Around Australia by Schooner

Ever thought about taking the squids on a long road trip? Here's my advice:  Forget it. They won't enjoy it, and there's a chance their constant bickering and squabbling will ruin what could have been a great holiday. These signs appear regularly on the Bruce Highway between Mackay and Townsville.  Because there's no sign of a McDonalds, the obvious answer is 'no' Instead, send them to the grandparents. The olds will love seeing the little ones, and after four or six weeks, the kids will begin to understand what you mean when you carry on about your difficult childhood. I'll admit I've dragged my youngest child along with me this time, but he's 19, and spends most of his waking hours scrolling through Tindr or Grindr or whatever mating app young people use these days. When he starts whining, I just give him $10 phone credit and a Red Bull, and he's fine for another 12 hours. So does it get monotonous on the really long drives? ...

Do you remember the Gold Coast of the 1960s? No, I don't either, but the place has a reputation. A time when you could throw the boards on the Kombi, and head off to a paradise of waves, weed and wenches. Truth be told, the white shoe brigade already had a foot wedged in the door by 1970, and crappy high rise flats were starting to pop up everywhere. These days, the Gold Coast has all the charm of a Kardashian sex tape.  If you're looking for the genuine Queensland beach idyll, then you'll need to head north. The Sunshine Coast is an obvious alternative, however much of it is starting to look like a mini-Gold Coast, just more expensive. More on that in another blog post, but today, I want to talk about Hervey Bay. There's no surf in Hervey Bay - it's sheltered by Fraser Island, so don't expect any waves bigger than six inches. That's not why people come here. Actually, that's something I've long wondered ... why do people come h...

Paul Hogan's done some wicked, wicked things in his time. Like leading thousands of Australians to an early grave by flogging durries. Like hiding overseas, rather than settle a shitfight with the Australian Tax Office, who were trying to ping him for $150 million. And of course, the Paul Hogan show.  Not to mention the abominable Crocodile Dundee III. Leaving aside those atrocities, I'm prepared to cut Hoges a bit of slack, because if it wasn't for him, Kakadu would probably be a giant uranium mine. You see, when he made the original Crocodile Dundee, access to Kakadu wasn't much more than a dirt road leading to the mine.  Nobody went there.  Hoges changed all that. If you haven't seen Crocodile Dundee, you should.  It's far from perfect (for example, the pub, thanks to a bit of production trickery isn't in Kakadu at all, it's thousands of kilometres away in Queensland). But the scenery and indigenous heritage is the real deal. ...

The cockroach lurking in the urinal was the size of a small dog. The plywood walls in the hallway were smashed in, clearly the result of a Saturday night rumble. There was even a Ladies' Lounge, and I hadn't seen one of them since a short-lived stint behind the bar at the Claremont Hotel in 1986. In other words, we'd found the perfect outback pub. The Lyceum Hotel, Longreach circa 1920 Decades ago, the grandly-named Lyceum must have been a shining light for the region. Now, like Longreach itself, the sparkle has faded. But the beer was cold (a schooner of Carlton Draught - $5.00) and the service as friendly as you might expect given I rocked up after four days without a shower. There was just on thing missing; a row of singlet-clad drinkers perched on barstools. "Where is everyone," I asked. "Left," was the answer. Apparently, the last drought was a reach too far for most of the local cockies.  Longreach was once one of the wealt...

Any travel writer needs to give practical, sensible advice from time to time.  Living on the road isn't all smashed avo on organic sourdough toast, you know.  Sometimes, we need to get our hands dirty with diesel. So today, I'm giving your the inside edge on hire cars, and how not to get screwed over.  Even if you're a complete cheapskate like me, and scamming free vehicles for weeks on end. The original plan was to circumnavigate Australia in a tightarse quest for The Ultimate Holiday Experience. Around 700 km west of Emerald, Queensland.  Where I dumped my tiresome travelling companion. Based on feedback, that's not going to cut the mustard.  I mean, people travel right around the country all the time, visiting tourism hotspots like Westfield Parramatta, the MCG and Ikea.  Instagram doesn't lie. So why not focus on the real Australia?  Places like Coonabarabran, Stinking Gully (often known by the more polite moniker of Ferny Gully) and M...

I'll admit it, I'm a food snob. That doesn't mean I'm a precious, gluten-free, organic food obsessive. It just means I like my food like I prefer my women - not too salty, and ideally, not stuffed full of chemicals. With our plans to catch a medium-sized crocodile to feed us for the entire trip harpooned (the snappers are everywhere, so why are they a protected species?) it was time for Plan B. Which meant foraging for food in the outback. We named this one 'Mr Happy'.  In a case of misleading nomenclature, we found him in the West Alligator River Truth be told, I had come prepared with some of our own supplies.  In the Toyota Tank was a 40 litre fridge, which even after swallowing a case of Carlton Draught left plenty of room for food. So I stocked up on healthy snacks and fresh fruit.  Sadly, my co-traveller (when not bleating about the heat) hogged the lot before we'd even reached the outskirts of Katherine. Which left us reliant on th...

Fifteen years ago, I went head to head with a shark.  Sort of. I mean I came close to one. I was diving for abalone in Fortescue Bay in Tasmania's South East. It was a smallish shark, five or six feet perhaps. I don't care.  I was shit scared.  I floundered back to the boat ramp, threw my gear in the Pajero, and put my diving equipment on eBay. I hadn't been back in the water since.  Until Monday. This time, it wasn't sharks I had to keep an eye out for.  It was crocodiles - both kinds (saltwater and freshwater). Did I care?  No. That's because this was the nicest place to get wet I've ever been lucky enough to stumble across. Litchfield National Park was our first stopover on the Darwin to Brisbane jaunt.  It wasn't on the original itinerary, however thanks to input from the local brains trust, we made a detour. Kakadu gets all the kudos (and visitors), leaving Litchfield largely for the locals (nice alliteration -ed.). Florenc...

In 2008, Mt Isa's mayor picked up some free publicity for putting out a call for ugly chicks to move to his town. Snaggletoothed harridans, he suggested, would be welcome on his patch, as blokes outnumbered the girls five to one, and the hard-drinking miners had the beer goggles on most of the time anyway. After visiting the mining town for the first time, I can tell you this:  the blokes aren't going to be winning any glamour awards anytime soon.  If you're a single female looking for a man, don't come here. In fact, Mt Isa is, in the most gentle terms I can use in a family blog, a shithole. If mineral resources hadn't been found there nearly a century ago, it would probably still be a blot on the map, sometimes passed by travellers on their way to the Red Centre. Instead, it's now a city of more than 25,000. It takes about 18 hours to drive to Mt Isa from Brisbane, or, if coming from the other direction, close to 25 hours from Darwin. That's ...

Here it is:  the best way known to join the army of oldies clogging up our highways. 1.  Go shopping.  Find the largest motorhome or caravan you think you could drive and/or back into a tight parking space, then go for the next size up. 2.  Tell all your friends you're off to 'do Australia', then head straight for Hervey Bay.  Stay there for at least six months. 3.  When you're on the road, stay below 60 km/h, even if the limit is 130 km/h.  It's safer that way. Better still, travel in convoy with at least six other Grey Nomads (from now on, I'm calling them Gonads to save typing). Tip:  for extra authenticity, consider changing your names to Brian and Pam. Actually, most Gonads are lovely people.  I count a number of Gonads amongst my closest friends. Then there are people like Brian from Shepparton, who I met last year at a remote campsite.  The Gonads had circled their Winnebago wagons blocking access to the river, so we r...

According Paul Keating, the best way to see Darwin is from 35,000 feet on the way to Paris. I've had a man crush on Keating ever since he called John Howard a slithering maggot, so I thought I'd see if he was right. From what I'd heard, Darwin was full of yobbos and shirtless, shouting drunks.  Not to mention child-eating crocodiles. A bit like Lonely Planet's take on Launceston, except Launceston makes do with monkeys in place of the crocodiles (more on that later). As my Virgin flight (suggested advertising slogan: 'Better than Jetstar') circled the city, I had to concede Keating might be on the money. The ocean, a muddy yellow/green, looked unappealing.  The dirt was red. The trees; stunted and twisted. Not to mention I'd heard Darwin Harbour is full of sharks, crocodiles, stingers, jellyfish, and probably unexploded armaments from the Second World War. To ease in to the local experience, the Darwin Hotel (schooner of Carlton Draught: $6.70)...

Ever wondered who writes most travel stories? I'll tell you. It's journalists who've been given a freebie. Whether it's a week on the Gold Coast or a boat cruise in the Whitsundays, offer it to a journo, and they'll jump at it. Just don't expect an unbiased story when they get back to work. So instead of a page of fluff about cocktails at the latest five-star resort in Queensland, I'm bringing you the ultimate travel guide. A trip around Australia.  All of it. I'll be looking for the best holiday spots, the most interesting people and the coldest beer. No kickbacks, no freebies, just honest travel advice. Best of all, I'm doing it on a shoestring.  This is tightarse travel at its finest. On Friday, I'm flying to Darwin to begin the adventure.  Stage one will be Darwin to Brisbane, via Mt Isa. Join me.