Thursday 18th: Up and away very early. Stopped at the local cafe in Julia Creek to buy coffee and brecky to have in the car. Refuelled at Hughenden and Charters Towers (where we also jet washed the car and trailer), arriving in Townsville at about 5:00PM. Glad to be near the sea again and to see hills and green trees.
Friday 19th -Monday 22nd: Have spent most of the time catching up with school work, journals and laundry – the Lawn Hill dust got everywhere.
Saturday afternoon went for a stroll along the Strand seafront in Townsville; not much to write home about.
Starting to get excited about our sailing trip in the Whitsunday Islands with the Campbell team from Perth. We just hope we don’t get bombed by the Americans!
Also looking forward to the Whitsunday trip. Not long now!
Just a bit worried about the White Aussies meeting up with the Bronzed English.
We won’t be Bronzed if it continues to rain (we’re in Bowen).
Hi Richard
I’m your neighbour from Airlie Beach van park. You gave me a heap of info on how to set up a blog. I’ve been looking into visiting the Undara Lava Tubes and Cobbold Gorge and I’m a bit shocked at the prices charged to see these great looking sites. Did you have to pay to visit all the gorges you went to in your travels. Are there any freebies out there. It’d be great to get your feed back.
Cheers,
John
Hi John
It was a pleasure meeting you, hope all’s well.
Yes we were also put off by the prices at some of the sites.
One of the great things about the Gibb River Road is that access to the Gorges is free if you have a DEC National Parks Pass, an Annual Car Pass is $80 (see: http://www.dec.wa.gov.au/) and covers you for all WA National Parks. Of course there are charges for the camp sites near the Gorges but the prices are very reasonable – especially the sites run by DEC. Some people take cheap tents when they travel the Gibb rather than risk denting their caravan. Some Camping sites in Derby and Kununurra charge a small fee for storing caravans.
Access to Lawn Hill Gorge is free and there are hiking trails to Lookouts over the Gorge but probably the best way to see it is by Canoe which costs about $50.
Yardie Creek in the Cape Range National Park near Exmouth is worth a look, it has a hiking trail along the cliff top but it doesn’t have a waterfall and is not as dramatic as the gorges along the Gibb. What Yardie does have is fantastic views of the ocean and the Ningaloo Reef.
I’m told that Karijini National Park, near Paraburdoo is fabulous. We didn’t visit on this trip but it’s on our ‘to do’ list for another trip.
I hope this helps, if we think of anything else we’ll let you know. If anyone else has any info for John please feel free to add a comment.
Hi Richard, thanks for your feed back on fees. Sorry I haven’t replied earlier. What you’ve told us is great. We’re at Paronella Park about 70k’s south of Cairns, well worth a look. Cairns and surrounds was really nice, Rose and I loved the whole area especially up around Port Douglas. The Great Barrier Reef is also well worth the money for a day’s outing.
I’ve been trying to set up a blog via your info and I’m not finding it very intuitive. Did you have troubles at first and if so did you find good help somewhere.
Cheers for now, hope y0ur all well and still enjoying the incredible trip your on.
John and Rose
Hi John
Sorry for the slow reply.
Here’s the link to information I used to set up our Blog: http://websitesetupguide.com/basic/buy-web-hosting.htm
I used the Twenty Ten template in WordPress (which is tool available on ‘Fat Cow’). Once you’ve followed the advice on the above link you can select your template then start building your Blog using the WordPress Dashboard. Here’s what I learned about the Dashboard when creating our Blog:
Pages: These are on the horizontal Menu bar on our Blog (e.g. Home, About Us, Gallery, etc.)
Posts: These are the updates that we post each day. Make sure that you click the “Publish” button or “Update” button when you add or update a post.
Media: This is where we place the photos and videos for our Blog – we upload them from our computer to the Media Library that ‘Fat Cow’ provides. Then, when we are adding a new post, we can use the “Add Media” button to place photos/videos in the post.
Comments: This is where you can go to see the comments that people leave on your Blog. The comments don’t appear on your Blog until you approve them (gives you control over what appears on your Blog).
Appearance: This is where you select the template that you want to use for your Blog, there are loads to choose from and most are free (some templates are at an extra cost). Our Blog uses the ‘Twenty Ten’ template (a free one).
That should be enough to get you up and running. I just mucked about with the Dashboard and eventually worked it out. Let me know if you need any help.
Hope all’s well with you.
Richard