204-205 - A disastrous breakfast and Cairns

We had been slowly eating up most of our food to save packing it all for a flight, so for our last morning camping on the east coast, we decided to get a few rashers of bacon for breakfast.

We had quite a long to-do list, so after getting up early we started cooking breakfast, only to discover that our bread had gone mouldy in the heat.

We had spotted a bakery the previous evening, so I (Joanna) headed off on a bread hunt. Unbelievably, at just after 7am, the bakery was closed, and as I wandered further along, so were the supermarkets.

After I returned to the campsite empty-handed, our breakfast consisted of 2 rashers of bacon, and a hobnob biscuit......

We had been given a slightly later checkout time of 11am, which gave us some extra time to sort things out.

Our camping table and chairs had disappeared overnight, our remaining gas canisters were given to a couple camped next to us. The rest (cooker, washing up bowl ect...) was packed up and taken to a charity shop.

By the time that we got back, our washing and more importantly our tent was dry. So we packed up and headed into Cairns.

Cairns is quite a touristy town, but very pleasant for a wander through. There are a lot of small shops and cafes, so we quickly found a spot for an early lunch.

There is a boardwalk going along the foreshore which is mostly a sand.... Because there is no actual beach, there is instead a man-made lagoon surrounded by sand. This has the added benefit of being safe from crocodiles.

We also wandered along to the marina.

Later in the afternoon, we headed to the botanical Gardens. By this point it had got very warm, so instead of seeing the gardens, we collapsed in the shade.

We had booked a hotel for our final night in Cairns, so before we did our final pack, we went for a swim in the hotel pool.

For our final day on the east coast, we headed to the beach at Palm Cove.

After it got too warm headed for the Barron Gorge, this having the advantage of being mostly in the shade. After an interesting lunch using up peanut butter and nutella, we did a few lookouts of the hydraulic power station, and then drove round to get abetter look at the gorge.

Queensland is rainforest country, and has a yearly monsoon. This would almost make it worth coming back in that season just to see the gorge gorged.

There was a scenic railway to the gorge, but unfortunately for David, it wouldn't have got us back to Cairns on time.

We arrived ridiculously early for our flight, and ended up having to wait for 2 hours, before we could even check in our baggage.

In the end, our flight was delayed for about an hour. This meant that we arrived in Perth just after midnight. But thanks to the time difference meaning that Perth is 2 hours behind the East coast, our bodies were convinced that it was gone 2am. Thankfully the shuttle soon came and took us to our hotel.

Next Time, our west coast adventures! :)