A couple of bumps in the road ...

Queensland. Beautiful one day, perfect the next??? Yeah right. I never should believe advertising campaigns by dodgy 80's ad execs and bad television personalities.

I'm currently in Cairns - one of the many old home towns I have - and it's pouring. Not just a little bit of rain. I'm talking flash flooding. All a bit of fun and games for the non tropics initiated. But this has been going on for days.

To quote myself (much repeated in a mocking way by my travelling companions): "It's the wet season. Really - what should we expect?". But I lived here. And I can't remember it ever being this bad. But perhaps that's because I never hired a little yellow getz and tried to drive through flooding.

Coming up from Townsville was bad enough. We drove through Tully - the wettest town in Australia - and to do so, our little car turned into a little boat. This prompted me to pop into the police station, where a lovely officer laughed at me "You want to go to Mission Beach? In that car? Hope you know how to swim!". Thus our plans were cancelled for the first time.

Then yesterday, we had booked a couple of nights in Cape Tribulation. For those of you unfamiliar with Australia - Cape Trib is a few hours north of Cairns, in the middle of the Daintree Rainforest, right on one of the most perfectly white beaches you've ever seen. Sounds lovely. Except the weather gods stepped in again. This time, we managed to get on a boat to cross one river. And then the road decided to turn into a river. So we decided to turn back, and head towards the familiar. A bottle shop. Really - we hadn't had wine for days, and in the circumstances, a nice hotel in Cairns with a nicer bottle of wine is what we really needed.

So our plans were thwarted for a second time.

And now - on a perfectly rainy day in Cairns, our bad luck (well, Michele's), has stepped in for the third time. When travel agents and websites advise that 'you don't need a visa for Vietnam' - don't believe them. Turns out, you do. And she's flying there in 3 days. And we're in the tropics -far far away from any consulate you may care to mention. So as I write this, I am also looking up flights for Mich to Sydney - to see if she can leave in a couple of hours, to get this sorted out.

Traveling - like life - I suppose, decides to throw a few curly ones in from time to time.

Speaking of curly ones, Michele decided that a rainy day in Port Douglas was the perfect place to learn to drive a manual. The fact that we drive on the other side of the road to Americans and Europeans means that this lesson will probably be rendered useless - but oh well. After mastering driving a mini moke on Maggie Island (near Townsville), she decided to hit the real roads. With interesting results. I'll try to attach a video to demonstrate. All I can say is I'm glad it was a hire car!

Better go - am off to the court house to watch cane toad racing tonight. Only in Queensland.