Coming to the end of something like this there’s always a temptation to say something along the lines of and then we went home. Back in your primary school days (or mine, in any case) you wrote until you’d produced something around the required length and then you wrapped things up as quickly as possible.
As the word count on this little effort creeps up towards fifteen thousand you might think that’s what I’m doing here, but there were two factors that encouraged a speedy conclusion to the current narrative.
The first came about five minutes before we headed out of Townsville on the way north. And when’re you coming back? was, more or less, the Golfer’s question, and our reply (Next Monday) produced the news that he was flying to Melbourne that day and the motel was, therefore, not accepting bookings.
Fine. Delivers us home a day earlier, doesn’t it? No problem.
It also meant the last day’s leg was extended from around four and a half to about seven hours - not a major problem if you leave early (say around eight) and take a couple of stops along the way.
The second hadn’t quite kicked in when Madam drew my attention to a platypus viewing platform not far from the cottage.
That was just after six-fifteen and within the quarter hour we were heading off through light drizzle to check it out. It was the kind of weather that would have any self-respecting monotreme snuggled in his or her burrow chuckling at the thought that there might be the odd human out there who’d be silly enough to venture out in weather like that expecting to sight an ornithorhynchus anatinus in swimming mode.
Back in the cottage I used the free WiFi to check the weather radar, noting that the 128km loop had a patch of cloud more or less on top of us, and a switch to the 256km version suggested that any rain activity between Cairns and Townsville was confined to the central Tablelands.
It was still drizzling as we set about stowing the possessions in the chariot, and we set off just after eight in the confident expectation that the weather would be clearing before we were too far down the track.
As it was, the drizzle turned to steady rain with the occasional downpour that you might have expected to move the mud we’d managed to acquire crossing two kilometres of dirt road between The Lion’s Den and the highway.
Lion’s Den mud, however, has rather more stickability than the common or garden variety.
The result was that we were driving through rain almost all the way to Cardwell, and we pulled over for brunch the view towards the Range suggested we weren’t out of the woods yet as far as the precipitation was concerned.
Under the original schedule we might have pulled over at Wangan (the place whose name starts with W that boasts the best pie shop in the north, according to Mad Mick), diverted to Etty Bay (where the friendly ranger girl from the Rainforest Canopy Walkway reckoned we were certain to sight a cassowary or two) and paused en route wherever there was a prospect of an interesting photographic capture.
That would’ve probably have got us into Townsville around three or four, with a spot of shopping while we gave The Golfer time to finish his round on the course.
As it turned out we were pulling into the shops at The Domain almost right on one o’clock, and were heading south again by two-thirty having stocked up on bulk cat food, hand towels and waterbottles and made the now regulation diversion to Angelina’s Deli at The Precinct in Fairfield Waters...
And that’s, more or less, the end of the story, as the word count nudges its way towards fifteen thousand. The published version will, of course, probably be considerably longer.