Karunda

Hey guys,

Back from a brief trip into the outback - we drove from Cape Tribulation through the inland road, about 300km in total, up to Cooktown - basically as far north as you can get on a normal road on the east coast.

And wow it was pretty crazy stuff, real outback and no mistake - baking hot scrub and savannah land, kangrooes, massive termite mounds everywhere and endless flat roads. We passed through a few one pub towns (no really, mt carbine has one pub and one road house gas stations, thats it) and what seemed like a eternity later got into Cooktown - a weird place. Very remote and really with nothing happening, despite the virilent invasion of germans (seriously, it was unbelieveable, of the 20 or so people we met, all were german. And fucking annoyingly so I'm afraid to say). We stayed just a full day, and really, that was plenty - 'Cooktown, where we make the most of the miserable history we have!' could easily be the slogan. Still, it was good to see something authentic like that.

Still, its very very much made me question the whole outback leg of my travelling - the drive back in particular. We foolishly did some 30kms on some pretty rough unsealed road to get to an admittadley nice waterfall, and on the way back everything seemed fine - until we almost hit two wallabies. And then a massive white cow, standing in the middle of the road. And then two kangerooes. After all that, the car has been making a weird tapping noise. Mechanic assures me that its a tappette thats not quite closing properly, suggests an oil change and some lubricant stuff. Thing is, we didn't know all that last nigth when we limped into the 'functional' ('crap') two on Mareeba, where incidentally there was no accomodation other then a room in a bearded truckers house. Of course, his mates all tried to help fix the car, up to the point of 'come back tomorrow with a case of piss, i'll bring my tools and we'll be right'. I can't beleive we were actually half considering all that as an option even! Thankfully we decided to keep on going to here, and the mechanic says the guys would have trashed the car (still further) if IU had let them anywhere near the thing. So I'm glad we made a good decision under the stressful circumstances.

So, whats next? Still weighing up the options in my mind to be honest. Maybe work back in Sydney, maybe learn to dive in Cairns, maybe go to Perth. Probably a combination of all three I suspect. Its hard to know whats best, but I am sure the answer will as ever present itself to me. Anyways, until then speak laters.