Let's Go See Dougie
16th January, Port Douglas, Australia.
Not much to report about the last couple of days. We've pretty much run out of things to do in Cairns without spending a fortue or covering old ground again. We have a van but we don't yet have a roadworthy certificate for it, nor have we got a rego (the Aussi registration, similar to car tax), and hence find ourselves stuck here trying to kill time. We managed to do this by having a marathon DVD session - I had bought a stack of Secret Life Of Us (Aussie drama, comparable to This Life) DVDs from HMV, and we watched the first six 1-hour episodes. Unfortunately, we couldn't go any further on it as HMV didn't have the whole set. At around £4 per DVD (with three issues), it seemed like a great investment.
After the last few days of killing time, we decided to rent a car today and drive up to Port Douglas. Unfortunately the weather wasn't all that great. This is a shame, as the route from Cairns to Port Douglas is a very scenic one, yet the grey skies in the photos taken don't allude to this at all. Still, it was great just to get out and about and have some freedom.
View over 4-Mile Beach, Port Douglas.
We didn't stay long in Port Douglas. The drive was the event, though, not the destination. Besides, we couldn't stay long because we had to get back to Road Runner Autos for the small matter of collecting a mustard yellow 1975 VW Kombi with roadworthy certificate!
I collected the van just after 3pm and then headed back to Cairns and our hostel to get all the necessary paperwork and then went to Queensland Transport to get our rego. I missed the office opening hours by just one minute, but given that this is a Friday, it means that that one minute will delay us getting the van registered until Monday now. The question is whether we take a risk and drive it now (risking a fine if we get caught) or do the sensible thing and wait until Monday before heading south. We decided to do the sensible thing, even though it means two more days in Cairns twiddling our thumbs.