YUNGABURRA

Well Hello again! Due to a combination of not having the computer, a lack of Internet connections and feeling a bit daunted by not having written for so long, it is now time to get back into the swing of the blog again. We are the last vehicle in the large campground at Yungaburra, a large grassy field just out of town where a couple of hundred tents, caravans, buses and motorhomes stayed for the last few days. The rest of the folk departed over the last 24 hours after spending a fantastic weekend at the 25th. Yungaburra Folk Festival, it is quite strange having the whole place to ourselves now. There have been some amazing bands playing in the six venues, plenty of activities and entertainment for the kids including a special lantern parade on Saturday night culminating with a great display of fire dancing accompanied by the tribal rhythms of ten drummers at dusk. We have caught up with quite a few people who we met at Wallaby Creek Festival last month and we have enjoyed the camaraderie and good vibes of the whole Festy thing. The last ten days we have spent with Jonas, Maree, Angus and Merrick, a family from Melbourne who are travelling the same way as us. We all get on very well and we reckon we will see them on and off on the way back down. Had the tinny out on Lake Tinnaroo last week, putting out our yabby trap and trying to catch a barramundi. No success with the fishing side of things but we did manage to get five red claw yabbies, a freshwater lobster type creature which tastes similar to their saltwater cousin. They dammed the Barron River to create Lake/Dam (we have seen signs calling it both) Tinnaroo which is a huge expanse of freshwater, attracting lots of boats for fishing and waterskiing. The weather has been extremely warm this weekend, a taste of things to come. Cairns has been a bit of a trial for us. The saga of the bus and the computer has dragged on and hopefully the final instalment will end tomorrow when a mechanic in Atherton is going fix the oil seal on the timing cover. We have spent a heap of money rebuilding the engine as one of the cylinders had failed and the water from the radiator was going into the motor. We finally picked up Bessie after three weeks in the bus hospital, got 2 kms down the road, (1km away from our caravan park….) on a Friday evening and the temperature gauge went very hot. I pulled over and found water spurting from the engine, got on the phone, a mechanic came straight out and discovered a welch plug had blown out. Three hours later I could drive her back to the waiting family who were all very happy to be “home”. We have a few bugs to iron out until I will have the confidence in her again to start our journey down through the centre back to Vic and hopefully that is the last of the dramas. So we are off to Atherton in the morning to drop the bus off for the day. We will go to Lake Eacham for a swim like we did today. It is a very beautiful lake, the water is a lovely greeny blue colour, (not like the algae!) there are a lot of fish and saw tooth turtles swimming about and the kids can jump off the rock walls into the water. The lake is a crater from an old volcano and is surrounded by rainforest. Just down the road is an amazing curtain fig tree, something I knew little about until now. We have had such a lovely time in this part of the land that it takes the edge off the whole engine rebuild debacle as we would not have seen half the stuff around here or met all these great people that we have in the last six weeks or so.

Quick Update

Cairns has been a bit of a trial really. We got the bus back on Friday afternoon after 3 weeks of work to rebuild the engine, not a cheap excercise but had to be done, a cyclinder bore had failed and water was going into the engine where it shouldn't have. The drive back to the caravan park in the "new" bus was cut short when I noticed the temperature gauge very hot, pulled over,and found water pouring from the side of the engine. It had blown out a welch plug!! 2km from the mechanic.... They sent out a couple of guys to fix it and 3 hours later I drove the last 1 km to the caravan park. We are looking forward to getting back on the road tomorrow, over the Great Dividing Range to Atherton and Lake Tinaroo where I am going to try and catch a barra. We will just have to wait and see how our new engine goes, we do not want to get too far away from Cairns until we are confident that the bus is 100% again. The computer saga also continues, had to go back in again....... So much of this journey to catch up on, will try and write about our Cooktown adventures soon. All the best, A

OFF THE TRACK

So we arrived at Peter and Estelle's place on Thursday and it was as if we had known each other forever. They have four children - Eden(18), Brooke(15), Harmony(12) and Cassie(8)- who got on wonderfully with our mob as we settled down to a few beers and a good chat. When she realised I was a teacher, Estelle showed me a photo of the school the girls go to, Rossville State School, down the road. There are only 28 kids in the WHOLE school and there on the right was Cassie's teacher who looked very familiar. When I showed the photo to Andre, he suddenly recognised the familiar teacher. He is Adrian, a friend of his from back in the London days whom I had met a few times. What a spin out! We hadn't seen Adrian in almost 9 years and to see him there in the photo was just incredible! So we called him up and after a little memory prompting, he and his wife came round and we had a great time reminiscing about times past and catching up on each others lives. We ended up staying 5 days with Peter and the kids (Estelle had to go to Sydney unfortunately)surrounded by the rainforest and learning about how they live. They have bought a hundred acres of untouched forest and over the past six years have worked to clear space to plant an orchard and live. They have a large, wonderful shed for the main living area, with smaller buildings for the bedrooms. They have solar power, a "long drop" (compost) toilet off in the bush and a wonderful hot water system runs from a large drum built into a stone fireplace, above an open fire. You have to think ahead, but it is amazingly good and they are totally self sufficient right through the rainy season when they can be cut off for days on end. We had a wonderfully relaxing time there as the children finished off their school holidays. Then, on Adrian's invitation, our kids started school on Monday. The best thing about the school? Definitely the fact that you don't need to wear shoes!! Nearly all the kids are barefoot and mighty fine soccer players. Tal and Rennie are thoroughly enjoying the experience and enjoying the company of the other students. I will encourage Tal to do his own blog in the next few days, so check the link to the right to hear about all the animal encounters we have had recently! So we will spend the rest of the week here in Rossville with Adrian and then head down the track back to Port Douglas to see our friends Jonas and Maree, before finally picking up Bessie in Cairns. H

Yes, we are still here!

Well where do I begin??????????? We have been without the laptop for quite a while now, that there is an almost impossible amount to catch up on. We are now just North of Cooktown at a spot called Endeavour Falls on the Endeavour River. It is a lovely spot.Set amongst lots of trees filled with birdlife and lovely green grass - which is just as well, as we are in our tent and some of the dusty , stony spots we have stopped in wouldn't be much fun to set up a tent. Poor old Bessie is up for rather a lot of work (which means a huge bill for us!!) and is back in Cairns now getting repaired - at the bus doctor as we have explained to Jarra. We feel sure she is in great hands, but it is a funny thing to give your home to someone to work on! Jarra insists on calling the tent the "bus tent". He found it hard foe the first couple of days. Announcing now and then that he wanted to "go back to the bus now" and not being very happy that we didn't. He is settling in now to our new life under canvas, as we all are. Last weekend we all had a fantastic time at the Wallaby Creek Festival ( see the website at the side),30kms or so south of Cooktown on the Bloomfield track. It is held in the grounds of Home Rule Rainforest Lodge, three and a half kms down a little track off the main track, next to a beautiful creek and surrounded by the most amazing rainforest. As we approached the festival on Friday afternoon we were all quiet as we gazed out on the thick, almost inpenetrable forest that lay on either side of us. Having spent time in the Daintree along with hundreds of other tourists, this somehow seemed to be the real McCoy. The Daintree is mobbed every day by tourists from Cairns and Port Douglas on their whirlwind 4WD tours to see the World Heritage Listed area of incredible rainforest. Now I know that this is necessary to sustain the local economy and stop these important forest from being chopped down, but it certainly ruined the experience for us when we had to sit in traffic and share every lookout and accessable forest space with so many others. We could tell instantly that we were going to enjoy camping at the festival for the weekend. With great luck? Timing? Coincidence? we had an excellent time. The music was not limited to folk, but showcased an array of local and indigenous music. The poetry was funnny and entertaining. The entertainers amazing and impressive. However the thing that struck us all the most was the wonderfully friendly and warm feeling we experienced everywhere we went over the weekend. We hardly saw Rennie and Tal as they were busy socialising and doing activities. After Andre had played a challenging game of chess with Peter at the Chai tent, his wife Estelle invited us all to pitch our tent on their property up the road for as long as we wanted. How generous! So we took her up on her offer and that has led to a whole other story that I will tell in the next blog entry! H