Day 35 –Mount Isa to Cairns
Travel Location: Cairns,Australia
We were up early again after a hot night. Today’s journey takes us through the outback of Queensland towards the Coast. The initial plan was to make it about half way to the coast and stay another night in the outback. However, with the early start this would mean to arrive around lunchtime there and spent the remainder of the day in the swimming pool. We decided to take advantage of the additional hours and drive straight to Cairns, which meant a journey of 1250 km.
The day started off great with beautiful weather, blue sky and nice outback scenery around Mount Isa. The drive took us through some amazing landscapes; some so dry we could not see a tree all around us. We felt a bit like in the area between Williams Creek and Coober Pedy. However, we saw a farmhouse and fences and thus guessed there must be at least some vegetation that grows every now and then. We drove through Cloncurry which has the highest recorded temperature in the shade in Australia. The temperature is 53.1 degrees and was measured in 1889.
The scenery changed to further we drove towards the coast. It became very green and with lots of trees near Townsville. We did not book a camp site for the night. The experience in the outback was that most camping parks open long hours and have plenty of space. However, we remembered that in our early travels, we booked sites as they closed after 5 and left the key for us to pick up at night safe boxes. We called some places in and around Cairns. However, none of them have night safes and they close by latest 7 pm. Ending up in Cairns without a campsite, we booked ourselves into a motel in the middle of the city. After a long drive, we look forward to a good night’s rest.
