The boys went off to pick up our campervan while I sat with all our bags in the hostel reception area. After what seemed like forever (it was probably about and hour & a half!) they returned in our bright orange 'Spaceship' and announced that it was called 'Sonic'!! Gareth fell in love instantly and has already given it lots of other nicknames. He also insists on singing the Red Dwarf theme tune at every opportunity & has assigned us each a character! Not being hugely familiar with the show, I'm not sure whether being given Rimmer was a compliment but based on how much they laughed I doubt it!!! Once all our bags were packed into the back, we were ready to set off, except for the small matter of a traffic warden walking towards us waving at us to wind the window down!!!! Turns out, we had inadvertently stopped over the line of the bus parking bay and that carries a $100 fine! Luckily, the warden was in a good mood and just warned us to be more careful where we stop before sending us off on our way! Phew!! As we pulled away, Matt spotted the mileage Sonic had covered... 263,950km!!! He's certainly a well travelled van!!

The first stop was at the shopping centre so we could stock up on food and also pick up some essentials such as cooking utensils, fold-up chairs, an Esky and Tupperware! After spending a small fortune, we loaded these into the van and then decided we really did deserve a KFC as we had no idea when we would get to eat again!!! ;-) Then, we were on the road ...

Matt did the first driving shift and took us all the way from Cairns to Mission Beach, which took about 2 hours. It was just as we decided to switch drivers that disaster struck! The roads entering Mission Beach became quite windy and there was a crazy number of road signs, some telling you the speed limit, others offering suggested speed limits and loads warning about cassowaries! In the confusion, none of us spotted that the actual limit had dropped from 80 to 60 km/hour so you can imagine our horror when Matt pulled over to allow a police car with its lights flashing to go past, only for it to pull up behind us! It turned out Matt had been going 81km/hour and for being 21km over the limit, the fine is $360!!!!! Thankfully, he was also in a good mood (just not quite as good as the traffic warden!) and said he would drop the recorded speed to 80km/hour which only carries a $220 fine!! So although we didn't stay at Mission Beach for very long (there really isn't much there other than a beach - unless you are going to do a sky dive or white water rafting!) at least now we have a souvenir of our visit! :s

I took over the driving from here and continued along the highway for a little over 2 hours! The roads are so long and straight, it's really easy to drive over here & of course with them driving on the same side of the road as us, it makes life much easier!! The only strange thing is the fact the van is an automatic & the stick is up by the steering wheel which catches us off guard every now & then, especially after a long spell of not having to slow down or stop!!

Gareth took over the driving for the final part of the journey and at just before 7pm, we pulled in to Black River Stadium, a fairly new campsite about 7km off the Bruce Highway just north of Townsville . We were a little nervous initially as the gates were chained up and we had to phone the owner so he could come and let us in but we were soon put at ease when we met him & his grandson and drove over to our pitch. Them came the fun part of trying to set up our bed! Gareth had his tent up in minutes while we faffed about pulling all the bags out, turning the chair round, putting the cushions in place, making the bed & finally repacking all the bags! All of this in the pitch black with just head torches to help us!!!! Eventually, we got ourselves sorted and then set upon our next task... Dinner!!!

The campsite has a pretty decent kitchen area with gas BBQs you can cook on and we had bought pasta & vegetables during our shopping spree so Gareth & I got chopping and preparing the food while Matt got the BBQ going, or didn't as we discovered we had made a schoolboy error... No matches & (as non-smokers) no lighter!!!! Finally it was decided we were going to have to go door to door knocking on the other caravans and campers and see if anyone had some we could use! Bearing in mind it was still only about 8:30pm it didn't seem that unreasonable, however we hadn't actually seen anyone from these vans since we arrived so maybe they were asleep already? We nominated Gareth to go knocking and luckily for him the first one he came to turned out to be the caretaker who kindly gave us a pack of matches! Result! Dinner actually turned out to be pretty good and we even had enough leftovers to box up for another day!

Finally the time had come for us to head to bed! The bit Matt & I had been dreading! At first it wasn't too bad as there was plenty of room for the 2 of us to lay down, the problem came though as it got warmer & warmer in the van and the air seemed to be disappearing! Matt fell asleep pretty quickly but I just couldn't drift off and to make matters worse I kept feeling like I couldn't breathe as there was no breeze! Following a pep talk from my mum (thank goodness for What's App!) I moved into the front of the van where I was able to open the windows slightly (I decided to take my chances with the bugs!) and make a bed up across the seats and bags where I managed to get a little bit of sleep! Not the most comfortable night's sleep for any of us but we are going to have to get used to that for a while!!

In the morning, once we were showed and packed up, Gareth continued with the driving and took us through the centre of Townsville and on to the Sealink harbour where we were catching the ferry to Magnetic Island for a few days. Sadly, Sonic had to stay in Townsville, so we paid for the parking and left him there - secretly looking forward to the 'luxury' of 2 nights in a 6 bed dorm room!!