Day 12
Leaving Bargara, we continued to journey south. We were now entering 'big stuff' country. I give the area this name quite simply because the residents seem to like building enormous copies of fruits and vegetables for no apparent reason. This habit would continue for several hundred miles, but today we saw the first such construction, at the aptly named Big Pineapple Service Station. I'll leave it to your imagination to work out the details of this one.
We arrived in Noosa at about 6pm, and had about two hours of daylight left - we decided to hire some bikes and explore the town until it got dark. We had a map and found a lookout which we attempted to reach, but time was against us and dusk fell when we still had about a third of the distance still to cover. The lookout was at the top of a hill and I was getting very tired by this point anyway. When the street lighting ended John decided to wait while David and I continued up the hill to see if we were getting close. We weren't. David went on ahead, and pretty soon all I could see was his torchlight ahead, since I didn't have a torch of my own. We still didn't know exactly where we were, and so we descended to find John. Once back on the street lit roads, we continued to cycle around the perimeter of the town, not wanting to go back over the hill. We still hadn't had any dinner and so it was quite a stroke of luck when a Pizza Hut suddenly appeared ahead.
After dinner we cycled back into the town, and couldn't find the hostel. It wasn't simply a matter of narrowing it down either - we genuinely had no idea which part of town it was in relative to where we were. Even David's legendary navigational skills had failed us. Eventually I worked it out, and at the same time David declared he had too, but unfortunately each of our solutions involved going in different directions. When we finally found the hostel, I believe I was right, but we never quite agreed on that.
- flickr
Day 11
I didn't sleep. Dingo may still officially be in the tropics, but the ventilation in the dorms was a bit too good for my liking and no duvets were provided. Not having brought a sleeping bag, I froze in my bunk.
By the morning I was stiff and hungry - not a very good start to my birthday, but Dingo didn't disappoint as far as breakfast was concerned. Rumours were flying around thick and fast about who was going to be driving our bus now that Phil had been arrested for drug possession. Would the company let him carry on or would they have sent a replacement?
At 9am we discovered that the complaints to HQ had found their mark, and that Phil was no more. His replacement was a hippy type called Steve who clearly belonged in the sixties and couldn't understand why free love and flares had gone out of fashion. His bus decorations clearly showed his experience though - where Phil had made a somewhat simplistic, albeit patriotic, statement with a single australian flag, Steve's redecorating job had installed several hundred photos, a whip, flynet, lots of things that were basically furry dice with character, and an enormous CD/minidisc collection.
The trip to Bargara was largely uneventful, except for spotting a trailer parked on the side of the highway that was used for transporting extremely heavy objects like turbines around. This would have been pretty uninteresting except that the thing had over five HUNDRED wheels. Steve (the new bus driver) knew it was coming up and asked everybody to guess. I think the highest number was around 50. I thought it was a trick question and said zero. I imagined large amounts of freight being sledded across the outback. No, that was a bit silly, actually.
When we arrived at Bargara, Steve told us that we would be in the lap of luxury this evening - the hostel was one of the nicest in the country. He certainly wasn't exaggerating. The place was a sort of village, with a river running though the centre, and very modern accommodations that were spread out into lots of individual houses. Each one slept about 7, and had a lounge area with TV (sofas convert into beds) a double bedroom, a bathroom, small kitchen, and a loft area on a mezzanine floor with 4 single futons. David and I opted for futons while John decided to sleep in the lounge. We would be sharing with two other groups of two.
Having showered (plenty of hot water too), changed, and generally wallowed in the splendour of it all, we went to find the beach. It was getting dark, and a total lunar eclipse was promised for about 9:30pm. This area was much more suburban than Airlie Beach, so finding the shore was a little easier, and as it turned out, it was closer. The roads were still deserted, and as the time approached 9:30, we studiously ignored the sky so as to get the full impact of the eclipse when we got to the darkened beach. Walking on to the sand, I waited a few seconds for my night vision to improve, and then looked up at the sky. Any preconceptions I had about the effect of lunar eclipses were washed away in that instant as I gazed upwards and saw more stars than I thought could ever be seen at the same time. In London massive light pollution obscures the night sky and you would be lucky to pick out many of the brightest stars, but that couldn't have made more stark a contrast to the display now hanging above our heads. Not only was the sky filled with the bright light of millions of stars, but also the planets, several of which were clearly visible, and even areas of shading that I guess may have been galaxies, or part of our own.
My digital camera was quite capable of capturing this scene, but would have required a very long exposure, and I did not have a tripod. This oversight probably cost me one of the finest pictures of the trip, but I don't think I'll be forgetting it in a hurry.
We slept comfortably in our luxury suite/house, for the following day we would be leaving at 9:30am, quite a lie-in by recent standards.
- flickr
Day 10
Otherwise known as "the day Phil got arrested". Leaving Airlie Beach behind, we continued our journey south, next stop Dingo. Dingo was to be our first real taste of the outback - a cattle ranch considerably inland from the coast road we had been using up to now. The plan (as conceived by OzExperience) was to arrive by about 4 or 5 pm, and have a tour before the evening entertainments began.
We didn't quite get that far. About two hours out of Airle Beach, our bus was stopped at what seemed to be a police checkpoint. Phil got out, walked across the road to the police car, and to the general amusement of everyone on the bus, blew into a breathalyser held by the policeman. He then re-boarded the bus and announced cheerily:
Ah, guys - looks like we're gonna have to go back to Airlie Beach" [everyone groans] "so, err, sorry 'bout that, bit of a bummer ay?"Then one of the police officers drove us back the way we had come. Phil, having clearly got himself into a hole, decided that the best thing to do was to keep digging. He continued with his charm offensive, offering the police officer the mic, saying "I've heard the Queensland police are the best in the world". The police officer predictably declined and suggested to Phil that it was probably not a good idea to use a hand held microphone while driving.
The bus stopped in the town of Prosperpine, about a half hour back towards Airlie Beach, where apparently the police had the necessary 'facilities' to deal with Phil. As it turned out, Phil had been in possession of Cannabis, which is illegal in Queensland. Since this is a fairly minor offence compared to being high on the stuff while driving a ten ton bus filled with tourists, the police wanted to check his blood. While they were doing all this, we had a look around Prosperpine.
Prosperpine had virtually nothing of interest to the regular tourist, and several members of the tour group were bored very quickly. One American girl even started asking everyone whether they would like to join her in complaining to Oz Experience's HQ in Sydney by phone. Quite frankly I thought that Phil had performed his role brilliantly - this was after all an adventure holiday, and he was turning a routine bus trip into a real adventure. So I declined. Actually, despite initial slightly dull appearances, Prosperpine is an excellent example of an agricultural centre in Queensland. There was a big sugar cane mill churning out steam nearby, and an enormous railway station where the sugar cane and sugar would be loaded for transport. The town existed for the sugar industry, and the sugar industry is a very important part of the economy of northern Queensland. This was clearly lost on many members of the tour group, who felt much more at home once we got to Dingo.
Getting to Dingo, our destination for the evening, could have been much more complicated had the police not released Phil without charge an hour later. We were back on the road, and Phil was as upbeat as ever. As we moved further inland, and passed the point where we had been turned back earlier in the day, the endless fields of green sugar cane was replaced by endless plains of pretty much nothing at all (see picture). Arriving in Dingo three hours late, the evening was dedicated to party games, drinking round the campfire and line dancing, all to a pre-programmed schedule. The food was good though.
- flickr
