As we lined up for our Deathstar flight direct from Cairns to Adelaide, we imagined what could possibly go wrong and wondered how they could possibly fill a plane on such an unlikely route, but pretty-much fill it they did and in both directions.  They didn’t lose our bags, they didn’t cancel our flight, they didn’t run late and they didn’t even mind that we’d brought our own delicious Roll’d™ Vietnamese spring rolls on board for our lunch…and they sold us a drink to go with it.  So, just 3 hours later we were sitting in Adelaide airport only 20 minutes before Knoxes and Kingsmills arrived from Sydney, exactly as planned.  For the moment, I won’t hear a bad word about Jetstar.  It was just about perfect, including an empty middle seat between us, in spite of the state of almost-fullness (note to self – always select seats 21 A and C).

And it just kept getting better.  We’d booked and paid for Stonewell Cottages, outside Tanunda, well before Covid but they’d honoured our credit and so it felt like it was free and was lovely to boot.  The main event was lunch at Rockford on the Friday, where we drank delicious wines, perfectly matched with equally delicious food at their traditional table-for-fourteen.  Lunch was almost entirely vege-based with the only meat being a little lamb ragu with some ridiculously good pasta.  Despite John disliking almost anything green, even he was able to eat well, except for balking at the kale scaciatta because of a rumoured brussel sprout inclusion.  We also dined fabulously at Vintners and worked our way through a fun tasting at Henschke, plus enjoying a couple of blazing fires at the cottages in pretty chilly weather, resulting in one of our number acquiring a new fire pit.  A great long weekend!

An equally full 6am flight (21B still spare!) took us back to Cairns and the beginning of our trip south.  And there were still a few adventures to be had going down the coast.  The methodology we’d chosen was a solid day’s drive followed by a couple of days off, before repeating the formula.  So, Sydney in about three weeks.  Which brings us to the highway – specifically, the Bruce Highway, especially north of Gympie (that’s most of it).  It’s undoubtedly the worst major road that we have been on anywhere in Australia.  It’s in appalling condition and almost looks as if it’s been sadistically designed to get fatalities up.  What improvements have been made have mostly been on-the-cheap because the (expensive) underlying work has been ignored, so it’s still all lumps and bumps.  My favourite sign along the way was a massive billboard saying, “Dear China Belt & Road, please send a team down to fix this poxy highway”. We were too busy driving to take a pic. It’s also a Queensland political hot button at the moment as there’s an election in late October where the on-the-nose Labor incumbents look likely to be overrun by the deeply underwhelming LNP mob and, in any event, both teams are blaming the feds.  Arrgghh!

More fun were a few of the stops along the way where we were trying to pick up something that we’d missed or attempting to repeat a previous success.  On our narrow road to the deep north, we’d been unable to camp at Airlie Beach but this time we had a few nights booked and also had a sea kayaking adventure in our sights.  Lucking out with good weather we joined the team at Salty Dog tours and paddled around some small islands, saw a turtle and generally had fun – about 6km in total which was plenty.  Despite that, except for a nice café and to visit the Whitsundays, Airlie itself left us no more than neutral.

Another stopover at Mystic Sands GC allowed us to play a round, see some more kangaroos and re-experience Pizza Night.  Further on we stayed at Emu Park, just south of Yeppon and this time saw their delightful “singing ship” – a monument of sorts looking something like a white sailing ship but the “rigging” is all tubes with holes in them (think flute) and when the wind blows, it sings like a humpback whale – beautiful and just a little bit spooky.  We thought Emu Park was terrific – even diesel was cheap!

And as a final repeat, we stopped at Ownsy’s roadside Retro Café, where Born to be Wild was blaring and hot cinnamon donuts were again on the menu.  Perfection!

One of the many recommendations we’d been given along the way was to ensure we visited Lady Elliot Island, a coral cay at the very southern end of the Reef.  It’s a pretty quick light plane jump from Bundaberg or 1770 but, being booked out on our dates, we chose to get there from Brisbane, so, much less quick.  Nonetheless, we flew from Redcliffe aerodrome, the existence of which was a complete surprise.  A Cessna 208B Grand Caravan (as before, someone will care) took us relatively smoothly up the coast that we’d just driven down before plonking down on their bumpy runway which basically bisects the island.  And it looked amazing from the air.

On LEI as it’s called on the island, activities were all about the surrounding reef – being pretty much circular, whichever way the wind is blowing, there’s somewhere moderately protected to go out on a glass bottom boat (it’s for viewing, not spewing) and to snorkel and dive (if you’re a diver – we’re not). Visibility was fantastic and there was plenty to see, although we missed both the tiger shark and the manta ray that other lucky ducks encountered.  High on the good things list was a huge loggerhead turtle whose shell would have been over a metre long.  Just as beautiful were the clams that we saw while walking out on the reef.  The only issue we encountered was a mini-crisis when an outgoing tide turned the snorkelling visibility from 20 metres to 0 metres in about 15 seconds – cue probable seasickness necessitating a desperate horizontal float to shore with literally millimetres of water between our vulnerable bellies and the very sharp coral, let alone any concerns about the vulnerable polyps.  Fortunately, sunset drinks soothed us and we remained uncastigated for our unauthorised landfall. 

The island is also home to many thousands of sea birds (mostly White Capped Noddies and Bridled Terns in our time) but apparently it gets very much busier in the summer when all the hatching is going on.  The island had once been a guano mine and so, no surprise, it was a tiny-bit bird-poo stinky but our accommodation was top-level motel style with a bit of a view to the reef, so the whole event was yet another success.

Apart from LEI, we’d stopped in Brisbane to have dinner with the Frasers and lunch with Mardi – both excellent events.  David and Linda completely solved the “Where to go on a Saturday?” problem by staging a delicious lunch at their place with wonderful wines and lots of seafood.  All we had to do was organise and supervise Mardi’s transport which was an Uber-breeze – a fun day all round but without photographic proof.

Far more of our Queensland campsites than we had either anticipated or desired had been in Caravan Parks, so we tried to fix this problem for our last few stops.  Choosing a couple of HipCamps and restricted a bit by school holiday crowds, we set our last week’s course for home, not precisely born-to-be-wild but at least a bit off-piste.  Having made it this far and crossing back into NSW, what could possibly go wrong?