A slow start, and we head into Port Douglas to have a look at the town and do some shopping before we head west. Port Douglas is a whole lot different to the towns around it. It’s a town not really designed for Vans. Boats yes, Vans No.
After shopping we start heading Southwest, the road takes us over the mountains and it is pretty steep, so slow going up the hills. We heading to south of Atherton, but needed to get fuel at Mount Malloy. There are two servos, I miss the first one as it looks more like an auto repair shop, so we drive on to the second, but this is like a general store and looks hard to get the van in. We are pretty low, so I decide to turn around and go back to the auto shop. We get there to a sign saying they are closed for the school holiday. Crap, OK back to the store. I pull into the drive way and there is another car at the one and only diesel pump, and the guy doesn’t seem in any hurry. It’s at this point the car dies, yup out of fuel! 4mtrs to the pump, but it will be on the wrong side. Damn. Justine has the bright idea of filling up the (empty) jerry cans I’m carrying to put some diesel in to then turn the car around a fill up properly. That was close, and a bit of a wake-up call. I haven’t been carrying extra fuel up till this point as it was not needed. Servos where all over the place, but from now on I will be (but not from Mount Malloy as at 169.9/l this is the most expensive fuel we have seen so far). In hindsight, I think we used a lot more fuel coming up those hills out of Port Douglas. We got lucky in some ways, It could have been worse.
We drive through Mareeba and Atherton where we finally hit the Savanna Way and start to head west. The Savanah way is a group of roads that go from Cairns all the way through to Broome. We’ll be on and off the Savanah way over the next couple of months,
We end up in a freecamp spot called Archers Creek, A quick game of backyard cricket and then a fire after dinner. Actually the fire was pretty lame, I think the wood I have is not aged, it was from a felled tree, but I think the tree may have just come down. I need to get better firewood.
