Heading west... soon

Guess where the van is? Yes, it's in the garage while they consider new ways to fit our 5th fuel pump. It seems a bad batch of cheap parts are to blame though, not the van, so all it's costing us at the moment is time. The garage (Woolcock Autos in Townsville that is) have been really good to us, thankfully, and they're trying to get the parts company to cover the cost of a genuine Mitsubishi part at the moment.

The bugger is that we're back in Townsville and not heading west into the Outback as we should have been at this moment. We gave up looking for work in Bowen, and spent another day trying various farms on the way back up north. We finally decided to cut our losses and just get moving again, when we realised our favourite oil leak has returned. We had to come up to Townsville before we could go west anyway so it's not too bad in that sense, but every day that passes means less time in the north and as summer approaches, the temperature out there is rising all the time. We really don't want to be doing hard labour in the blazing heat.

Although it was ultimately unecessary, we did have a good time in Bowen. It was nice to meet up with Rodney, Tracey, Adam and Heeya again and on our last night we had a bbq on the beach. Well, we started to have a bbq on the beach but only about 4 square inches of the bbq plate got hot, so we gave up and went back to the caravan park.

Last night we went to a sausage sizzler at the caravan park, which is a meet and greet thing at which we get free food. We went before and the sausages were good, even though we're about 30 years below the average age of the rest of the attendees! Still, we chatted to a couple from Melbourne who've told us to contact them if we go back there so that they can have a meal with us. We returned to the van and then had a nice chat with our neighbours, who are part of this 'grey nomad' phenomenomonmonoenomeonom.

The grey nomads are people who have retired, sold everything and bought a big car, a caravan and are spending their time cruising round Oz. Obviously they're all as happy as anything so are always very pleasant to chat to. We were given some tips on where to go fossicking for precious stones, so maybe we can find something to put in an engagement ring...

Time to catch up with our photos now:

Cape Tribulation - as far north as we could get (from a couple of weeks ago):


Oh you lot are in for a treat, this is going to be one hell of a video! Up in the Atherton Tablelands:


Millaa Millaa in the Tablelands - is this your infamous pub Rich and Zoe?


Millaa Millaa falls:


A couple of our favourite sign posts (first one referring to the endangered Cassowary):



Silliness in Bowen:




Mavis and John, a lovely "grey nomad" couple who celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary a couple of days ago, and who looked after us last night!