1 August 2011 – Cairns Sunland Leisure Park, Queensland

One day soon we will get to be just tourists in this very promising tropical centre but in the meantime… we will press on with the minor errands and tasks that need to be dealt with.

We woke again to the raucous chortles of the kookaburras and screeches of the cockatoos. Many campers packed up and left well before the required 10 am check out, and so the camp was quiet and spacious until the next lot started to arrive closer to midday.

Chris telephoned through to the Australian equivalent of the 0800 number for distributors of our water filter, who pride themselves on having branches Australia wide, but alas not in Cairns! After a series of calls back and forward, the purchase was formalized and hopefully the filter is on its way to us care of this camping ground. Fingers crossed!

After lunch we drove in to town to BFC to give them more custom. There we purchased tent poles, a tarpaulin and a lantern. These actions, along with the tent erection yesterday, confirms our decision to head for Cape York within the next fortnight. It does seem that the cost of going is more than facing the probability that diesel and food will cost up to twice the regular price, and that we will have to pay through the nose for any camping accommodation; there are also accessories required that as caravan travelers we do not normally carry. 

From there we visited the RACQ office to obtain maps of the far reaches of Queensland, and left with these and some really helpful information.

Our next stop was at the Cultural Centre to pick up tickets to the opera we had booked on line over the weekend. La Traviata is being performed here in Cairns tomorrow and Wednesday. It is one of our favourite operas and it seemed such a crime to let such an opportunity pass. Tomorrow morning I will pull out our glad rags and do whatever I need to do to make them gala ready.

From there we tracked down the central Post Office to pick up our registration sticker. And guess what? There was nothing there for us! Surprise, surprise!

Any plan to spend some time wandering around the town and enjoying the sights went out the window, and we tracked down the Cairn’s Queensland Transport Authority. I suspect that we will qualify as the tourists who have spent the most time in the QTA offices. As we sat holding our numbered ticket (just like Mr Bean in the hospital waiting room scene) I was reminded of the day I spent in a Police Station in Tonga with Helen back in about 1973, when she was robbed of her handbag, while the rest of the cruise ship passengers delighted in the sights. Here in Australia, in 2011, Chris and I spend hours in QTA and Post Offices chasing registration for our landcruiser. If only they had a simple system like New Zealand, where you pay your money across the counter and receive in return, a plastic registration label to slot in to the plastic sleeve on the inside of your windscreen. We have procured another printout showing we have indeed paid, and this with the receipt will continue to be carried around until the correct sticker turns up. We will revisit the Post Office later in the week. Another sticker has been ordered, the third so far, and we may have to call back to Cairns after we have traveled north and west. This was not the plan.

After such joyous hours, we decided to head back to camp and save any further tripping for another day.