Townsville

The incomparable John McDonald, promotions manager at the Walters Group IGA store there, soothed us with his lemon-squeezy dulcet laidbackedness and enthusiasm for anything beyond the nine dots. He arranged work for us at Camp Quality, a kids camp for cancer sufferers, one of the many local charities he and the store he works for are affiliated with, where we gardened for the day, where we earned some fuel and food from the goodly John and the kindly IGA.

Pleasure meeting with Mark and Nikki at Camp Quality, who do good work, for some beautiful children.

Thank You to Darren, Janine, and Ethan Staunton in Kirwan, for a place to hang our heads for the night. Darren makes an incredible curry. Cheers for the shampoo and cd’s too.

Bonza to Darren, Jon and Sharon at the Network Communications store, in Castletown Shopping World, for the $30 of Optus phone credit.

Bonza too to Lauren, Elouise and Gemma at the Vodafone store in Castletown Shopping World for $20 Vodafone phone credit.

Cheers Den at Den’s Internet, 265 Flinders St, who donated 20 minutes free to us., and invaluable wisdom into the bargain. Mention also to his lovely sister Anna, who helped us out with some names for work further along the track.

Thanks to Very Tall Andrew at the Townsville Bulletin who ran a story on us. He was over tall you know. What’s the weather like up there, we quipped.

To Michelle and Christine at Reef HQ, that underwater aquatic extravaganza, for donating a trip round for us. Made us crave fish N chips.

To all the staff at Mobil Calcium, Charters Towers, who donated a jerry cans worth of fuel to us for the trip out back.

Too easy mate. We rested our perspiring behinds and lay our sweat-beaded brows at Pentland Caravan Park, our first taster of the Outback. It’s big, we agreed.

To Nick and Wendy, at Julia Creek Roadhouse, who donated $10 fuel to us.