We woke up for a seven hour drive to Cairns, but for some reason Waze tells us it’s 15 hours. The main highway seemed to be shut due to the fires and we would have to go back the way we came for a few hours and go inland for another few hours until we can reconnect with the highway we want to be on. Antoine panicked while I drove. We turn on some AM radio, looking for traffic news. Eventually, we open up Google Maps, who does not seem to be aware of the fire dangers, but it is several hours shorter, so we take that chance.
Following Google, we are in fact, able to get on the A1 highway like we want. But, while we are driving, we do see the charred land next to the road. Some parts still have little fires going on, and there’s significantly more road kill than usual.
After we get pass the fire zone, we relax and just keep driving. We stop for lunch at a Macca’s (McDonald’s for those of you that are uncultured).
Once we get to Cairns, we bring our stuff to the AirBnb and go return the car. We decide to call an Uber from the airport back to around where we live, so we walk around, hop in the public lagoon (it’s a swimming pool next to the beach), and get dinner. We also find boba so it was a great day.
We walk back to the AirBnb, finding a Daiso and a Target. We hear some distressed noise come from a tree and we check it out. Two bats were fighting. We keep walking and see bats flying everywhere as it got later.
As we got a few meters away from the AirBnb, we notice that the diving company, Diver’s Den, is right next to us.
We sleep happy.