Monday 27 June 2005
I applied for a couple of different jobs at photographic stores today, hopefully something will come from one of them, as I have plenty of experience.

Tuesday 28 June 2005
This morning we went out to the shops to look for presents for our Dad’s birthdays, we have one on the 4^th and one on the 6^th. We then went to Jupiters Casino for the $3 lunch they do on Tuesdays. We had to wait over half an hour to become members and once we had our membership it entitled us to the discount on certain items on the lunch menu. There’s a saying “you get what you pay for” well that describes the lunch, it was just ok, but we won’t need a cooked tea, beans on toast will do.

We also looked into Q-Ride while we were out. In Queensland you can go from Learners to full license by completing training courses and I’m    thinking that seeing as we’re staying in Townsville for a while it mightn’t be a bad idea to take a couple of riding lessons. The place that does the training have facilities on their property to teach the basics before you even need to go anywhere near the roads, sounds like a great idea to me.

We went to Queensland Transport to get the Learners Permit book but there were heaps of people waiting to be served so we’ll go back again tomorrow.

I put a bit more paint on the trailer, it’s looking much better, it needs a bit more work but it looked as though we could get some rain so didn’t want to do too much just in case.

We went to Bunnings and bought some bits and pieces for me to do some mosaics, all this sitting around doing nothing is driving me nuts. If I keep
polishing the bike at this rate the metal will wear away!

Gary comes home each day for lunch and joined us for pancakes in the camp kitchen.

A few more Ulysses members arrived at the Caravan Park today.
 
Thursday 30 June 2005
Today we went to Wallaman Falls, said to be the longest single drop waterfall in Australia.

We drove up past the canefields, where harvest has begun, to Ingham and through town to the mountains beyond. There were a couple of sections of dirt road but overall it’s not a bad ride. Now that the cane harvest has begun we have to take extra care when riding across the many tracks that criss cross this region. We did see a couple of cane trains today.

When we got to the waterfall site we decided to go straight to the bottom of the falls without even looking from the top, we thought we’d do that once we got back to the top. It’s a 2km walk to the bottom of the falls, on a reasonably steep track that zig zags down the mountain. The walk down was ok, the walk back up was a killer, we thought we’d never reach the top. A 4km walk is quite a bit of a walk, but 2km uphill is murder.

Wallaman Falls is a long waterfall spilling into a rocky gorge. I was surprised at how quiet it is, I expected a thunderous sound of the water tumbling down over the cliff, but a lot of the water falling is a fine misty spray.

After a picnic lunch we dragged ourselves over to look at the waterfall from the top. It’s a great view of the falls and I don’t know that if we’d looked at that first whether we would have done the walk to the bottom. We just tell ourselves that we need the exercise.

At Ingham we stopped and photographed the Lee’s Hotel, which is the original “Pub With No Beer” from the Slim Dusty song. The story goes that American servicemen stationed here during World War 2 drank it dry.

Tony got a call from Monica at Adecco and has an 8 hour day of work tomorrow.

Friday 1 July 2005
Tony worked from 7am until 3pm today and I updated our website.

Saturday 2 July 2005
We went out to Bunnings in the morning to get some board on which I can do mosaics.

After lunch we spent a bit of time cleaning the bike, it was pretty grubby after the ride to Wallaman Falls.

It was hot today so we went for a swim in the pool, quite refreshing!

Gary and Anne invited us over for a meal, so we headed down there at about 6pm. We had a nice meal and spent a lovely evening talking and showing them some photos of our trip.

Sunday 3 July 2005
We got up early and rode straight to the Willows Market to buy some fruit and vegies. The quality of fruit and veg in the supermarkets isn’t very good and the market has a wide range at much better prices and quality.

After taking the shopping home we went to McDonalds to see if anyone from Ulysses had turned up for a ride. The ride that was scheduled for today had been cancelled and we weren't sure if anyone would want to go somewhere else. John and Steve were there when we got there so we had a cup of tea. We were there a while and decided that if anyone else wanted to go for a ride they would have been there by now.

We headed up the Bruce Highway towards Ingham again. Lucinda is a small town not far from Ingham and has a 5.6km jetty for loading raw sugar cane onto ships for overseas. Hinchinbrook Island is not far from the coast. There's a large caravan park there that we're told is filled with Victorians escaping the cold.

While we were riding I saw what looked like a dingo. When we got to Lucinda I asked Steve if it he’d seen it and if it was a dingo, he said it was. That's the first time I’ve seen a dingo in the wild, I've only ever seen them in zoos.

After lunch we went for a bit of a ride around the area, the scenery all around Ingham is quite beautiful, lush green canefields surrounded by blue mountains and where the cane has already been harvested and the soil has been ploughed and replanted makes a tapestry effect.

Steve and John came back to the caravan park and had a coffee and looked at some of our photos.

Another quiet day, we went down to town and checked the mail first thing this morning. While we were in town we went to Orm Snell, the Harley dealers and Tony got his mileage program form stamped. We’ve travelled over 16,100km since we got this bike and that entitles Tony to his first mileage badge. The program is American and 16,100km is 10,000 miles. There are badges for 10, 25, 40, 60, 80 and 100 thousand miles. We may get a couple more before this trip is over.

Colin and Desley who stayed beside us a week or so ago are back in the park. They stopped by and said a quick hello; they had setting up to do. We walked around passed their van later in the day but they were out, we’ll catch them tomorrow.

We caught up with Anne and Gary for a cuppa. Anne has borrowed a small tent for us to take to Mackay for the rally next weekend, that way we won’t have to pull down our big tent and it will be ready for us when we get back. We’re fairly well set up and we’ll only take the minimum of gear with us for a weekend, besides we won’t have a powered site at a rally.

Tuesday 5 July 2005

Today I officially became a Queenslander. I had to get my licence changed over to Queensland so that I could get a Motorcycle Learners Permit, which I did. I also had my first lesson. Rising Sun Honda hold one on one bike lessons and when they feel that you’re ready they enrol you for Q-Ride.

While we were at Rising Sun we ran in to Joelene who we’d previously met at Mountain Madness. She is a sales rep and does the rounds of all the bike stores. Tony told her that she features on our web site, so she jumped straight on the computer to have a quick look. She said she’d look again when she got home.

It’s Tightwad Tuesday so we decided to go to the pictures and see War of the Worlds, it wasn’t bad, nothing to rave over, the effects were good. We were tossing up whether to see that or Batman Begins, we may see that next week.

We enrolled with another employment agency today, only 52 to go.

Wednesday 6 July 2005

Today is Townsville Show Day, so everyone had the day off work. The caravan park is really busy, as fast as a van leaves another moves in, we noticed quite a few being turned away.

We caught up with Colin and Desley and they told us of the places they’ve been since they left here. Tony burnt Desley’s photos onto a disk for her, she’s photographed a lot of the same things as we have, I suppose all tourists go to pretty much the same places.

I started a mosaic this afternoon, I don’t know what I’ll do with it when it’s done, but it gives me something creative to do, and they don’t cost much to make.

Every Wednesdays a Meet and Greet Barbeque is held at this caravan park. We’ve been once before and Colin and Desley asked if we would go tonight. We went along and chatted with a few of the other people staying at the park, it’s a good chance to hear about other people’s trips.

Thursday 7 July 2005

Every time you do anything here like swimming in the pool or going to the beach the locals say “Victorians!” They think that because it’s winter it’s too cold to swim. They feel cold on days that are 25°. Today we went to Saunders Beach and had a swim, the water is about 23°, at home we wouldn’t swim on a day under 30° but because the water is so warm here it’s really nice and once you get wet the temperature outside the water isn’t too much different from the water itself and you don’t feel cold.

We invited Gary and Anne to join us at the camp kitchen for tea, I made spaghetti bolognaise and we had plum pudding and custard for dessert. I wasn’t sure if we had enough dishes to provide for 4 people but we did, I just had to wash up between the spaghetti and pudding. After tea Colin and Desley dropped by the camp kitchen to let us know they were leaving tomorrow and they talked with us and Gary and Anne for a while.

Friday 8 July 2005

I rode a bike today! It was only first gear doing figure eights round the yard, but it’s a start, and it was good fun. My lesson was at 8.30am and went for an hour, we left for Mackay afterwards.