It turns out that the little
street-sweeper was a very busy, or a very evil, chap as he did indeed come
round every few minutes. He eventually stopped, but at who knows what time, and
that gave us both an opportunity to get the rest that we craved. As the next
flight was due in at 7am we knew that we would need to be up and about by then
so as not to have countless tourists and locals milling about as we slept. We
both groggily rose from our make-shift beds at around half 6 and compared notes
on sleep duration and position. When 7:30am came around James went off to speak
to the information desk and he returned with relative good news – someone had
handed in an iPod from our flight. So with spirits raised we collected our
belongings and jumped in a taxi to get to the city centre.
The taxi driver was a complete
idiot and we both hoped that the rest of the people we would meet in this
beautiful country wouldn’t be as frustrating as him. But we were there, in
Cairns, in Australia! As it was only just after 8am we would have to do the old
wait-around-for-hours-before-we-can-check-in trick. James said that he would
wait with the bags first so I set off for a wander round. Straight down to the
harbour, and it felt a little bit like San Diego or San Francisco, with people
going about their morning job down the sea front with dog/iPhone.
Temperature-wise it was bob on and felt good to take some layers off and enjoy
the nice warmth of the sun again. I found a McDonalds with Wi-Fi so we set up
camp in there nursing a tea and a coffee whilst catching up on a few things.
After 3 and ½ hours we thought
we would try our luck at checking in early at the hostel so we lugged our stuff
down there, the all-too-familiar feeling of back-pack digging into flesh coming
back to us already. We were in luck, she booked us in straight away and started
to tell us all about the place. As a bonus we would be getting breakfast in the
morning, and apparently a dinner at night too! Each day! What a winner. It
looked like our luck was changing! The hostel was pretty much the same as all
the other backpacker hostels in the area it seemed; pretty basic, with communal
areas and bathrooms, but at least we had our own room. First on the agenda was
to get all our stuff in order and grab a much-needed shower. A little afternoon
nap was very enjoyable, and then we were off out to have another look round the
place. We had a meal voucher for a place called Gilligan’s just down the road
and we weren’t sure how much the beers would be in this place so we stopped off
in an offy to scope out the prices. New Zealand had been pretty expensive on
the booze-front so we held out hope that Oz would be better. At well over $10
for a six pack of beer we were left a little deflated. Perhaps the wine would
be better. But we would not be able to grab a cheap box of the stuff for we
would need to be on the Greyhound in the next couple of days and they have a
very strict policy on alcohol on the buses i.e. none. Bottles of wine looked to
be around the $10 mark for a non-table wine……until we spotted some for $4 each.
That is about £3 by English money, which even we drew the line at. Maybe $5
would be ok, as we certainly didn’t want to be drinking paint-stripper. And
then I spotted something in the chiller. A bottle of Wolf Blass sparking white
for $7 and thought “why not!”. James decided to join me on the fizz we bought
them and hid them as best we could in the communal fridges, hoping that nobody
would pinch them before we came back for them after dinner.
 |
| The Fizz |
Dinner was sausage, mash and
gravy, pretty expected, but I decided to upsize for $3 more to get a little
more of everything. It was obviously a ploy to get people in and then hope to
keep them in to have some beers afterwards. It was never gonna work on us, as
we had two bottles of fizz lined up for when we had polished off the grub. It
was decent enough grub, but nothing special, and we headed back to the hostel
to crack open the bubbly.
There was no real set of
cutlery, pans, crockery, etc at the hostel, so we had to make do as best we
could – James got himself a light blue ceramic mug and I snaffled a luminous
green plastic cup. Who said we weren’t classy?! After popping the corks we
settled in on the couches outside our room, where the Wi-Fi signal was
reasonably strong and had quickly become our usual place of residence. We were
supping away quite happily and playing a few games of cards when a couple of
young girls came to ask us if we would mind if they put a DVD on, to which we,
naturally, replied “fill your boots” or words to that effect. The film they had
chosen was a generic “rom-com” but one that I had actually seen before. The
Danish girl fell asleep after about 10 minutes and went to bed soon after, and
then the Irish girl came back to carry on the film whilst me and James
continued our battle of wits (+ luck) at cards.
By the time we had finished
both film and cards it was pushing half 11 and as we had not slept well in the
airport (surprisingly) we hit the hay straight away. As I put in the earphones
to listen to the ramblings of Ricky Gervais, Steven Merchant and Karl
Pilkington I was blissfully unaware that the rowdy Club Mickey outside would be
told to quieten down after 10 minutes or the police would be called. Happy
days.
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