July 30th to August 6. Cairns. Time to get touristy

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We had 8 nights booked in Cairns, though for two of them we took a little side quest and went to Melbourne (see separate entry). Arriving in Cairns early afternoon, we dropped the van into its resting place a little out of town and went into central Cairns to book our adventures over the next few days. A large part of the waterfront is under construction, and it felt the sea was also not quite built because looking out from the esplanade all you could see was a wide expanse of mud and the hint of water in the distance. The tidal movement is quite extreme, and when the water is there, it is very shallow. We learn later that differing water colours in the sea are where there is a less salty, tidal water being green, and the blue is heavier salted ocean water and the two mix as well as oil and, well, water. They make distinct line as you travel over them in a boat and from the esplanade you can see why there would be so much tidal water.

Our Monday was a recovery day after a big out of Cairns experience on the weekend. It let us set up for the week and start getting into touristy things. The first of which was a trip out to Fitzroy Island, a 45 minute boat ride to a tropical island for a walk and snorkel. It is surprising we can breathe at all with so many breathtaking views on things we are doing, but tropical beach chic was certainly in style here. In the middle of the day, we reboarded the boat for a spot of whale watching. The first whale was spotted very quickly, and then a number more including mothers and their calves, and others close to the boat. Some were more playful, and we got to see most of their tricks. One came pretty close to the boat so we could gauge its size. Fair to say that it was big.

Tour groups do show the whole gamut of human behaviour, and it isn’t always the most delightful thing to see. On this one, everyone is pretty civil at the start, finding a seat and making their own space. However, as soon as someone shouts “Whale at 2 o’clock!”, suddenly everyone sprints to the same spot with little regard for those already there and anybody else dashing to what is the perfect spot only momentarily. Linda managed to set up a view beside one person who had pushed in, only to have her shot ruined by said person thinking it was a good idea to wave to a whale. One young boy moved to the centre of the deck with his handheld photo stick video thing, not holding onto anything on what could be said to be a very rocky boat. With mum and dad focused on a humpback, I needed to give some strong encouragement for him to sit down and hang on as I didn’t want my tour ruined by having to do an ocean rescue of someone not related to me. It would have been quite inconvenient.

Wednesday, we did a full day snorkelling tour of the Great Barrier Reef. With the sun coming out, and the Coral Sea not being quite as rough as the day before, the 2.5 hour ride to the reef was pleasant and came with a bonus whale show. In a glorious display of serendipity for missing out on the shot the day before due to someone waving to an animal, this glorious beast breached right in front of where we were sitting, allowing Linda to get the best photo of the holiday.

Preparing to snorkel and getting into our wetsuits provided some confusion for me as to where the zip should go. I am scarred by an event from around 30+ years ago where Linda’s brothers were going to try and teach me to surf, and when I put the wetsuit on backwards with the zip on the front, they basically laughed at me and gave up then. Now, everyone was having their zippers on the front. I think that they are silly tourists not knowing the right way and I had learned my lesson well many years before. I proudly step into the suit backwards and Linda just asked what the hell was I doing. Apparently, these ones DO go on the front and now my wetsuit emotional scarring is even deeper and I don’t know what to think other than I should probably stay out of water which is less than 30 degrees.

With us now looking like pretty good shark food, we jump off the back of the boat with a bunch of other tourists like berley. Under the surface, a new world opens up. Giant clams, colourful fish, tiny Nemo’s and a myriad of differing coral types and colours were on display. I am not a confident snorkeller, but having some floating fairy wings on helped immensely. Linda held my hand through most of the dive while taking some pretty amazing photo’s with her new birthday month present, an underwater camera. I did note that not one sea animal took the time to even look at us, let alone wave.

Returning to dry land and heading back to the car, we see that the road to the main strip was closed off. Behind the boundaries were a number of sprint cars, trailers, and trucks. We wander over and have a chat and discover they are about to start a parade with the cars being towed along as a promotion for the races they were having on the weekend. We take a look as they prep and see them tying them together ready to tow. I was happy to move on as we had seen them standing still long enough and seeing them dragged behind a huge 4wd wasn’t much different. Then, from down the street, one of the sprint cars is being pushed by another big 4WD to jump start it, giving an almighty roar when the engine kicks in. These babies don’t have batteries, so need some encouragement to get started. When they had encouraged a few more and the sound of the engines was ringing in our ears, we felt we had been given a little treat to see at the end of the day.

Thursday was a nice walk to Crystal Cascades, lunch at the Botanical Gardens and a second visit to a record store with a great selection just in case we missed something on the first visit. I did get a Crown of Thorns album I didn’t know about, record count is now 7, as well as a number of cd’s and a Nick Barker and the Reptiles Cassingle. I really do need to get that tape deck.

Dear reader, this is where the tale takes a dark turn as the next 12 hours are grim and stressful. Being on a holiday is not always a bed of roses, and if it is, there are sometimes a few pricks to spoil the party. I crack a beer (this isn’t the bad bit), and settle into my camp chair and kayo on the laptop. The next 3 hours was spent watching North Melbourne embarrass the Dogs over and over again. Sick to the stomach on such an awful result, I toss and turn and finally manage to get to sleep until 3:30am. Then nature calls and Linda says that there is a distinct lack of power to the van.

Not the 240v power that you plug into, all battery related power. I check the battery charger and turn that on, and it tells me the battery is 100% and won’t do anything. With other panels showing nothing, panic starts to set in. The key issue with not having battery power is that the roof on the van can only be lowered on battery power and only when it is over 50%. With nothing on the readouts, we are not going to move anything.

Linda and I frantically googled, checked Alto facebook sites, even read the Alto manual and nothing was useful or helpful for this situation. At 4:30 Linda finds on the Alto Facebook site that the previous owner of this specific van had posted at one stage that in the middle of the night she inexplicably lost all power, and after a stressful night trying to figure out what to do, when the sun came out and hit the solar panels, everything started to magically work again. Mmm.

So, we have until the sun comes up at 6:30 and Linda is thinking about how much an emergency auto electrician is going to be and I am stressing about the park wanting to tow our van with the roof up, breaking the van and other unlikely scenarios. The park starts to wake up, old mate next to us heads off for work at 5:00am, some more people stirring 6 and finally there is some light to do some further investigation. We had read that some Lithium batteries have reset buttons for when the charge gets to dangerously low levels and shut down. I open the external cabinet to access the battery and look for such a button that will get us out of the mess we are in. Nothing.

However, there was a fuse. Under a black locking cover that looked a little loose there was a fuse. The fuse was loose too. I push the fuse into the holder. Suddenly, everything comes alive. The battery charger, the lights, the fridge, and both Linda’s and my face. It liiiiiives. The battery charger does its thing, the readout console also springs to life after a message of “connecting” for a bit. The console has a little face emoji to show how happy the battery is, which we have come to name Larry. Larry wasn’t happy but he was getting a charge. He would soon be happy as Larry again.

Disaster averted, a couple of strong coffees and some breakfast, and we can get back on the road again. Everything seems worse at 3:30 in the morning. It still didn’t seem good at 6:29 but was fine now. It was going to be a long day moving to Newell (Port Douglas) but thankfully it was a short drive day.

Cairns Ingenia Big 4 Holiday Park Google review

This park is big, really big. It’s so big that you can lose your way to the front gate the first time you drive out. It’s so big, that the kids playgrounds, jumping pillows, water park, tennis court, basketball court, games room, water slides and second pool are so far away you can’t hear them from the other side of the park where we are. This is appreciated. I expected to hate this park and we only stayed here due to circumstance but found it to be quite pleasant and would stay again if the circumstances arose. 5 stars.