chunder down under

I was up and ready to go at 7am, only 2600km to drive, about 3000km with detours. I had reckoned on taking 4 days, rather than my original 5, and so today needed to get roughly half way to Brisbane, perhaps Mackay.
Highway 1 is the longest road in the world, it goes almost entirely around the coast of Australia – starting from just inland of Cairns, down the East Coast to Sydney and Melbourne, west through Adelaide to Perth, then up the West Coast to Broome and East again to Darwin. It only needs about another 800km to totally encircle Australia. The name changes down the East Coast, although it is all Highway 1. Cairns to Cooktown is the Cook Highway, to Brisbane it is the Bruce Highway and down to Sydney it is the Pacific Highway. Along the south coast it is the Great Ocean Road.
The omens were good – it was overcast (unusually) which meant that although it was still hot the sun wouldn’t heat up the car so much. A quick check of tyre pressures and I was on my way. The radio was tuned to Hot FM, the local Cairns radio station, and as I headed out of the city I listened to Nay and Coastie rambling on about the Taipans as usual. I had briefly met and worked with them when I was at Gilligans when they had hosted a weekend Big Brother style event for Mother’s Day. They are your typical local radio DJs, a bit more irritating and less funny in person than on the radio, and annoyed that I didn’t give them any special treatment. I used to drive the Big Brother evictees (who came up once a week on tour) to the airport and it’s always revealing as to which ones act like the celebrities they aren’t and which are genuinely friendly. Because I never used to watch it (and couldn’t care less about it) I just chatted to them as if they were any other passenger, which used to annoy some who felt their 15 minutes wasn’t over.
The further out I headed towards Innisfail, the weaker the radio signal became, until gradually Nay and Coastie’s banter faded and then disappeared completely. I was left in silence, and with a poignant feeling of loss that the soundtrack that had accompanied me every morning had vanished. An era of my life had ended.

The longer I drove (in silence as there was no radio reception), with the window open to cool the car down and save the air-conditioning, the more I noticed the gradual change from the lush wet tropics to the dry tropics of Townsville. There were a few small and isolated bush fires by the side of the road, but none out of control or dangerous. Just lots of long stretches of straight roads and 100km/hour speed limit. Because the road is all single lane you could get stuck behind slower moving trucks and road trains, it often involved overtaking two or three at a time. The heat haze on the road made it difficult to see if anything was approaching in the opposite direction. The first stop was at Cardwell, inland of Townsville, and a hot featureless small town. I shared a house with a girl from Cardwell, Leanne, and she couldn’t wait to leave it. I could see why. As I was starting to feel sleepy I had my first Red Bull. The sun was now to the west of me and so I had to close my window to avoid sun burn, and the heat eventually required the air-conditioning. Mid afternoon I had a lunch break by the beach in Bowen, home of the “Big Mango” although I couldn’t find it.
At about 4pm I was approaching the turn off for Airlie Beach and didn’t fancy pushing on to Mackay and having to find somewhere to stay in an unfamiliar and bigger town, so I ended up staying in a hostel there.