End of the Tropics, 1900km, left side of the road

So the past few days has been packed with a fair bit of driving, 1900km to be exact which puts us into Brisbane! The journey has been what was expected and shared by many, sugar cane, more sugar cane and then just when you thought it was about to change, more sugar cane.

Thus far the adventures of aussie caravan'ing has left the little van with one battle wound a overhang at a mall nicked my top a bit creating a bit of hole (1" x 3") with only a fraction of it making it all the way through, but a hole none the less =(. Thus far I have adapted well to left hand driving, no wrong turns or wrong side of the road (knock on wood). The silly overhand that got me was purely for decoration, didnt realize it stuck out so far when trying to find a sparcely available mall parking space!

My bone with Australia is calling this stuff bbqing, I was all excited to have 6 weeks of bbq every night, but this is really just a giant electric sometimes gas frying pan, no open flames in what I would suggest is a requirement to call something a bbq, an open flame. Cleaning after each use is also an art I am having some time to learn, seems it takes me just as long to clean the "bbq" than it does to cook the meat. And I am not sure yet how it knows to turn itself off, other than a timer.

So having been craving bbq and mostly a bbq steak that turned into more like a pan fried steak, we set out a few nights later into a local steak restaurant, only to have a similar experience. The steak really did seem fried and not bbq'd/open flame cooked. On another occasion, now really craving a properly cooked steak we ate a great meal in Brisbane with a juicy flame cooked steak ;).

We've had an amazing experience and a few great experiences since the last update, the amazing was a turtle rockery, a beach where turtles come to lay eggs. Not just the wee little guys, but some big logger head girls come and its the season for laying eggs! So we arrived at about 7pm with something like 100 other people that night and are broken down into groups, group one sees the first turtle to arrive, group two waits for a second and so on, the night before group three waited until 1am for a third turtle. Luckily about 9:00pm our group two was called into action and onto the beach we went. We got to see the eggs dropping into the hole,  then momma covered them up, waddled back into the ocean and disappeared into the nights waves in seconds. Oh after they did an ultrasound while she was doing her 111 egg laying. Then we got to assist with relocating the eggs to a safer location, each of us holding 1 to 2 recently laid eggs to its new home. The location is run by the government and everything we did apparently has been tested and proven not to disturb the turtles and improves their survival rate, so they say! It was all about light, no cameras until a certain point, no flash lights, all so the turtle knows which way is shore and which way is egg laying fertile beach ;)

Onwards south and into Brisbane region we went, stopping at the Steve Irwin Zoo for some up close experiences with roo's and koala's (naturalist at the zoo even admitted most people, not just me think of them as koala bears). They are pretty cute, hard not to want to sneak one home, they seem to have lots =). We also went to a place where we could get a bit closer and hold a Koala, we also arrived earlier so the roo's were actually hungry unlike our stop at australia zoo, it was too late in the day, they were all full. On a side note it was a torrential down pour when we arrived at the Australia zoo, otherwise weather has been great.

Speaking of weather, we crossed the tropic of Capricorn on the way south and am I glad to have crossed that ;) The northern humidity is not my friend, its still warm and some humidity here but man the north had us on full a/c 7x24 never turning off the truck until power was plugged in to keep it running. Where now we've been able to adjust and use it more for comfort than raw survival =) and its not even full summer yet.

Pricing! Its tough being a coca cola guy here, in Cairns I was having to pay 4$ for a single coke at a small grocery store, a 30 pack of coke is in the 45$ range!! Essentially a few things are double the price, although further south it seems to be getting a bit more normal but still high. For the smokers out there, the anti smoking signs indicate a pack runs in the 16$ range!! And our Canadian dollar is essentially on par, so there is no funky math to make it less painful!

Gold Coast and Sydney Next!

Dan & Danielle