Cairns to Darwin Day 1

After 3 months in the wonderful city of Cairns, it's time to say goodbye! During my last week in town, I finished up with my job (my boss Ivo wanted me to stay SO badly he was trying everything to stop me from quitting), said goodbye to all my friends, and cleared out my room.

During my last night in Cairns, instead of going to bed, went out. My roomate, Eri, saw me get off the couch at 10pm and said "So you're off to bed?" "No, I'm off to the Woolshed!" Was supposed to only go out for an hour but ended up staying up until 2:30am. I got hardly any sleep and finally got up at 5:30am. I called a cab and ended up at the pickup point. Shortly after this huge red coach with the words, Desert Venturer on it's sides pulled up.

Once on the bus, totally passed out. I woke up later on to meet this English guy named Lee sitting next to me. Turns out he's going to be in the same hostel as myself and doing the same tour to Kakadu. We chated it up a bit and listened to each others music, he has a load of CDs that I wanted to listen to.

Our bus driver was this amazing guy named Greg. Turns out he knew Tim and Micheline (owners of the house I lived in Cairns) really well. He totally knew his stuff for the whole duration of the trip. Our first stop was at Ravenshoe for a toilet break and then headed to Millstream Falls. The falls were great. The duration of the day took s west through the Atherton Tablelands and then finally leaving behind the rainforest for a more dryer climate. All along the road were thousands of termite mounds. A great site to see.

We had lunch at the Kalkani Volcano Crater. After a couple of sandwiches, went for a walk with Lee and Chiaki, a nice little Japanese girl, up the mountain side and around the crater. Although it's a volcano, it was completely covered with trees. By then I started to meet a few more people on my bus. The group was mostly Germans and British people. There was Angus, James, Amanda, Jonothan, Rich, and Josh James Jonothan (his first name is Jonothan but was always called Josh and his middle name is James) from England, Aylish from Ireland, Kirsty and Nancy from Germany. there were also two older women (~60 something) travelling with us and they totally had that motherly appeal on everyone (See mom you're not too old to travel!). Also there were a couple of dutch girls and a Japanese guy and a Korean guy among some other peopel I didn't really talk to that much. All in all the group was a great group.

After driving through Mt. Surprise we stopped for the night in Croydon and stayed at the Club Hotel that originated in 1895! After checking in, we headed over to Lake Bellsmore for a swim and to watch the sunset which was beautiful.

After dinner, which was chicken curry, busted out the guitar and practiced for a while until someone got me and said that these two cowboy guys (Kimbo and Graham) were drinking with part of the group and oen of them wanted to play a song on my guitar. I let him use it and he was serenating one of the girls. He told us that he's been playing ina band for 20 years (these guys must have been in their 50s). They were pretty funny guys but obviously drunk. They kept calling me Elvis and putting me on the spot to play something but I got too tense and find it hard to sing a ndplay at the same time anyways, so I didn't get to far. I tyhen called it an early night but was lucky to have claimed the double bed in my room which I shared with Lee (the room, not the bed!)