Briefly Back to Civilisation in Townsville

The world’s longest pub crawl had led us back into civilisation, and our first glimpse of the ocean in over a month – Townsville QLD.

We had planned to stay in Townsville at a cheap and cheerful guest house ($80 a night, shared bathroom and kitchen with the other guests, breakfast included!) for three nights and use Townsville as a base for productivity. We have a number of items on our to do list, related to the Jeep and increasing our comfort while camping, and it’s difficult to knock things off the list while in a campground or outback setting where all you want to do is explore or move on to the next cool thing, not to mention the minimal stock most hardware stores keep out there.

Three nights ended up turning into four, because while we were on the 595km pub crawl, this happened…

Anyway, once the windscreen repair appointment was secured for Monday afternoon (we arrived in Townsville on Friday evening, leaving us the whole weekend to GTD), Saturday was the perfect opportunity for a well-overdue spa appointment for the Jeep – she badly needed a soap-down, and the chrome wheels especially were looking quite beaten down.

And, after 6,000km the tyres also needed to be rotated. Just before we left Sydney we bought brand-new all-terrain tyres from Bob Jane (a chain tyre supplier in Australia), and they offer a free first tyre rotation, which is awesome – so while in Townsville, we took advantage.

Incredibly, washing, vacuuming, and polishing the wheels on the Jeep, plus a tyre rotation, took up the entire first day in Townsville up to dinner time! We frequently find ourselves underestimating the time it takes to get things done while we’re on the road, and this day was no exception.

That night, we treated ourselves to a night on the Town(sville), heading to dinner at a local brewery and for a few drinks afterwards at an area of town called City Lane – look how civilised (and clean!) we are!!

The next day was a shopping, laundry, blog post, and budgeting bonanza, with Nick out at the big box stores all day in search of supplies for our project list, and Pam back at the guest house catching up on washing, writing posts, and reconciling the July budget (spoiler alert: we were pretty significantly off on some of our estimates…ah well, it’s a learning process).

For the curious, on the shopping list was:

• Replacement bow shackle for our rear recovery point (previous one fell off somewhere in the Simpson Desert – this one will be zip tied into place!)
• Bolts and washers for the tent’s ladder – one of the bolts seems to be coming loose and it’s always good to have spares
• A very specific socket and some wiring for our broken UHF antenna
• Blade guard for our saw (original guard seems to be MIA)
• A second rapid tyre deflator for Pam to use, so we can air down twice as quickly when we hit dirt from now on
• Some foam board and fabric, to create some DIY window covers for the rear windows, since the things we have stacked up against them are damaging the tinting

With regards to that last item, the foam board and fabric to create window covers, we had a little arts-and-crafts session before leaving Townsville and knocked this project off our list – and I think they turned out pretty darn well!

A little yellow foam board, and measuring tape to get the dimensions right (yellow of course, we’re very colour coordinated around here).

Some fabric adhered to the foam board, to further protect the window and provide a little visual interest from the outside…

I chose this adorable bee fabric, with Nick’s slightly reluctant blessing, because our black-and-yellow Jeep is often compared to a Bumblebee (one of the highlights from the beginning of our trip was a truckie over the radio telling us with all the black and yellow we look like a bumblebee)…

Here’s the view from the outside – adorable and functional!

And the inside (yes that’s duct tape) – windows all safe and protected!

Our final activity in Townsville was to make a little time to visit the beach – only for long enough to have a coffee, but we couldn’t leave without at least spending a little time taking in the ocean.

And with that, our productivity goals somewhat met (again, everything always takes so much longer than we thought it would…), the fridge stocked and laundry done, it’s time for us to continue on our journey north along the Cassowary Coast and through the Atherton Tablelands to Cairns, and from there straight up Cape York, hopefully reaching the northernmost tip of the continent by late August. Cape York is another one of those dream destinations for Nick and I (the Simpson Desert being one we’ve already conquered on this trip) and we’re so looking forward to checking another one off the list, but taking our sweet time along the way!

MVP for this leg of the journey has got to be NRMA. For non-Aussies that’s our roadside assistance provider. Prior to leaving we maxed out our coverage, and while our windshield replacement was a small issue costing only around $260, it’ll be fully reimbursed by NRMA even though it occurred out of state. Our roadside assistance plan comes with a host of other benefits too, like recovery of our vehicle from remote areas, free hotel stays in a recovery situation, taxis to and from repair shops, etc. Anyone going on a long trip like this one should certainly opt to max out their roadside assistance coverage and we’re thankful to NRMA for providing such a great plan.