What do you want?

Several times in this blog we have referred to the kindness of the people we meet. “Hi mate, how are you doing?” is somewhat a standard greeting and people seem to mean it. On the other hand we sometimes are amazed by the bluntness of shop- or barkeepers. Entering a café and having to wait for too long a time while being totally ignored by the barpeople who seem to have more important things to do, then a grunt for your order. First have to proof that you are a client before being shown the toilets.

In Millaa Millaa I went to the pub to buy a sixpack of beer. The pub also is the local “bottleshop”. In this state (or the whole country?) you can only buy alcoholic drinks in such a shop, nowhere else. When I entered this pub and the barman, a big midle aged man with shortcut hair and a moustache, asked me what I wanted? I told him that it was beer that I wanted. Then he more or less shouted: “What do you want?” As I'm not familiar with the kinds of beer in these regions I thought it might be a good idea to ask him if there was any special beer he could offer. Before I was finished he roared again: “What do you want? I'm not a mind reader”. At that moment I thought that this was perfectly true and that he was certainly much less than that and I just mentioned a brand that I saw on a bottle in the fridge. Settled. Imagine such a guy running a shop or pub in a bigger town. No clients returning the second time.

But to be honest, most experiences are the opposite. Maybe that's why these occurences are so striking.

Leaving the Tablelands

Saying goodbye to Jen and Tony was hard. We had had such a good time with them. But a traveller has to travel, so the inevitable has to happen. Tony guided us out of the town and there we were on our own again. Beautiful weather and beautiful environment, no wind. We rode to Millaa Millaa, a small town at the south side of the high lands. It was only 43 kms, easy. Less easy than you would think, the road is undulating and we hate that. It goes up and you have to work hard, only to race down to the same altitude as before, and continuously so. So tiring. So these few kms appeared to be enough. We ended the day on a beautiful caravan park at our highest point until now: 869 absl, right after a “pass” of even 925.

Millaa Millaa, what's in a name, is a junction where there are some small shops and a pub and only some houses in the neighbourhood. We, citydwellers, wonder how people can live and feel well in this, what we find, solitude.

Atherton

The ride up to Cape Tribulation was long and had some hard hills in it, 85 kms. After 40 kms we had to cross the Daintree river with the ferry and then we were totally enclosed in the tropical rainforest. The road ofter ran close to the marvoullous beaches of North Queensland, but we didn't see much of them as the dense trees blocked the view. The cape is a very quiet and lonely place in the rain- and mangrove forest, some campsites and small shops, that's it. The sealed road ends here and those who want to continue further north, to Cooktown, need 4-wheel drives.

For us it is the most northern point of our Australia-tour. From here it'll be southbound only.

The next day we first rode the same road back, but after the ferry we took a right and arrived in the Daintree village. There Dean and Anja run their Crocodile Express river cruises. We were offered a one hour cruise, the last one of that day. Though during all other cruises that day 4 big salt water crocodiles were spotted we didn't see any. As a matter of fact, apart from lots of birds, we have not seen any  living specimen of the typical Australian wildlife until now. We did see many roadkills though.

The next days we rode south and just after Mossman we left the coast and got on to the Atherton Tablelands. Atherton, a rather pretty town, is situated on an altitude of app. 800 meters. So it was real climbing, made tough by a very strong headwind. The town fortunately has a good bikeshop. I needed one, as I had a broken spoke in my rear wheel. It was caused by a rock flicked up from under a car tyre. Robbert of the Northern Bikeshop could repair it and to be sure we bought some spares as well.

There is an active cycle group in Atherton and we found refuge at the house of two of its members, Jen and Tony, Warmshowers hosts as Warmshowers hosts are meant to be. We stayed 2 nights with them, they gave us an extensive excursion on the tablelands, with the rainforest, dairy fields, volcanic craters and a woodcarving exhibition as an extra.

After Atherton we will leave the Tablelands in two days and reach the coast again. We have to head south in order to reach Brisbane in time, still quite a distance to go.

Port Douglas

We left Cairns on Friday at about 14.00 hrs. The road runs mainly directly along the coast, which provided us many times with splendid views of the Pacific Ocean. But the road appeared to be rather busy, with cars sometimes passing very closely, there mostly was no cycle lane, sometimes hardly any shoulder.

Night falls quite suddenly here and at 18.00 you definitely need lights. Alas we don't have them on our sophisticated riding machines. So in the end we had to race in order to reach our destination in time. It was after 65 kms that we pitched our tent in the dusk at Pandanus Caravan Park. Good facilities, comparable to Europe, but strikingly many caravans towed by 4-wheel drives. It was to be our first night in a tent after last year's unfortunate events.

As we couldn't get on a boat for a visit to the Great Barrier Reef on Saturday, we hung out in the pretty and very well kept touristic centre of the village. Shops, bars, restaurants, terraces. Full with people watching the Grand final of “Australian rules”, a kind of rugby I would say. Someone told us that the significance can be compared with the Champions League final in Europe.

On Sunday we snorkled on the reef. The cliché is true: it is magnificent. We sailed out to the outer reef, that is about 60 kms out in the ocean. We visited three locations and really saw species of coral and fish that we could not have imagined if we tried. It is an expensive excursion, but once here you cannot let this pass unseen. And the services provided by the staff on board are boundless. They provide everything, gear, food, a helping hand and explanation of the eco-system. Well guys, great job!

Tomorrow we'll head for Cape Tribulation, the most northern point of this trip. If all goes as expected we'll pitch our tent in the middle of the tropical rainforest just a few meters from the white beach.

A picture of the route our boat made to the outer reef:

Cairns, Qld, Australia

From door to door it took us 33 hours. That is from our frontdoor in Breda to the door of Dean and Anja's house in Cairns. We survived it relatively fresh. We were very well taken care of in the aircrafts of Singapore Airlines and Virgin Australia. Our bikes came out intact as well, though in Sydney the cardboard boxes appeared to be in a very bad shape, as if they had been out in the rain. The Australian customs people showed that the general cliché that says that Aussies are laidback and friendly people is true, they taped the boxes up for us, so that we could continue to the next flight.

In Cairns Dean and Anja stood waiting for us and drove us to their tropical home close to the small airport. We got in touch with these very kind people and experienced cyclists through Warmshowers.

The next day we spent with activities like putting the bikes together again and do some shopping: getting Australian simcards, buying a gascontainer for the stove and what took most of the time, finding a replacement for Eveline's Kobo-ereader. The device was a present given to her at her retirement. It should make the next bike tours lighter, as it would save the weight of one pannierfull of books. To our disappointment the thing appeared to be dead when Eveline wanted to use it in the plane. Helpdesks and all the rest that we tried didn't solve the problem, so in the end we bought a replacemnt. This was not easy, since there are not many bookshops here, and ereaders appear not to be sold there, but only in electronics shops and then it's only Kindle. At last the adequate young lady of the information desk in the public library knew a shop where they had Kobo. This appeared to be true and the people there were so pleased to be able to get Eveline back to reading again that they gave a 20 dollar discount as an extra. How about nice Aussies?

Tomorrow Dean will take us on a small tour to the Esplenada, the beach-boulevard and most likely we'll head north after that to Port Douglas. One of the things to be done there is an excursion to the Great Barrier Reef; glass bottom boat, submarine or just snorkling, we're going to see what will happen.

Back on our wheels again

We had a good “summer of recovery”. Now we have said goodbye to neighbours, friends and family. Our house is spic and span and we emptied some wardrobes, so that the new temporary inhabitants will feel OK. We are reading our beloved newspaper NRC for the last time and we have nothing more to do than wait for tomorrow morning 07.00 hrs for a taxi mini-van to pick us up and take us to Schiphol airport. Then, after 27 hours, we hope to make a safe landing in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, where we will be picked up by our new warmshowers hosts. They have already biked a large part of the route we want to do, so there will be a lot of information exchanging. All in all, we're back on our wheels again.

Renewed plans

As you may have read in About us our perspectives have now, spring 2012, turned positive again. We feel very happy. We want to use this summer to get our physical condition back into the old shape again.

Meanwhile we received an invitation to attend a wedding in November. We know the bridegroom from Cambodia, as we have spent a few days riding together in December 2008. A year later he stayed with us in Breda for a week. He is Australian and lives in Brisbane and there the wedding will take place.

We plan to go there by bike.The first part of this journey, to Cairns, we'll do by plane though :-). Our departure is scheduled sometime in late September.

So check the blog around that time. Until then.