We stayed in Cairns for four nights and really enjoyed being there. Coming from Asia, it was once again so different from what we had gotten used to. The streets were clean and next to the pedestrian walkway was thick green grass. The weather was excellent during our stay with warm temperatures but without the heavy humidity. Walking around appeared to be almost as unpopular as in Asia but the cars would actually stop for you when exiting a driveway or at a pedestrian crossing. The traffic lights on the other hand do not turn green for pedestrians – ever – unless you push the button.
Since we hadn’t planned anything in advance, we spent the first night in a rather crammed bedroom but Chris found us an excellent offer for one of the better hotels in town, not much more expensive than where we had stayed before. There was a nice pool and we had a balcony where we could have coffee or drinks and some snacks.
Of cause, the price increase we experienced overall was dramatic compared to where we had been before. Additionally, it is confusing, that they also use Dollar here, just Australian and not US. And the Australian Dollar is significantly weaker than the American, but it takes some time to get used to it.
The city offers a nice waterfront with bars and restaurants but my favorite was the public pool. It is placed just at the seaside in the middle of a long green stretch with a promenade. It is completely free with a lifeguard on duty and just really nice. There is small picknick places ever few hundred meters with a barbeque station. One night we prepared ourselves some wraps and took them to the water, grilled them a little bit and had a delicious, cheap dinner looking over the ocean.
From Cairns we had rented a camping van, that needed to be transferred back to Sydney. With Corona already casting a shadow over our trip (there was also no toiletpaper to be bought) we had started avoiding other people and traveling around with our own bed and kitchen seemed a good way to keep to ourselves for a while. We had a bed inside the van and another in a pod on the roof that folded up to a tent. We always slept on the roof because it hat mosquito nets and was therefore much cooler during the night and mosquito free.
Camping in Australia is a lot of fun, there are plenty of campsites all around ranging from city funded sites which are free of charge or campgrounds in National Parks which have no or rather basic amenities to caravan parks offering not only a hot shower but also a well equipped kitchen. Every campsite had some kind of picknick space with benches and tables often with a barbeque or a firepit.
One night we spent in a National Park south of Townsville which is known for its Kangaroos and Wallabies. Every morning at sunrise they are being fed at a beach only few minutes’ drive from the campsite. Therefore, we got up in the dark, packed everything and set off. We arrived just in time for the Kangaroos at sunrise and were glad to have gotten up that early because while we were still at the beach it started pouring.
We stayed at a campground where we got the best spot overlooking a lake with the sun setting behind the trees. I really liked one on a farm where sheep and horsed would wander around. It was further inland and at over 1000 m above sea level. At night we made a camp fire and looked at the stars. We would have liked to stay but in the morning, there were so many flies and they would fly around your face we decided that we had find something else.
You all have probably heard about the bushfires in Australia just a few month ago. Along our way we certainly saw how large stretches of wood had been impacted by the fire. The trees trunks and branches are black from the fire and there is not much underwood. But on those black trees new plants were growing. To me it looked like new offshoots and they were covering the whole tree like a big fluffy, green cloud. It is impressive how quickliy nature can react to such a devestating event as the bushfires!
The further south we went, the easier it was to finally go swimming in the ocean. As already mentioned, there are poisonous jelly fish in the water but only in the north. The beaches here are absolutely marvelous! Compared to the rocky and muddy beaches we often have, and where I personally like to wear neoprene shoes, the sandy ground is amazing! The waves are strong and you need to be sufficiently comfortable about your swimming skills but it’s so much fun!
We only got to enjoy the camping experience for little over a week because the Corona related hits kept getting closer. A few days after our arrival in Australia the Australian government introduced a 14-day mandatory quarantine for all overseas arrivals. Not long after that the borders were closed to all but Australian citizens. The German Foreign Office issued a global travel warning. This in particular was a problem for us because our Health insurance contract has a paragraph stating that after a travel warning is issued for a region you have 14 days to get out of there, after you are no longer covered. Since a global travel warning is unprecedented, we called our insurance if this clause will be applied. Even though we wanted to stay in Australia, having no health insurance would force us to go back to Germany. They indeed confirmed that we’d only be covered for the 14 days after the travel warning. Since we had already seen that other insurances handled this differently, we started looking for alternatives. For us, going back did not seem a better option that staying here (and still is). We have no apartment and not job, with little prospect of a job in the near future but also no responsibilities. So, once we had secured a new health insurance nothing was making us go home.
Of cause, it was dawning on us, that Australia was likely going to be the last stop of our trip and that our world tour would not quite be around the world. Many of our plans were shattered in these weeks but I think we always made the best decision based on the knowledge we had at that point. Our camping trip came to an abrupt end when the Australian government issued a ‘travel ban’. With the uncertainty that had been with us for days now and the emotional roller-coaster we experienced (checking German news in the morning for the latest horrific developments in Europe and checking the Australian news in the afternoon for the newest restriction put into place), we decided to find an apartment for the next few weeks to lay low and observe the development.
We were lucky to find one in Port Macquarie and drove down to Sydney and back within a day to return the camper. We were relieved to arrive back in our new home, certain that we had done the right thing, our decision being confirmed by the pouring rain…
– Stay happy and healthy!
