We made it to Cairns!!! Thank goodness!!!!! I am well and truly over free camping.

Let me just explain my past experiences with free campsites before I launch into a description of my recent experiences.
When Ben and I have travelled with the kids in the past, the free campsites we have stayed at have been some of our favourite places to stay. Whether we were in the middle of the desert in the NT staying under what looked like a dome of stars or camping on the banks of the Murray River in Victoria the free campsites were always clean, picturesque and relaxing. We used to use a book called Camps 5 that listed all of the free campsites around Australia. As the updated Camps 9 book is $49.95 (too expensive and bulky), I was excited to find a $7.99 app called Wikicamps. It’s easy to use and lists free camps, caravan parks, points of interest, day-use areas, etc. What’s better is that people using Wikicamps can add comments about the site so the information is constantly updated.
Armed with Wikicamps, I was sure our overnight stops on the way to Cairns would be as lovely as the ones we’ve camped at in the past. WRONG!!!
The free campsites along the Bruce HWY between Cairns and Brisbane are absolutely disgusting (well, the ones we looked at/stayed at anyway). They are minefields of human waste and rubbish and smell like a giant sewer. I don’t understand. Why don’t people dig holes?!? Or use the toilets???? Even some day-use areas had piles of human waste everywhere (complete with the brown stained toilet paper sitting next to it). It’s enough to make you vomit. Rubbish is everywhere. I’m sure that Qld has lots of picturesque, waste & rubbish free campsites off the highway, but when you have 2000km to travel in 2 days, you don’t fancy driving 20km from the Bruce to find a nice spot (although I wish we had of!!).
We don’t pay to stay in caravan parks because we never know where we will end up until late in the evening. Ben will say to me at about 7pm, “I’ve “I’ve got a few hours left in me”. I then open up my Wikicamp app and investigate all the places we can stay for free. Generally, we’d pull up between 9pm & 10pm, sleep (or try to sleep) for 8 hours, and then get back on the road nice and early. Caravan parks  will charge us upwards of $90 a night. It’s usually about $40 or $50 for the site, including 2 adults. Then they charge $10 or $15 per extra kid!!! That is a steep charge when you are only spending 8 hours somewhere.
Currently, we are staying at the Coconut Resort (Big 4) in Cairns. We are spending two nights here, and I wish it was longer. I don’t mind paying $90 a night here because it is so lovely. The kids are entertained; it has the BEST water park and playground I’ve eI’veseen, the most giant jumping pillow in all of Australia (or so they claim), and so many activities for the kids to do. You could spend a week here, and the kids wouldn’t be bored.
The kids have been busy writing in their diaries, watching the outdoor movies, swimming, playing in the playgrounds, annoying the crap out of each other, annoying the crap out of me (and probably Ben), whinging for food (mostly Rohan) and spending their pocket money.
My mum ever so kindly gave the kids some spending money for the trip with the instructions that it could not be spent till they reached up North. Consequently, as soon as we arrived in Cairns yesterday late afternoon, Rohan began rabbiting on about spending his money. This lasted aaaalllll night and picked back up early this morning. At about 8:30am this morning, he finally wore me down, and I sent him off to the gift shop here at the Coconut Resort so he could spend his money on a grossly overpriced plastic snake. In a bid to encourage more reading (which has the added benefit of them being quiet whilst doing so), I’ve told the kids that they can earn money by reading books on their Kindles. So far, Jazzy has read the entire Peter Pan book (original version), and Rohan is halfway through the book “Lion”” by Saroo Brierly. I regret my decision to give them more money as I imagine this trip will be spent with Rohan either frantically reading or relentlessly badgering us to spend his money. Anyway, I’d best be off. Kids want to go for a swim, so I’m going to slob by the pool and read a book. Ben is spending quality time again with Frankie, who still needs some tweaking to stop the 6 million alarms she is fitted with from being so sensitive.
Thanks for reading!!
B xxx

I’m catching up with one of my besties, who I met while living in the Torres Straits.

Picture of one of FrankiFrankie’srs. You can see the freezer in the background (with a drop-down fridge slide), and my Dreampot nicely snuggled in the bracket Ben made for it.

Keeping up to date with their schoolwork.

Ben spends the morning under Frankie (I swear he loves her more than me 🙄).

Kids are about to go swimming.

Reading my Kindle while watching kids in the pool & minding Rohan’Rohan’sr snake.