Refuelling there removed that issue from the equation, along with the do we stop in Tully or continue on to Cardwell (fuel permitting) question. A stop in Cardwell was mandatory, given the need to reunite Hughesy with his mobile, and we’ll be stopping at the Vivia Cafe whenever we’re passing from here on.
Actually, we’d probably have been stopping there anyway, but the proprietor’s consideration on the matter of lost phones tipped things over into mandatory, didn’t it?
In any case, every time we’ve stopped there for a meal the food has been good, and when you’re on a good thing...
The roadworks over the Cardwell Range seem to be largely complete, though there’s still something going on in what looks like the scenic lookout department. That meant we sailed up and over the range without any hassles whatsoever, and once we’d made our way through Ingham he next bit of the journey passed in a relatively subdued manner as minds were cast back to events a few days before.
There were a couple of instances of Is this the place? No, don’t think so before we hit what I’m sure was the right location, and while we didn’t slow down to take a detailed look what I saw as we whizzed past was enough to suggest this place was ideally suited to a fixed point police monitoring position when you’re looking at traffic travelling southwards.
From there on the mood lightened considerably as we passed through Rollingstone without locating the cheap fuel place we’d missed on the way up, though there seemed to be evidence to support the hypothesis that the operation wasn’t in business any more. Out of the wet tropics, we ran on through Bluewater and Yabulu, skipping the opportunity to use the ring road because we had an appointment with a large bag of cat tucker.
Having looked after cat catering issues we were back on the way out of Townsville just after three-fifteen, and things continued without undue excitement as we turned off at Sandy Corner, looped through the back blocks and rejoined the highway south of Ayr.
We were, if anything, about a quarter of an hour behind where we’d been a mere nine days earlier with two semi-somnolent passengers in the back seat, but there were no side excursions to photograph the sunset this time around. As a result we were pulling into the driveway and opening the gates at about the same time as we’d done the same thing towards the end of Day One.
Which, as far as Hughesy’s concerned, delivers a neat bit of symmetry to proceedings.