Today marks the start of a new Australian adventure. Well at least "sort of".

The adventure is to drive the The Savannah Way, an outback route in Far Northern Queensland (called FNQ by the locals) that starts on the East Coast of Australia in Cairns and ends on the West Coast in Broome.

This adventure started life as a plan that Nina and I had as a way of christening our new adventure vehicle (a 2021 Toyota Troopie fitted out as a pop-top camper - more details in subsequent posts) but got mixed up with a plan by our eldest son and one of his mates to bicycle the same route.

The net result of this mixing of plans is that our son and mate drove our vehicle from Sydney to Cairns and Nina and I flew up to meet them. We also hung around in Cairns while they did some last minute prep and purchasing.

To further confuse the timing and plans Nina was obliged to return to sydney for a week while I cooled by heels in Cairns.

Today is the day that Nina returned to Cairns and hence tonight is in some sense the "first night" of the adventure. We spent the night in a cute motel in the town of Yungaburra, a small town located in the Gilles Mountains at an altitude of 700m. Very nice little place.

Tomorrow we begin to travel - we hope!