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Koala Beach Resort, Cape Kimberly, Far North Queensland, Australia. 119km

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Australian word of the day: Sullage – Sewer. As in, sorry, we don’t have sullage here. You’ll have to go south to Mossman to dump your toilet water.

Happy Sukkot!

Today marked many changes in our trip. In the morning we were sad to bid farewell to Alfredo and Raquel, after spending the last two weeks together. At 8am the taxi came to take them to the airport, on their way to Thailand. Thanks for all the good times and help with the kids!

Later in the morning I took a taxi as well, to the motorhome depot in Cairns. After reviewing the various contractual and financial issues, as well as going over the vehicle itself, I returned to the hotel, driving really slowly, and we proceeded to move the family into the new “house”. The children, as usual, are very happy in a motorhome, so it was a cinch to get them in.

The Motorhomes here are quite different from the US. We ordered the largest one they have here, which is still smaller than the RV we had in the US, and it was a midget in a land of 40ft monsters. Now we are the 20+ ft monster in a land of popups and supervans.

The main differences are:

1. Manual transmission (6 gear diesel). Bummer. It was so easy driving automatic. Add to that the location of the stickshift to the left of the driver, and you have a world of re-education for the left hand.

2. No captain’s chair behind the non-driver seat. This means that Ron is sitting facing backwards, across the table from Shir and Orr. Actually, he is happy and so are they. Let’s see what happens when they want to watch a DVD while we are driving.

3. No full hookup system. Big Bummer. The RVs here are only equipped for a constant flow of electricity. But for water, you can only fill up a tank of 180 liter. There is no connection to “city water”. Also, there is no black water dump. It is a 10 liter cassette that you have to physically remove from the RV and dump.

4. Much more undercarriage storage space. Big plus. We don’t have to live with the girls’ double stroller inside the RV. It fits (albeit just barely) in one of the storage spaces in the rear of the RV.

5. Very narrow rear bed. Bummer. Too small to fit the three kids.

6. Safety net on the overhead bed. Big plus. The 3 kids can sleep safely in a large and fun bed.

7. Very narrow rear bed. Big plus. Paola and I can cuddle like in the good old days…

There are many more nuances some which we don’t have enough experience to judge. Overall we got an RV in good shape and I hope we will enjoy it.

We drove north from Cairns for about 100km, stopping only once to buy some groceries.

Just past Mossman we crossed the Daintree river and entered Daintree National Park. The 100m crossing is via a ferry that crosses back and forth every 10 minutes.

Crossing the Daintree river, we entered a magical tropical rainforest that is a world heritage site. For a relatively tiny part of Australia, this region has an insane amount of flora and wildlife (over 30% of the continent’s total)

We drove a few km on a dirt road to our first campground, a very spacious “resort” where we could just choose any spot on the grass parking area and hook up to the electricity. Grey water (shower, dishes) can be dumped directly onto the grass, but no dumping of toilet water this side of the Daintree river.

This place has, aside from camping for motorhomes, cabins and tents. We are told that most RV campgrounds here are a mix of cabins, suites, permanent tents and usually have a restaurant and pub as well.

I took the kids for a walk along the beach, just 200m from our site and the view is just gorgeous. We got back to the RV and set up our folding table and chairs (part of the rental package) for a lovely dinner just as it was getting dark (6:30pm). A but later, an amazingly bright full moon lit the campground and the strange animal noises of the surrounding rainforest. The folks here claim it is the world’s most ancient rain forest. Some of the noise we heard sure did sound from another age.

Tomorrow we plan to spend the day here. Good night,

-Hemi

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at 1:02 am and is filed under Australia, Big Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.