Cairns

Our stay in Cairns was great thanks largely to the 5 star caravan park.  The Cairns Coconut Resort offered heaps of entertainment for the kids.  There were movie nights 3 nights a week, pancakes for breakfast on Thursdays (yum), a water park, 2 pools, one with 2 spars, 18 hole putt-putt course, 2 huge jumping pillows, giant chess set, basketball ring, volley ball court, tennis court and much more.  Check these out:

So as you can imagine, the kids didn’t want to go too far from the caravan park too often, but we did see some of Cairns’ other attractions such as the Cairns Night Market and The Lagoon, a huge pool by the main town ‘beach’.

Beside the caravan park, there were 2 highlights for our Cairns stay; the first of which was Jodi and horse-mad Ella going for a horse ride:

The photos of Jodi were not too flattering and were not allowed to be included!

The second highlight was the cable car ride to the Kuranda Markets, and the train ride back down the mountains.

Cairns also gave us the opportunity to get a few things fixed before we head north.  We weren’t sure how far we would get with the wet approaching, but we were going to give it a go…

Kununurra to Cairns

Kununurra was one of our longest stops, 5 nights.  In Kununurra we:

1.     Checked out the rum distillery,

2.     Saw heaps of mango and sandalwood plantations,

3.     Killed heaps of cane toads,

4.     Checked out some of the local walks and lookouts, and

5.     Performed some maintenance on the TrakShak and car.

With the heat, humidity, and rain, everything was tiring.

The highlight of our stay was a scenic flight over Lake Argyle, the Bungle Bungles and the Argyle Diamond Mine.  Yes, Jodi allowed all of us (including herself) on a single engine bug smasher!  This was particularly brave of her as the previous day we had walked to the top of the Kununurra lookout to find a memorial plaque dedicated to a helicopter pilot and 3 girls that crashed during a scenic flight over the Bungle Bungles.  Jack sat next to the pilot and had a turn at flying the plane and still we didn’t crash!

Lake Argyle is HUGE!  These photos won’t do it justice.

 

Next we flew over the Bungle Bungles.  These are truly spectacular; the colours and layers, the hills and the valleys.  The glossy brochures are no exaggeration.

Then we saw the Argyle Diamond Mine.

 

Much to Jodi’s relief we made a gentle landing and it was over.

So then it was time to leave Kununurra for our next big leg to Cairns.  We said our farewells to the Eaton family as they were heading back to Broome where David was starting a job on Koolan Island (I worked there when I was 18!)

We were following The Savannah Way, an east-west series of roads from Broome to Cairns.  The Savannah Way is about 3,000km long.  It makes its way through lightly wooded grass land.

Lake Argyle was our first stop.  Up close it is particularly beautiful with the hills rising from the water in so many places.  At the caravan park the pool has the best view.  As usual it didn’t take Ella long to meet new friends.  We caught heaps of catfish in the spillway with Jodi catching a good sized black brim.  A lot of people think the catfish are poor eating, like carp or trumps, but apparently they are sold to Perth fish and chip shops.  We cooked some and it tasted fine to us.

Next we made a detour into the Gregory National Park, the highlights of which were homemade pizza, killing cane toads and a camp fire.

If you ever get the chance to drop into Daly Waters, do it!  It is one cool pub.

Another interesting stopover for a couple of nights was King Ash Bay Fishing Camp.  Apparently there are heaps of salties around but we didn’t see any.  Still, we camped on a high bank and didn’t go near the water.  Of course we didn’t catch a fish either.  Again a highlight was having a camp fire.  This is the view of and from our campsite at dawn.  That’s right, we are up most mornings at DAWN!

Then it was time to head for Lawn Hill which has been highly recommended.  You never know what you will find on the side of the track.

We chose to follow a short cut via King Fisher Campground.  The campground was based at a station homestead.  The young couple there were very surprised to see us as they thought the beginning of the wet had scared off all travellers until next year.  The next morning, after they assured us that the track to Lawn Hill was OK we headed off.  It was a trip of just over 100km.  Seventy kilometres into it and we were crossing some flood plains.  We had crossed a fair bit of mud by now, but we got bogged!  It was a dirty, muddy affair getting out, but after 6 hours we did.  We decided the best course of action was to return the way we came and give Lawn Hill the miss, but just a couple of kilometres from our first bog, we got bogged again.  As the sun was about to set with some storms around we had no choice but to spend the night in the car with mud and water all around us.  The mozzies were terrible!  It was an early start and by lunchtime we were on our way.  We spent the night at Burketown – in a unit!  It took hours to clean the mud off the car and TrakShak.

The next main stopover was the Undara National Park, the home of the world’s longest lava tubes.  They were created during a time when there were over 70 active volcanoes in this area, about 20,000 years ago.  These tubes are huge in places, about 15m in diameter, and are about 20km from the volcano itself.  There are heaps of tubes from this and other volcanoes in the area.

Finally we left the flat, low wooded grasslands of the Savannah Way and hit some hills and dense forest.  We had lunch in Atherton (the first time we have had Maca’s since Karratha), and descended from the tablelands into Cairns.  Destination: Cairns Coconut Holiday Resort; Star Rating: 5; Awards: Winner of Best Caravan Park in Australia 5 years running.  Need I say more…