The Road Trip, Day One, Brisbane to Tin Can Bay

I should probably give a bit of background to this road trip: My original plan was to spend time with my cousin Gracey after the wedding and then head off to Fiji, but unfortunately I forgot that newly weds have a honeymoon straight after the wedding. Grace promptly legged it to Thailand and so I decided to visit her in Cairns when she got back. I was checking out flights to Cairns and I happened to come across a camper rental website, that had 'relocations' from Brisbane to Cairns. Relocations are where the hire company needs a vehicle moving to a certain location, usually 'against' the popular routes as it were, and they had loads of vehicles from $1 a day!!

So I then did a load of research and thought into this, and decided that it could be workable if I could find 3-4 people to share the driving and cost of big 6 berth motor home. This would cost more to hire but at least I could share the driving and it would come with a kitchen, air con, toilet and a shower. So I left a few notices in backpackers asking for 'company' on this trip: it took me two days to find 4 suitable people but unfortunately by this time all the relocation deals had gone.

I then reverted back to the 'fly' option, until I randomly met Lucy and Natalie in the reception area and turns out they wanted to travel to Cairns too. Coincidently the hire company had six motor homes on new relocation deals, so I got over my nerves and the risk, and booked it. I then met a lovely Spanish couple the next day, who wanted to join in as well and that is how this whole road trip started.

With a distance of 1,701kms and needing to do this in 6 days, this was never going to be an epic 'see everything' trip, but it would be an experience and should be fun.


So the first day, picked up the vehicle that we would all be living in for 6 days and wow, its bloody huge!!! (see pic)

I was expecting a large van, but Big Bessy (my nick name for it) is huge.... like 7m long, 3.5m tall and weighs like 3.5T. Driving it feels very similar to my old work pick up truck, the ever lasting and fun Mitzu Triton: very light on the steering and quite 'jelly' like in it's responses but the fact it is an auto makes it very easy to drive.

The ever kind and helpful Erin shuttled me around Brisbane to get Bessy and sort stuff out (mucho grasicis!!!!!) then at 9am I drove through central Brisbane to pick up what is best described as a random collection of backpackers:

Natalie and Lucy: two English lass's from up north, who only left England a week and a half ago, for the usual backpacker dreams.
Antonio and Christina: a Spanish couple, traveling around Australia looking for work and doing the backpacker thing.


The first day was a quite an easy day, just 3.5hrs (218km) to Tin Can bay. We got the first introductions out of the way and just hit the road, whilst trying to work out where to go, how the sat nav works, how the iPod thingy works and who's doing what. Quite fun really....

The bay it self looked ok, it didn't have a beach within walking distance but it did have the option of feeding dolphins by hand just off the point. The dolphins (pics) looked like they had a bad argument with a cheese grater, apparently they were signs of shark attacks. Anyway it was pretty cool to see them up close and watch them gobble down the $5 fish that all the tourists were buying for them.

And I went for a walk at like 10pm, which wasn't very picturesk but was very interesting to hear the sounds of the Australian wild life without seeing them. I even thought I was being followed a few times........

General Road Trip Pictures

Tin Can Bay Pictures

Location:Tin Can Bay