Our Walkabout

We left Bedourie early Sunday morning headed for the famous Outback settlement of Birdsville, just north of the Queensland/South Australia border.  It was a muddy drive along the sections of road between the towns that were unpaved (roughly 65% of the track is paved), the clay floodplains holding on to the water from the torrential […]

Planet View: S24°21.770’ E139°28.206’ Street View: S24°21.770’ E139°28.206’ It’s a long way from Cairns to Adelaide.  2738 kilometers (1701 miles) miles if you take the shortest route.  We made our way through Australia’s centre via the small cattle station outpost of Bedourie in southwest Queensland.  It’s 1729 kilometers (1074miles) from Cairns airport – where we […]

Planet View: S14°40.101’ E145°26.750’ Street View: S14°40.101’ E145°26.750’ Temperature: 21-29°C (70-84°F) Water Temperature: 26°C (79°F) The northernmost of the Great Barrier Reef Islands, Lizard Island was a stopping for point for Captain James Cook on his voyage in 1770 and named for the prolific population of monitor lizards that inhabited (and still inhabit) the island.  […]

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Planet View: S16°55.246’ E145°44.483’ Street View: S16°55.246’ E145°44.483’ We’ve been skirting around Cairns for a few weeks now, exploring the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area to the south, Tablelands to the west and all the way up Cape York to the north.  We arrived in town on Sunday after our trip across some very arid […]

Planet View: S17°09.953’ E144°30.903’ Street View: S17°09.953’ E144°30.903’ National Parks Website: Chillagoe-Mungana Caves National Park   

Cooktown is as far north in Queensland as one can travel on the pavement.  Named after Captain James Cook when he stopped in the area in 1770, Cooktown is a sleepy collection of a few shops and hotels on the banks of the beautiful Endeavour River.  After a quick stop in Cooktown for necessities (beer […]

Although we had absolutely no intention of staying a night in Port Douglas (the exclusive resort town is a little high-priced for our current modus operandi) we dropped in to have a look around on our way down the mountains from the Atherton Tablelands.  Port Douglas is basically a collection of luxurious tropical resorts, a […]

Planet View: S17°15.094’ E145°35.031’ Street View: S17°15.094’ E145°35.031’ The Tableland Region is a tract of super-fertile agricultural land in the plains behind the mountains that circle Cairns.  The variety of crops we came across in the Tablelands was quite staggering: driving through the area we saw everything from mangoes to pineapples, coffee to tea, maize […]