Tom of course ran to collect our Mighty camper, their depot on the same road as our Airbnb (Sheridan Street), but it was a long road! It was quite something to get used to traveling in, let alone driving. In order to have a toilet and shower, you need a six berth, so it was bigger than we needed, but quite nice to not have to put the two beds we used away every day to travel.

For sleeping, girls were up top, we were at the back, middle table fitted the girl’s car seats nicely. In Australia we hardly ate inside at all given the great weather. We needed to stay in campsites in order to plug in and switch on the AC! The girls were great at helping with chores, Molly especially becoming a very dedicated sweeper, essential given all our beach stops!

We soon realised it was best to make bookings for sites a few days in advance, prime spots at most were booked out by pensioners! Although we did find plenty of other families as well. Tom spotted some future camper dream goals!

Despite the plan being to ultimately go south, we had 13 days to reach Brisbane – we started off our first stint of driving heading north up Captain Cook Highway, hunting for beaches, which were easy to find.

Our first stop was one of Cairns northern beaches, Ellis Beach.

It was our first encounter with sand-flies, and we were unsure whether we could swim due to the box jellyfish season kicking in, we didn’t.

It was however an incredible expanse of palm-fringed sand, so tempting indeed that after a picnic lunch I made the mistake of running off barefoot across the sands with a plan to meet in 45 minutes at the famous ‘Cairns of Cairns’ – a collection of piles of rocks.

Unfortunately it was high tide, so I very soon realised I was going to have to be clambering up and down rocks and through bush to reach our meeting point, poor Tom realised the same and had to make numerous U-turns on a small coastal road his first day of driving a camper van to find me – which he did, eventually.

We had considered going up to Daintree national park or Cape Tribulation but decided that to get to Port Douglas would be far enough, and that we wanted to spend a couple of nights there.

It was a good decision: we loved Port Douglas. Staying at Tropical breeze campsite we were a short walk from stunning four-mile beach where we had a wonderful day running, swimming (it had the all-important stinger net in place) and making sand balls.

Tom’s sand balls / caterpillar were so admired by the lifeguard that he placed orange cones around them to keep the crowds away!!

We also ran around the cliffs to the marina with great views. Town was one strip, but a very pleasant one, where I found a fantastic yoga class and we had a memorable evening at Iron bar, watching Cane Toad racing.

It was probably made a spectacle due to the charismatic host Matt’s tirade of impolitically correct gags (we enjoyed his banter again at Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures, his day job) but it certainly was an entertaining night out. Cane toads were introduced into northern Queensland in 1935 to control the cane beetle, it is the only true toad found in Australia.

Selected audience members had to hustle their toad across the table and into a bucket – for big money.

As mentioned, we are trying to only visit animals in their natural environment, I’m not quite sure whether Hartley’s counts, but it was a brilliant day with the chance of meeting and learning about most of Australian wildlife. An Aussie institution running for over 85 years, Hartley’s Creek is the place to get close to crocodiles.

We kicked off with a crocodile feeding show, then getting up close and personal with the crocs on a boat tour (again led by Cane Toad racer Matt), later visiting their onsite crocodile farm and the grand finale of ‘the best crocodile show in Australia’ where the aforementioned Matt got close enough to the crocs for them to demonstrate the death roll and head shake.

We also learnt a lot about snakes, saw some cassowary’s and koalas for the first time, fed some kangaroos and wallaby’s and even eyed up a Komodo dragon. The girls got to stroke a baby crocs scales, luckily with its jaw taped up.

We stayed so long in fact, once we hit the road, we had a race to beat the setting sun on our drive south to Mission Beach, and we lost.