It was only south from here and we left Cairns to go south to Townsville. On the way we passed a billboard for Paronella Park and decided to go since I had seen brochures for it and it seemed nice. It was a bit out of the way and on the old road to Townsville and overpriced, like everything touristy I have found out, but it was a nice detour. It’s basically an old villa and gardens, which have unfortunately seen a fire and a few floods and the owners don’t plan on rebuilding, which I think they should.

Paronella Park

Cane Train and sugar cane

Then we passed through acres and acres of sugar cane and saw lots of cane trains on the rest of our journey to Townsville. We had found a campsite in the brochure but without a proper map we got a bit lost and it was a mess because when we called the campsite I think they also didn’t know where they were located and we spent a good 2 hours driving around the outskirts of Townsville.

I was in a mall parking lot, turning around when a lemon of a car drove by me with a heavy-set woman in it who stuck up her middle finger and yelled obscenities. I felt right at home, as if I was back in Philly. In Philly this is a normal everyday occurrence and on a journey to and from the city this happens at least once for sure and sometimes even three or four times. That’s when it hit me that this was the first and turns out only person that had road rage towards me, and believe me there were countless times people could have had road rage with me driving the bus, and this wasn’t even one of those occasions. I realized there is no way I would want to drive the van anywhere near Philadelphia, because I couldn’t even imagine the abuse I’d get, but here, at best when I was driving my worst I may have gotten a beep.

After the fiasco of driving then turning around four or five times we decided we had it with Townsville and would move on. As we were leaving the city, what did we see? The entrance to the campsite we were looking for all along. We could have strangled ourselves and the teenagers behind the desk since their directions were for a wild goose chase.