The Sun shall be blotted from the sky!

[glatt]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

Just below the summit I took this shot, showing the shadow of the mountain with it's cloud hat.

Awesome! Love that picture.

[Lamplighter]

I'd love to have you ship the Empress to me.

Or, they could send the other half to you.
I'll bet it's just laying around there somewhere gathering dust.

[ZenGum]

If they still had the lid, some new age sparkly vampyr could use that as a coffin.

[footfootfoot]

You're just lucky you weren't eaten by a drop bear, young man. That's all I have to say.

[ZenGum]

Well, my foot did get ripped off by a trap-door wombat.

[ZenGum]

After climbing that mountain and sleeping in my sweaty clothes inside a giant garbage bag, I was desperately in need of a swim. So, I went camping. Again.

First, drive a little way south along the Bruce Highway. The East Coast has a thin alluvial plain between the sea and the mountains, looking somewhat like this. There's sugar cane here, but often also bananas, lychees, pineapples, and cattle.



Then to a place called Murray falls, which I remembered from my last time up here. This is probably about 50 metres high. Remember, this is the end of the dry season.



A few silly drongos had managed to kill themselves here, by jumping off cliffs into the pools at the bottom of the falls, so anywhere near the falls was fenced off with big signs saying VERBOTEN!!!

So I only had to share these areas with about a dozen other people, and all the grey-haired nay-sayers could stare disapprovingly from behind the safety fence.

View from the top, looking out over the valley.



And past a few more signs, upstream from the falls, was this lovely swimming hole, plenty deep, and since crocs can't climb waterfalls, the only danger here was flying sharks.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

Well, my foot did get ripped off by a trap-door wombat.

Hmmph. A mere flesh wound. Continue with the narrative, m'boy go on, go on.

[ZenGum]

I had mentioned that I wanted to visit the Northernmost tip of Cape York. So far this year I have done the Southernmost and Easternmost points of Australia, would be nice to box the compass.

Ahh, difficult. Even after you've done 3,200 kms and got to Cairns, it is still about another 1,000km to the tip. and here's what google maps has to say about the roads:

We could not calculate directions between Cairns QLD and Bamaga QLD.

There is a road but from speaking to locals, it was clear that you need a high-clearance 4WD with river crossing ability, well beyond what my little subi could do. The car was a bit grumpy already. Also you don't go during the wet season unless you're a masochist.
There were some options from Cairns, either a 4WD tour, or a day trip by plane, but both were well over $1,000 and seemed to miss the point of the adventure. So visiting The Tip has been saved for "some other time".

Likewise, I'd been planning to return via some desert tracks - the Birdsville Track and the Oodnadatta track. While river crossing was probably not a problem, the rough roads take a toll on a car. Worse, the summer heat had started, temps over 40 every day, and that makes it impossible to get out and look at things. It would just be a driving mission. If you're just going to drive, better to stay on black top. So, the desert tracks will also have to wait for some other time.

Instead, I spent another day at Murray Falls.

Dragon flies:



A cane toad. These are an introduced species and have become one of the worst pests we have. They do a lousy job of controlling cane beetle (since the beetles can climb to the top of the cane, but the toads can't ) and their poisonous glands make them deadly for anything that eats them. As they spread they leave a trail of chaos through the ecosystem.
Because of their poison, they don't bother fleeing danger. Which means that BB guns, golf clubs and cars are their main threats. This fellow was feeling a bit flat, shall we say... or maybe a bit tired. (Which works better with the American spelling )



Nearby were some pine trees. Remember Cyclone Yasi? Pine trees and cyclones do not play well together. This is about 30kms inland, in a valley.

[BigV]

poor little toad needs a flag

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

But of course.

These jellyfish: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articl...13/3653150.htm

Australian box jellyfish can cause deadly cardiac arrest within minutes by punching holes in red blood cells and causing potassium to leak out of them, Hawaiian researchers have found.

But, say the researchers, writing today in the journal PLoS ONE, a zinc-based compound could one day be used as a treatment.

"The box jellyfish is the most venomous animal in the world," says lead author, Dr Angel Yanagihara, of the University of Hawaii's Department of Tropical Medicine.

The Australian box jellyfish (Chironex fleckeri) inhabits coastal waters from Australia to Vietnam.

The creature is the size of a basketball and has 60 two-metre long tentacles covered in stinging cells. Apart from causing unsuspecting swimmers excrutiatingly pain and other symptoms, being stung also occasionally leads to rapid death from cardiac arrest.

"The fastest deaths have been within 2 to 5 minutes," says Yanagihara.

[Trilby]

Hooooooooooleeeeeeeeee shite!

basketball sized jellyfish with SIXTY two metre (however long that is) tentacles??????


god gawd man!

Flying sharks!!!!!!

Cane toads?!?!?!?!

how did your ancestors survive all this ruckus?

I loved the waterfall bits, though. Very pretty. Very, very pretty.

[ZenGum]

Well, in Queensland, they've made it illegal to lick cane toads. I'm sure that helped.


Allegedly, you can get some psychedelic trippy effects from your body fighting the toad's poison. Fuck that, Imma take proper stuff.

[ZenGum]

I could have spent another month cavorting about the tropics, but I felt it was about time to come home.

I drove a few hundred kms to Townsville, and stayed in a caravan park so I could use the laundromat. Worst van park evah, it was between two highways, a freight rail line, a roadhouse with roadtrain break-up pad and a junkyard, with the choppers from the nearby army base adding to the noise.

After this I was pretty much exactly retracing my steps. Which worked well, because I had to drive that same 30kms of bumpy dirt road that caused the brakelight/indicator electrical fault as I came north. This was good, because ... wait for it ... driving south on this road fixed the electrical fault.
I kid you not, it is working as it should and has been for two weeks.
I decided to shut up and be thankful.

A little further was this very lonely rest area. This is what they are like: composting toilet, table and bench with shade, a few bins, maybe a place for a fire.



I had food here, but then kept driving.

Not much further, this wedge-tailed eagle swooped down to the side of the road.



I stopped for pictures, but I left the engine on and this may have scared the bird off, but I still got this nice shot of it in flight, riding the thermal above the road.



That night I made another roadside camp, cant really remember where. South central Queensland, roughly.

Next day was just huge amounts of driving. I'd planned to stop at a rest area an hour or so before sunset, but it was too darn hot. The car has a function that tells me the outside temperature, and during the day this got up to 42. If I kept driving, the air conditioning inside was 26. it was.

Even as the sun was setting (half below the horizon) the temperature was still 39. Glad I didn't try the desert tracks!

I camped for the night not far from Broken Hill, a mining town just on the NSW side of the NSW/SA border. I pitched my tent and made my bed, but after a while it seemed to be getting warmer! I could feel the heat coming from the ground, through the 5cm foam mattress, to me. Ugghhh. Even at dawn the next morning, the floor of the tent was still noticeably warmer to the touch than the air temperature. I was in the car within an hour of sunrise, and the temperature was already 32.

[ZenGum]

So, final day. Stare at this picture for three hours, hum loudly. You may play music.



You may recall a pic I posted from the East Coast trip in September, looking like this:



The same area now looks like this. Summer snuck in while I was away.



I made it home, tired, sweaty, smelly, but satisfied with one of the best road trips ever.

But if you're thinking of a road trip in Australia, be afraid. Be very afraid. Not so much of the enormous trucks and road trains, but by who they let drive them!

[Lamplighter]

Applause, applause... great presentation... looking forward to an encore, and will buy season tickets.