Cairns - Richmond

Day 1 - "Livin the dream"  Sat 24 Sept 2011

The big day becomes reality! We set of on our epic journey, leaving Cairns about 11am.
Our first stop is Rollingstone (300kms sth of Cairns).  This was a great free camp and we tucked into a spot between some grey nomadsfor a quick overnight stop. 15 mins later we were all setup and it was time for Mark to 'have-a-chat' to the neighbours.  One was quite a character (more on that later...), but the other  bloke was an instant hit!!  Why?  Well, there were a couple of important games of footy on that night, and he had  a monster home on wheels with a TV set up outside!  So, there we were - set up with the oldies watching footy (a good night for the kiwis...)

Quick set up on our first night

Day 2 - "Escape to ???"  Sun 25 Sept 2011

Well - 'how's the serenity last night? - Trucks on the h'way, freight train & some hippies on guitars....
Then, as we were leaving in the morning, the 'character' neighbour gave us 'all the tips we needed for our trip' and pretty much had an opinion on everything. When we were finally able to 'escape', I looked at Karen and remarked " whatever I commented on, he 'had another seemingly gospel opinion".   Drained already, and we hadn;t even hit the road yet!!!
After fuelling up at Townsville (cheapest fuel we will see until we hit S.A), We checked our 'Camps Australia' book (the bible) and decided to head for a free camp 240kms west of T'ville.  After stopping in at Charters Towers to check out the gold rush history, we arrived at the camp spot around 1pm.    It was OK......between the h'way & railway....then a train came past - holy crap! bugger that in the middle of the night!
No worries - ph ahead to the next place up the road.....closed.  No worries, we'll carry on to Torrens Ck (1 hr away).....I blinked & missed that place, so another hour and we were in Hughenden, where we checked into the caravan park.  There were quite a few nomads all lined up together on powered sites, so we thought, the last monad drained me - lets get an unpowered site away from it all.   Now, I don't know what it is with railways out here, cos we were near a station, which the boys loved, but they slept through the 3am shunting of goods trains.....
The next morning, we checked  out Hugenden.  This place was a great buzz for the boys. Not only did the trains entertain them, they loved the dinosaur muesem.  Scott, as expected, wanted to know everything - more than what we could tell him.
We also found our first Geocache in Hughenden (http://www.geocaching.com/)

Our camp at Hughenden

Museum at Hughenden

 Muttaburrasaurus (yes - really!!)

Day 3&4 - 'How's the serenity (take 2) - Sept 26-28 2011

After Hughenden in the morning, we headed up to Porcupine Gorge National Park, only 65kms away, for a couple of nights.
Finally - serenity! What a beautiful part of the world.  Our first swim in a creek was a 1.2km hike down into the gorge.  What goes down, must come up.....good thing we are super-fit...:).   the water was cold & refreshing and  the scenery was pretty spectacular.
We loved the hike so much, we did it again the next day - well, we had to if we wanted to swim & cool off.   Temps got up to 38deg, but different heat to the coast, so did not feel too bad.   It cooled down a lot at night though.
We had a little party for Trents B'day (basically sat down & ate some junk food)
With no electronic entertainment at night and the daily exercise, we hit the sack early.
Karen (not a morning person) was up before sunrise on the last morning to take some sunrise pics.  She reckons a budding photographer is lurking......
Packed up camp, on the road to Richmond

Porcupine Gorge

Pyramid in the gorge

Sunrise over the gorge

Base camp - Porcupine Gorge

Prior to departure on Sat 24 Sept 2011

Intro.
We are the St Amand family from Cairns in tropical far north Qld.  Mark, Karen and 2 active boys, Trent & Scott (10 & 8). 
We love camping, travelling and the great outdoors, so it was a relatively easy decision to decide on a trip arond Oz. ...well, not all the way around, as we 'only' have 4 months! 
We started the planning this trip about 18 months ago, and there has been a fair few changes in 'operating hardware' for the trip.

We used to have a really old homebuilt camper trailer, however, the camper top was past it's use-by date, so the old camper is now a garden box trailer.  We then went back to tent camping for a while in our old flogged-out tent, however, one wet camp was the final straw.......I was over having flogged out gear that made camping a chore - over it I tell ya...!!!

We researched options for making camping life easier.  After much deliberation, we aquired a new Jayco Hawk Outback camper trailer in December 2010.   We collected this from the Gold Coast in January 2011 (in between the floods down south and a nasty cyclone...) with the trusty old Hilux 3L diesel slug.  This was OK....the old girl pulled it alright, but in her own time..... 
For the big trip, I was planning on making quite a few vehicle modifications, and It was concluded that, combined with the distinct lack of urge pulling 1.3T, it was not worth ploughing the $'s into the old Lux,  so approval was granted by the  minister for everything to purchase a new dual cab ute.  Decided on new, as we will keep it for many years, so depreciation does not matter  (I could debate for hours on this....).    Anyways....A new Isuzu D-max 3.0 Turbo Diesel dual cab 4wd  is in the driveway, and I'm happy as a pig in poo :)

We have done quite a few 'shakedown' trips locally, and have everything setup the way we want it now.

Leaving home - see you next year!