Well things didn’t quite go to plan today but more on that later. What did go to plan was the weather but of course the blues skies appeared as we are leaving the Cairns area.

We have a week to get to Darwin and we wont get there if we keep hanging around here.

First order of the day was to get Rachael to the airport so that she could return to the colder climes of Blackwood. She was not too happy about it either. After a bit of poking and prodding she was eventually ready to go. In fact we had the van all packed and ready to go but not connected to the car as I didn’t want to drag it through the airport again.

Leaving the caravan park at 9am, we dropped off Rachael by 930am then back to the caravan park and connected, out the gate just after 10am. All going well so far.

Our journey to Darwin will follow the Savannah Way which runs across the top from Cairns to Broome but we will only be going the first half to the Stuart Highway in Northern Territory.

The first obstacle is the climb up the Great Dividing Range to Kuranda. It looks a long way up from down the bottom but it is deceiving as it is a gentle climb and was able to maintain 60kph with no problems.

There was a lot of changing landscapes as we moved west. Starting with the rain forest of initial mountains, we came out onto the Atherton Tablelands which reminded us of the North Island of New Zealand, then some gentle rolling hills that are similar to around Meadows in South Australia before opening out in Savannah which is very similar to the Northern Territory.

At one point there was a section with Boab trees which took me back to my travels in Africa.

We stopped for lunch at Mount Hypipamee which had a volcanic crater as well as the Dinner Falls. A chance to put the new improved foot to the test (there was some walking involved) following the steroids and it stood up well.

The original plan was to get to the Undara Lava Tubes for the 1pm tour but that wasn’t going to happen with 180km to go. A quick check of the website revealed a 330pm tour which is more than doable.

Along the way was the Innot Hot Springs where hot water around 78C bubbles up in the creek at the back of the pub. They say it is natural and has amazing properties but is this just snake oil selling. It mixes with the cold water of the creek and you can soak in the water mix. This is similar to the Douglas Hot Springs in the Northern Territory. Unfortunately there was not much flow today so most of the pools were stagnant so no dipping to be had by us.

We arrived at the Undara Lava Tubes just after 3pm so plenty of time to make the 330pm tour or so we thought. The staff decided that they didn’t want to run one today and the next one will be at 1030am tomorrow. Well that is not the right way to please 10 paying customers that all arrived around 3pm.

They must be rolling in cash as they turned away at least $600 and probably more because most of the caravans would have stayed the night. I am sure it would have been cost effective to put on a guide for the couple of hours a tour takes. Soon there was a convoy of vans heading out the gate. Maybe we will see the tubes in 5 years or so.

We were going to stop the night at Mount Surprise following the lava tube tour but since we now had some more time, we pushed the extra hour to Georgetown.

The leg between Mount Surprise and Georgetown harked back to driving the Stuart Highway back in 1987 when it was just a single lane of bitumen and when a car came the other way each vehicle drove with one wheel on and one wheel off as you passed. The Gulf Development Road is just like that now in 2017. Of course if a road train is coming your way then the idea is to get right off and let it pass.

I guess one old mate thought pulling a caravan made him a road train so there was an interesting game of chicken between two cars pulling caravans for a little while with me wildly flashing him. He eventually straddled as we came together. You can view the dash came here on YouTube.

The hope was tomorrow to ride the Gulflander train but checking the schedule that is now not going to work out but we may get to see it along the way. Our destination will be Normanton and we are now an hour closer than planned.