A week in Townsville.

Well hello there, so nice of you to pop in. :) I have to say life is really quite good at the moment, the people we have met up here have been awesome, Townsville is alot bigger than i thought it was (but still easy to navigate, if your not looking for the tourist info centre) it's got all the shopping centres of a big city but still manages to feel like its not too big.

Last week we went to to Ayr on Wednesday i think, (day names seem to have lost their importance already). Its a sugar cane growing town south of townsville. We had to go there to visit the big snake (so that Mikgater could cross it off her ever shrinking list of BIG things around Australia.) It was a pretty cool little town, the number of Pubs almost outnumbers the population there were also a few backpackers there it would be a nice place to visit we thought. After lunch we found a road that led to the beach it was about 15mins drive, we arrived at the beach car park under the shade of a few very impressive trees i wish i knew what they were but they had large roots that seemed to just turn into the branches and the canopy at the top was fully encompassing and blocked out nearly all the sunlight. I didn't take long for the distraction of the beautiful trees to wear thin, the mosquitoes were RIDICULOUS, it was like a swarm, there was no escaping the amount of mozzies that were in the area, but we all battled on walking like a pack of epileptic monkeys trying to swat the mozzies, we walked for about 2mins like this until we realised that there was no real easy way to get down to the beach and from what we were experiencing and seeing the beach was mudflats and infested with mozzies, So after another tantrum by Heather we legged it back to the Bumblebee.

hmmm what else did we do...... on Saturday we went to Magnetic Island, to get there you pay $29 for a 30min ferry ride which was great because there was a bar on the ferry :) we got off the ferry in Nelly bay and caught the bus to Horseshoe bay which was a beautiful. it was a nicely enclosed bay on the far side of the island, We went for a stroll along the beach and once we were far enough away form the main tourist area we decided to go for a swim. (after i smashed someones sandcastle). The water was beautiful and refreshing, but we didn't swim for to long because we had no sunscreen on and there were possibly stingers in the water. After the swim we waited at a nice table and had some ice creams anticipating the buses return. On the bus i was singing along obnoxiously to Radar love which was funny because the bus driver was a maniac it was a very fast drive around a very windy and hilly rode on one of the last turns Heather and i were thrown into the side of the bus (we were on the backseat because we are super cool) and at that moment just after the turn the song was up to the point where the lyrics said "No more speed I'm almost there" to which the back half of the bus (IE the cool kids) cracked up laughing. We caught the ferry back and had a beer and waved goodbye to Magnetic island.

Us on the Ferry to or from Maggie

Horseshoe Bay

That evening we decided it was time to show townsville how we drink, we went to the Sea view which is a beautiful Pub near The Strand, it has a large beer garden and had a live band playing. We had quite a few drinks and as always attracted a group of randoms that ended up sitting with us for the night, actually by the end of the night we had split into two groups at two different tables haha. Anyways met some cool people, one being Darren a Canadian who said at one point in the night
"i love fishing in Australia because it's like fishing on the national geographic channel, *mimes catching a fish* what the hell is that can it kill me?" much laughter followed.
After the night of drinking Mik and i walked from the pub to the backpackers via another pub, once we got to the backpackers we flipped a coin to decide whether or not to have a swim the universe decided we should so we went for a roof top swim at 4 in the morning had a shower and went to bed.

Some people we collected at the SeaView

 

 

Stay tuned for more Adventures, coming up is Cairns and Paronella Park and some other places that i cannot think of. Bam.

Adventurers Backpackers is our new home

Hi, good thanks, yourself? that's good.
Yeah we've been here a few days now since Saturday night, we stayed with the girls for a few nights in their share house, we tried to snaffle a room there but it wasn't to be, so we had to find a new place to live.

Nelso and i set off with the idea of finding the tourist info centre, thinking it would be easy to find whilst also teaming with the info that we so cravenly desired. Following the signs from where the girls lived the info centre logo was on the city signs so we obviously followed them. We drove for about 12kms into the city and noticed that the info logo had been dropped from the signs. I found this a little annoying (they're happy to direct you to the info centre from 12kms away but as soon as you get close you're on your own). We continued riving aimlessly around the city for a while and ended up crossing the Ross river into south Townsville, found a army disposals store and decided to stop in... (not really a tourist info centre but at this point who gives a crap?) Upon entry we were greeted by a gillie suit that i really would like to buy, just for fun. other than that it was your typical redneck army surplus store complete with knives the size of swords and a holder for your slouch hat. Bored and done we left the army surplus store to meet the girls for lunch, Pizza Hut lunch special ohhhhh yeah we gorged ourselves. After lunch i did a search in my phone for backpackers in townsville and picked the one that had a pool. and the rest is history, i've taken a couple of brief shots of the views from our doorway, if you're lucky and i dare say you aren't i'll do a detailed photo review of this place (it has alot of character).

Nelson in our amazingly cell like room (i think they must hose them out)

Carpark from our doorway with a suspiciously handsome 4wd in view.

View out from the door.

Not near our room but in the reception office lives a chicken, little weird but I'm going to let it slide.

Bumblebee takes flight

Below is the route we took when we left wagga to head up to meet the girls in townsville.

View Larger Map

After a night of packing on thursday we were finally ready to hit the road, so we had a good nights sleep that night and hit the road at about 10:30am. Heading inland through central NSW and QLD was the quickest route, so thats the way we decided to go, as soon as we got past West Wyalong Nelson lost reception and every road from then on was dead straight, which made for quite the exciting drive hahah. We got all the way too Charleville at about 1:00am after dodging many kangaroos we only hit 2! not bad hits just a couple of tails. We were just about out of fuel, Nelson and i were bickereing over nothing because we were tired and grumpy. I remember saying to Nelson in a pissed off tone
"Have you got the shits with me for some reason?" to which he replied in a similar narky tone
"No i thought you had the shits with me!" Anyways after that crap settled down we pulled over in a random street in Charleville and had a sleep for around 4 hours to wait untill the Servo opened.
We set off at 6:30am heading for Augathella more kangaroos along the road untill the sun came up, i don't think we hit any along this stretch, we had realised if we kept cruising at 100kph the noise of the exhaust scared most of the roos off before we got near them. Below are a few images of the roads along the way.




Obviously the best place to stop for a sleep. (charleville)

 


Between Aramac and Torrens Creek




After Torrens Creek i think in the low fuel section.



My favorite stretch of road was between Aramac and Torrens Creek it was a small tarred road for a majority of the run and it ust ran through the middle of grazing properties, there were cattle, kangaroos and ems on the road, we also spotted a few eagles which was awesome. As we got about 30kms out of Torrens creek the road turned to unsealed bulldust it was very cool, the Bumblebee eats up the dirt roads. We had all the windows open by this stage as the climate is alot dryer and warmer here than in Wagga obviously!!

Alright now for the nailbighter of the journey we were just above empty on the fuel gave as we drove through Torrens Creek the servo at TC didn't have any diesel so we had to continue on to the next town (Pentland) which was about 35kms down the road, we had enough fuel to get there so we continued on our merry way. As we approached the only servo in Pentland we noticed the Service staion was closed due to a "family emergency" so we gritted our teeth and thought we'd push our luck and drive to Homestead. This drive was alot more delicate didn't push the speed to much and managed to make it to Homestead with the fuel gave right on the lower part of empty, luckily we could fill up at the servo... WRONG two guys watering a barrel full of flowers came over and kindly informed us that they were completely out of diesel, it was about this time i slumped heavily in the chair and let out a couple of quiet choice words. The next town (Balfes Creek) was another 30kms down the road, the flower watering man with slightly crossed eyes told us that we should make it there. We had no real choice but to give it a go. So we drove slowly, in tence silence along the highway to see if we could make it to Balfes Creek, i was putting up the hills and rolling down them in neutral to conserve every last drop we had.
Somehow with the gauge now well below empty we made it to Balfes Creek Servo, we asked the owener if we could pump some diesel, he told us we might get some if we were lucky as his pump was playing up, at this point is said something like
"we'll pump it by hand if we have too!" after 10mins of persevering with the pump we had $20 worth of diesel in the tank.
"That'll get ya to Charters Towers" said the old bloke pumpin the diesel, we paid him and continued on our way to said town. The tension was lifted and we were getting stoked about being so close to townsville.
After filling up at Charters towers it was 130kms to Townsville, we were no longer concerned about conserving fuel and were getting anxious too meet up with Mikgater and Heff. Thundering along the highway at 110km p/hr we made it to townsville and navigated our way to the share house where the Girls are living.

After stuffing around at the house for a couple of hours we unloaded some things out of the Bumblebee and went and picked Mikgater up from work, we went back to the house and partied on untill early in the morning. It's awesome to be back with the girls! now we just have to figure out what we are doing next!

Nice Rack Pt2 + nice tent hat.

Helllloooooo! im going to let you all in on a lil secret (by secret i mean not secret) the Bumblebee is just about ready to take flight (possibly drive)...Anyways this post has some pictures of the roof rack and the roof top tent fully opened up. For some stupid reason i didn't take a photo of the tent when its all folded away but that doesn't matter because its much cooler open.
Roofrack
Well keeping in tradition of nothing going smoothly for me the roof rack was no exception. My dads mate "Ducky" said he had the perfect roof rack for us, he said it was off another Landcruiser troop carrier and was just sitting at his other house waiting to be used. So of course we jumped at the opportunity to collect this amazing fabled roof rack, so the weekend we decide to go and get it "Ducky" discovers that the roof rack had been stolen from his other property... Yaaaaaaay. I wasn't all that suprised by this news, i had thought to myself that this was way too conveinient and easy thins just never work out the way they should. So after that depacle we went with plan B which was a roof rack my mate Costa had offered us, it was a white steel roof rack which would have needed some modifying to make it strong enough to mount the roof top tent to, so we took that roof rack home with the intentention of using it as a starting point for what could be. Ducky came up for a beer with my dad and saw the roof rack we were intending on using. He took one look at it and called me over, at this point i was wondering what he was going to say to me, he had a strange look in his eye. But luckily for me that strange look in his eye was generosity and he offered us to use the roofrack off of his 4wd. In his words "Better than stuffin' round with that other thing", i couldn't have agreed more. Ducky's roof rack is a nice solid aluminium roofrack, much more suited to the rugged old bumblebee than the dainty white roof rack (no offence Costa). So the next task at hand was to have the roof rack fitted, even this was not a seamless process, suprise suprise.
The first attempt at fitting the roof rack let the guys know that the top of bumblebee was too wide so custom mounts had to be made out of Aluminium thanks to agweld bullbars for supplying us with them. (gotta love the beer economy).

Once the brackets and spacers were manufactured we went to agweld for the second attempt at fitting the roof rack. This time at least it fit over 'ol bumbles massive head but the brackets wouldn't clip into the roof gutters properly, turns out the roof gutters had been bogged up by the previous owner. So after scraping out the guttering where the brackets were to be we finally got the roof rack fitted. ahhhhhhh got there in the end.

Roof top tent

So no that that shitfight was sorted moving right along to the next. I need a place to sleep and i prefer something enclosed and with a bed. The solution was a roof top tent because im not willing to sleep in the back with nelso as much as he would like me to. Anyways we sourced the tent through all things off road and my parents generously bought it for me (i can't believe the help we've recieved from our awesome family and friends to get this expedition underway very moving!) anyways enough witht the sop the tent is super sweet, but as with everything, it wasn't just a bolt on and walk away job infact as of now i'm still waiting for the pat to come in to resolve the issue. The issue being that the ladder that you use to climb up into the tent also acts as the support for the unfolded side, the issue we have is that the bumblebee is so damn tall that the standart ladder doesn't reach the ground HAHAHAHA*sigh i actually was a little bit shitty about this when i found out, but im getting over it. We've ordered an extension for the ladder and that should be here tomorow. then we'll be ready to head off. We are hoping to have the Bumblebee all packed up and ready to go tomorow, so i'll take lots of pics of the loaded rig and do another update for you all. :)

Check out the awesomeness below that is the roof top tent in its folded out glory!!

!

Nice Rack pt1

Allllllrighty then. I've been a bit slack with the posting recently due to the fact that we've been busy finishing or jobs (now officially an urban pioneer) and modifying the Bumblebee. We enlisted the help of the very practical man in the form of Nelso's father. He constructed for us a magnificent custom storage rack for the rear of the bumble bee. I must apologise as i haven't got any photos of the rack installed but the next post will so just chill out, (there was no need to get upset about it.)
We sized the rack up to be able to take our fridge, esky and as many storage boxes as we could fit, we also kept in mind the fact that Nelso apparently needs somewhere to sleep so we utilized the existing seats to form a bed, (don't try to hard to visualise it because it will be in the next post). Anyways below are some construction photos of Bumblebee's Rack taking shape.

Remove seats to inspect optimal rack dimensions

Observe (preferably with a  hang over) as the dreams of men become reality

Observe further......... ooooooOOOOO.

Place on a series of brick like pedestals to make it feel special

I want it painted black

Stay tuned as there is more excitement to come, you may need to keep a spare pair available as the next update will show the finished product in place.
Also still to come:

• Installation of roof rack and a rooftop tent for me :)
• Installation of dual battery circuit
• Installation of electrical wiring, including interior lighting, phone charging ports and auxiliary power socket for the fridge to draw power from.