A grey morning on Cairns’ city-“beaches”….arghhh.
Presses home the point, that the whole town is built on tidal mud-flats…
Yuck, let’s get outta here…
Next stop is Ellis Beach for a coffee and the bunch of owners of the parked Dukes, Hogs and assorted yoghurt-tubs stays well in the back of the café, there’s just NO competition against a bunch of Cape-ready Posties.
Into Mossman Gorge, only a few k’s back from the coast
…and slowly, very slowly, the sun starts peeking through
…
Next stop is Port Douglas.
Byron Bay, Noosa, Port Douglas….swap the names around and nobody would notice.
Nowadays it’s just yet another one of those generic plastic tourist-traps with Danish Ice cream-shop next to surfwear, Real Estate, Café, Theme-Pub, Subway blahblahblah…
Time for some relief and piss-farting around out the back of Mossman
…and north again through the sugarcane-fields towards Daintree
At around the 80k peg, the whole thing comes to a stop….the FNFAST has just died!!
Cruising fine one second, dying in the arse the next!!
WTF????
We stand around, scratching whatever comes handy or feels good…FUGG!!
Check this, rattle there….and 5 mins later she’s purring again. What the hell was it? :wow:
No friggin clue…but let’s keep going, it’s not far to see Neville, another of Glen’s contacts, who’s the skipper of one of the Daintree River Tourist Cruise boats…and who’s offered to take us along for one of the cruises that afternoon.
Some cute little critters around here…
all 16ft of it
10 Mins later it’s a 10ft female snoozing in the mud…
…..and spotting them really takes some training, Nev’s a champ at that!
But does he know what he’s in for when inviting the Postie Crew to stay the night at his place?
Nev….every minute’s been a pleasure and there’s always a place for you in Melbourne….a HUUUGE THANKS for your hospitality (and lots of other things).
While Nev slaves away with the next lot of tourists, we try to talk that gorgeous looking lady behind the counter into marrying Nev, but: “I’ve told him we can talk about it, if he comes up with some decent necklace or something, the real thing, ya know…”
Let’s mull that over...and get to Daintree-town first…and check on the CREB track, a possible option for the way down on the return from the Cape !
The old pub has turned into a Gallery and fastfood-joint…
GREAT, just what we’d hoped for!!
Glen’s excitement bubbles over and he has to find a quick-fix
Nev’d also given us some ferry tickets for the Daintree-Ferry, his place is just along the northern bank.
FNFAST decides to shit itself again as the ferry-queue starts to move….nothing but a good push with a stretched-out leg against the luggage rack to get the little shitter onto the ferry-deck then, aye?
10mins of rest, draining the carb bowl etc… and she’s a goer again. Nev’s place turns out to be a small oasis in dense rainforest… all 5 acres of it, small lake included.
The big, covered verandah is an open workshop, too…what a place to replace the first busted spoke on Plain Jane’s rear wheel (what else, why make it easy, heh?)
Nev lends a helping hand after coming home from work, but despite the applied magic
it’s a cock-up and I promptly pinch the tube trying to get that blasted 16.5” rear hoop on again…spoke’s fixed…now it’s a tube!!
Finding the leak….in the goldfish pond!
In the meantime, Rohan and Glen have decided to kick-start things between Nev and the “Office-Girl” …..and fabricated various versions of a
“she’ll be BOWLED-OVER by THAT, you watch it, mate!!” necklace….made from some huge seeds found at the back of the veranda....and a set of ear rings while at it !!!
Jeez….not a bad day, that first one…only 130K’s or so, but who cares.
The light drizzle starts as the mozzies and midges become ferocious.
…just what the hell’s wrong with FNFAST??? :wow: