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| Stone curlews at the camp site |
Tuesday - Our flight out of Cairns was not until 540pm, so
we had most of the day free. Time for Simon’s
choice – the largest armour and artillery museum in the southern hemisphere! Simon may be able to tell you some interesting tank-facts but the one
that stood out the most to me was the replica German Tiger tank that was used
in the film ‘Fury’ with Brad Pitt.
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| Tanks for everything.... |
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| Tanks come in all shapes and sizes.... apparently |
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| Simon with the German Tiger tank that featured in the film 'Fury' |
Another wonderful thing about the tank museum was that
outside there was something for Ruth’s choice – a fresh seafood bar! I really haven’t made the most of the amazing
seafood on offer here in Oz, so I took a last-minute opportunity to enjoy some
lobster bites and calamari with a beetroot salad on the side, mmm mmm!
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| Seafood for one?! |
Then it was time to prep’ the Cyber Punk, so we headed to a Car
wash to clean our spaceship inside and out.
The drop-off service was very efficient, and we managed to save a few
bucks by sharing a cab with another couple to the airport. The important thing at this juncture is to
make the all-important announcement of (drum roll please) …. The FINAL MILEAGE TALLY
FOR OZ!! Brace yourselves, I’ll break it
down for you:
PERTH to DARWIN (heading south via Albany first!) 7509 km
DARWIN to ADELAIDE (via Uluru and Kings Canyon) 4134
km
ADELAIDE to MELBOURNE (via the Great Ocean Road) 1148
km
TASMANIA 1046
km
MELBOURNE to SYDNEY (via Canberra and the coast) 1202
km
BRISBANE to CAIRNS (we flew from Sydney to Brisbane so that
doesn’t count) 2657 km
This is a staggering total of 17,696 km (let’s call it
17,700 km then) or 11,000 miles - in three months!!! That’s 5,900 km a month. That’s 3,666 miles
per month, stat fans. So, comparing it
with our jaunt around the US where we did roughly 3000 miles a month, we have
been pushing hard. But that’s what
you’ve got to do when they only give you a 90-day visa! I think we can feel justly proud of achieving
that kind of distance in the time allowed, whilst still cramming in as much important and beautiful
stuff along the way.
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| That should just about explain where we've been and what we've seen...! |
Back to the story-line, we arrived at Cairns domestic
terminal nice and early for our flight to discover that it had been
delayed. As soon as we checked in we
expressed our concerns about making our connecting flight to New Zealand. We were due to have just under two hours in
transit at Melbourne, but now our flight had been delayed by roughly an hour we
were worried whether we would make it. We were informed that we would have to squeeze
in collecting our checked-in bags, carrying them to the international terminal
to re-check-them-in AND get through security again within that time. This was going to be tight!
In the end our flight took off one hour and 20 minutes
late. Again, we’d highlighted our
onwards connection to the crew who were very positive and hoped that we’d make
up some of the time lost in the air to enable us to catch our NZ flight.
We landed in Melbourne at 11pm. Our next flight was due to take off at
1155pm. We could do this! There was no point doing a mad rush from the
plane because we would only beat our luggage to the reclaim carousel. We were there in time to meet our bags, throw
the hefty pieces of luggage on our backs and try our best to ‘run’ from the
domestic to the international terminal, run up a travellator to the first floor
and find the Jetstar check-in desk. It
was deserted apart from three members of staff.
It was now 1120pm. Breathless, I
ran up to the desk and said, ‘we are on your 1155 flight to Auckland, can we
still make it?’ They were expecting us
but replied ‘the crew on your flight should have told you not to rush. Your flight’s closed, you’ve been booked on
another flight tomorrow and we’ve booked you into a hotel’. We were deflated… and annoyed that we’d just
got hot and bothered running across the airport for no reason! We received a voucher with our new flight
details, hotel details and a £30 food allowance for our stay. Our flight was at 7am so I pointed out to
Simon that by the time we reached the hotel we’d only have about 4 hours until
we’d need to be back at the airport! But
still, it was Jet Star’s fault that we’d missed their flight to NZ, so we’d
take them up on a hotel room to catch a few hours’ sleep and have a refreshing
shower.
There was a little wait for the courtesy bus to the hotel so
it was gone midnight by the time we arrived.
Despite the lure of free food vouchers neither of us wanted to eat
anything, so we got some essential electrical items on charge and collapsed in
bed with the alarm set for 4am. I was in
a deep sleep when the alarm sounded. It
was painful, but we both had a shower and pulled ourselves together to gather
our belongings and head back on the bus to the airport.
So long Australia! We had a blast!!
There were plusses and minuses to our new flight. Plus – it
was with Qantas therefore fully serviced meaning free drinks and breakfast
which we would otherwise have had to pay for on arrival in Auckland. The negatives were that we’d paid extra for
leg room for lanky Newman and Qantas could not honour it (so we will have to
see if we can get a refund for that) and mainly, that we would be over four
hours late to collect our north island camper van.
On arrival, there was a courtesy bus to take us to Britz
campers. They had no problem with our
lateness, we were the ones who’d lost four hours of driving time today. Our new camper was bigger than expected with the bonus is that it ran on diesel which costs about a third less than
petrol here by the looks of things. The
collection went smoothly before we headed straight to get some shopping, having
a decent-sized fridge on board this time.
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| Our Britz camper for the North Island |
Due to the delay, it was rush-hour by the time we headed
east out of the City and we discovered the pain of Auckland traffic. Wow!
Mainly, because there are limited roads out of the city to get round the
waterways, it turns out that it is carnage on a daily basis!
We had no detailed plan for the north island, other than a list
of things to see from friends’ recommendations and a vague route stolen from
Kiwi experience! Our plan today was just
to head out of Auckland and find somewhere to catch up on some sleep, but we
were surprised at the lack of campsites in this area! There were plenty of signs indicating ‘no
camping’ at all car parks we drove by. They are clearly hot on fining people
for parking up where they shouldn’t.
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| Our first epic NZ coastal panorama.... but no camping allowed! |
We
ended up at a ‘Top Ten’ camp site at Orere Point where we paid $46 for an
unpowered site – ouch! We need to find
out how to camp in NZ for free or cheaply without being fined, that’s
expensive.
We were both exhausted after only having 3-hours sleep, so
we had picked up a cooked chicken for an easy dinner. Once we had managed to make our make-shift
Velcro curtains stay up in the windows, we had an early bedtime.
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