Wednesday 30th September was our last day in the campervan and day 108 of our year-long trip. By 8.30am we had hosed down the van and put in a little extra elbow grease to remove all the bugs that had caked onto the windscreen and front of the van. Note to self: next time hose the van off a little more regularly, as the bugs really bake on in this ‘winter’ sun! That done, we were on the road on our final leg of our journey back to Brisbane.

We took the Glass House Mountains Scenic Route . Captain Cook apparently saw these mountains from the coast and they reminded him of the glass furnaces back home in Yorkshire, hence their name. 

This route took us past Steve Irwin’s famous Australia Zoo, which everyone tells us is wonderful, but we weren’t really interested in visiting. However, as we whizzed past it, Tony exclaimed ‘A Big Crocodile’. After a month of seeing warning signs that a crocodile attack may cause injury or death, but never any sign of an actual crocodile, this could have been an exciting moment, but as not as exciting as finding this unexpected huge crocodile carved out of a tree trunk to add to our collection of Big Things! Well, actually, I lie. I really would have loved to have seen a real crocodile, but it wasn’t to be.

We did a U-turn and went back for the Big Croc photo and then continued on to Beerwah to find the Big Mower. Tony was quite surprised to discover that this was indeed a giant lawnmower, as he’d got it into his head that the mower was another weird Aussie bird (something like a ‘Moa’, which does possible sound like a bird - TP). The big mower is outside a shop of the same name which sells the biggest lawnmowers you can imagine (or bigger maybe - it depends how good your imagination is). Tony did, for a moment, think that maybe he would like a place with a really big garden so he could have one of the hugest ride-on lawnmowers known to man…the boy likes his toys!

By 3pm we had emptied our belongings from the van, cleaned it out, returned it to Travellers’ Autobarn and were back at Rosie and Steve‘s drinking tea. Total travelled: 5036 kilometres (about 3150 miles). It was brilliant but next time we’ll either take more time or not go so far!