luckily he ran away in time, tried eating our food,

Stupid bloody donkey

tried breaking into the van by bashing it all night at almost broke our wing mirrors. Not only that, a Huntsman spider invited it’s way into our van and scared me half to death and then awoke in the night to hear rustling in the front and petrified it was a snake, we tried to investigate, but found nothing until morning when Chris was about to get in and drive and found tiny mouse poos on his seat.

written by

chrischarly on October 26, 2011 from Tennant Creek, Australia

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Now in Queensland

Mount Isa, Australia

Chris looking gorgeous

After a rubbish sleep, back on the road all day to see how far we can get. We did manage to drive almost to Mount Isa but it was a proper boring day. Miles and Miles of pure nothingness to look out of the window at…

The view out of the back window. aka nothing

Miles and miles of nothing

In the evening we camped up, too hoot for anything else but cheese sarnies and played some card games with a couple we keep bumping into.

written by

chrischarly on October 27, 2011 from Mount Isa, Australia

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Well-hidden sunnies

Normanton, Australia

We headed from our rest stop to Mount Isa to get fuel and go to the visitor’s info. After passing pretty cheap fuel on the outskirts we continued on thinking it would be the same, it wasn’t. We headed to visitor info and it wasn’t open so decided to head back out to the first fuel stop. Refuelled and watered and noticed they had free showers for the truckers, so made the most of it! All refreshed we headed back to town, went to visitors info and then to get a new jerry can funnel to reduce the chance of Chris bursting into flames with our leaky one. All done we headed out of town until about 20kms out I went to put on my sunnies but couldn’t find them.

Having a quick stop over

After a bit of panic and Chris requesting a full search I was adamant I had left them in the shower room back the other side of Mount Isa. We headed back but couldn’t find them and no-one had handed them in, oh bugger, but wait, what’s this, under the pillows! Another Charly great search = an extra 40+km’s. This made Chris grumpy for a good while, but it was at least better than a grumpy Charly if she had lost them. The rest of the day was continuous driving of about 800kms, the last 200 were very tricky at dusk and with 100’s of roos unhappy with life and wanting to have a close encounter with our bull bar. We made it by dark to a nothing camp, Chris made me Macaroni cheese and ate cold chili from a can, then sleep!!

written by

chrischarly on October 28, 2011 from Normanton, Australia

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Ice cold water

Ravenshoe, Australia

Really nice waterfall

After waking at our roadside stop, we headed further towards Cairns, stopping at Millstream Falls for a look then stopped at Ravenshoe visitor centre were a nice man gave us lots of useful info. Heading further we got to Millaa Millaa falls where Chris braved the cold water for a swim under the falls.

How the curtain fig tree was made

Curtain fig tree

Curtain fig tree

We then took a brief de-tour to go and see a huge curtain fig tree which was pretty impressive and after this we headed into Atherton and did some shopping before finally getting to Lake Tinaroo to camp the night. Enjoyed a glass of wine and a bacon and Camembert Sandwich. Yummy!

written by

chrischarly on October 29, 2011 from Ravenshoe, Australia

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Turtle spotting

Atherton, Australia

Bottom feeders!

Had a nice day with not doing a great deal. In the morning we drove to Lake Eacham and did a little turtle spotting before going for a nice early morning swim for an hour.

Then we made our way out of the Atherton Tablelands and headed North towards Port Douglas where we found a nice little place to camp and got chatting to a nice guy who was a dozer driver and a snake catcher who gave us this amazing drawing he had done of a crocodile, just need to find a way to get it safely back home now.

written by

chrischarly on October 30, 2011 from Atherton, Australia

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Charlie's Restaurant

Port Douglas, Australia

Such a lovely beach

We drove up to Port Douglas and down the coast taking a look at some of the nice beaches along the way to Cairns. In Cairns we went for a nice swim at the huge free pool and chilled out there for a while before checking into a campsite in town. We then went for another swim in their swimming pool and then got dressed up to treat ourselves to some dinner out. We had heard that ‘Charlie’s’ a restaurant in town did an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet for $25pp and there would be loads of lobster, crab, prawns etc. etc. So we were really looking forward to it.

Bubbly and prawns

After ordering a bottle of bubbly we checked out the buffet and unfortunately it was not what we expected, strange-tasting oysters, cold prawns, cold mussels, a little sushi and bland Western type food. But we paid so were determined to make the most of it, leaving very full but pretty unsatisfied. But we still made sure we had a good evening, but vowed to not eat in a budget buffet again.

written by

chrischarly on October 31, 2011 from Port Douglas, Australia

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Trains and Sky rails

Kuranda, Australia

We left the campsite first thing this morning and drove to Freshwater Railway Station to go on the scenic train journey up to Kuranda.

Going in a tunnell

Loads of people waiting

Chris by the train

It was a nice journey on a really old train which lots of tight bends, tunnels and Bridges up the Mountainside. Once in Kuranda we wandered around for a while, but what was once a cute little village in the rainforest has now morphed into a massive tourist hub but we made the most of it by getting all the free samples we could get our hands on.

View from skyrail

What a cassowary is...

When we had had enough we then took the Sky train back down to Cairns making a couple of stops along the way to walk around. Had a great time, but it did make our wallet a lot lighter at $99pp for the 14km train journey and 7km sky rail, but worth it. We then took a drive out to Babinda in the evening and stopped at The Boulders at a free campsite and spotted the rare and endangered cassowary bird! I followed it for ages until it ran off into the bush and unfortunately without a photo.

written by

chrischarly on November 1, 2011 from Kuranda, Australia

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Off to Beth's...

Mission Beach, Australia

The lovely water

Windy but gorgeous beach

Didn’t do anything too strenuous today, went to MacDonald’s to take advantage of their free Wi-Fi and managed to book our New Zealand- Fiji flights which we found for a bargain! Then made a quick stop off at Mission Beach, but too many stingers for a swim and then drove to Townsville and gave Chris’ parent’s friend, Beth a call and turned up at her lovely House for a couple of nights.

written by

chrischarly on November 2, 2011 from Mission Beach, Australia

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chrischarly
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