Rain

Greetings,
It knows how to rain in Tully. There is nothing you can teach it about rain, you kids with your so called heavy rain, pah. The yearly record is 7.9m (which is the same height as the Big Gum Boot in town, coincidence?) which is by any measure, an awful lot of rain. The rain that fell on us over our last few days in Tully was not quite in the boot league, but it was still pretty impressive. The van sprung a couple of leaks during the heaviest part but all in all we faired pretty well.

Just as we were beginning to fear that the rain might never stop the sun eventually returned and the waters quickly receded from around us, which was good because we still had a couple of things to do here before we left Tully. One was to get a photo of the gnomes.A lot of the (old) folk who stay in van parks like to add some home comforts to their vans, welcome mats, herb gardens, etc, but our favourite is the gnome family. There is a basic rule in camping that any item you lug around should have more than one use, however the gnomes alternate uses escape me. Perhaps you can chuck them at the curlews when they are particularly annoying. Curlews are a brownish, greyish, non descript little bird with spindly legs that spend a a lot of time running around calling to each other in the middle of the night. The reason you might want to hurl gnomes at them is their mating cry sounds a lot like a woman being murdered, or if not murdered, at least poked with something hot or sharp.

Another thing I wanted to do before we left was to climb Tully’s Mt Tyson, an expedition I would bravely attempt solo. Drag my fat sweaty carcass up a hill while Graz sunbakes is a more accurate but less romantic description. I took a photo of myself at the top to indicate how fat and sweaty I was. Nice view from the top though.

Another clear day saw us (both of us this time) going for a drive up to Tyson Falls, via a road that was closed apparently. We took the ‘road closed’ signs as more of a challenge than a firm directive and ploughed on up the steep windy road. It probably sounds all macho and 4x4 but it was in fact a nice drive, even with the enormous potholes and the odd tree branch over the road. We didn’t quite get to the falls, but after about 3 hours of driving without seeing another car (we did see one guy hiking) we reached a nice river to stop for lunch. While I was walking the river bank I found a discarded fishing rod with Simpsons characters painted on the sides. As usual.

Apparently all good things must come to an end, so we packed our car and van, said our goodbyes and headed north from Tully. We would be returning to Cairns, again. Our friends Chris and Emma from Singapore would be there with a bunch of other people we knew for a Punters Club trip to the yearly Cairns Race Day. It was great to see them again, and the day at the races was a cracker, although I don’t think many people in attendance cared about the horses, it was more of a drinking event. Lots of drunken ugly people dressed in ill fitting clothes mingling with a handful of pretty girls wearing dresses that fit them. It reminded me of Graz and I. Later on Chris would introduce us to Jager Bombs (a drink), thanks Chris.

It was not all alcohol and flesh in Cairns, we also joined the punters club crew for a snorkelling trip out to the reef, which was a sensational day swimming around looking at coral and fish and turtles. Graz and I saw a couple of pretty good sharks, but it was ok, our wetsuits were hired ones...

Leaving Cairns (again) we headed south (again) for our next rendezvous which would be Fraser Island with Graz’s parents. On the way down we thought we would give Bowen one more chance and it turns out that it is quite a nice place. All the good stuff is just hidden from casual view. Away from the town itself, which remains pretty dull, there is a rocky coastline with plenty of sheltered bays and sandy beaches, and a caravan park that has peacocks running about (one took a liking to Graz). Bowen also boasts a more ‘european’ beach, which we enjoyed. Our friend Marty would have been proud...


later,
brad and graz.

also, thanks for writing to us, grazgarrett@hotmail.com or bradreeson@gmail.com