Travels Around the world - Ingham

Somewhere along the line we had added a fourth member to the group, I can't recall how Steve came to be travelling with us but he was a good guy to have around and his sense of humour fitted in well with us.
We found ourselves in Ingham.  We had got the map out to plan our next location and Ingham looked like a fairly big town.  Someone had told us there was nothing in Ingham and I think Kev saw that as a bit of a challenge.
It turns out there is nothing in Ingham but that didn't stop us having fun.  The place itself was worth a visit as it gave us the chance to just see an Australian town, unspoilt by the backpacker trade. It was full of the colonial wooden buildings that you see on tv and the first thing I noticed was the wildlife, there were hundreds of brightly coloured birds in the trees, I later found out that they are called lorikeets and they are everywhere.


As Ingham isn't geared up for Backpacking we checked into a hotel, Ian and I had one twin room with Steve and Kev took another just across the hall, what happened next completely changed everything......one of us found a drawer full of "adult magazines" and we suddenly had a new travel companion, her name was Jo Guest and she was soon established as the leader of the newly formed Jo Guest posse. The hotel locked the front door at about 10.30 so if you got back later than that there was another entrance to use. We had no intention of being back early but didn't bother to find the other door either. Off we went and found the bars and suprisingly found that Ingham had a nightclub. Ok, a nightclub in a small Australian town isn't going to compare to the city clubs but we had a laugh as we were the only non Australian's in there. Eventually we were back at the hotel and, as expected, the front door was locked. No problem, we thought, we have a key so can use the back door.....all we had to do was find the back door. We failed. We did find a door that looked right but it turned out to be a bakery. The key didn't even look like it would fit any of the other locks so we needed another plan. We ended up back at the front of the hotel, looking for a doorbell or something but then Steve saw something and started to run. He jumped into the air and next thing we knew he was half way up the fire escape. Once he was at the top he managed to lower the ladder a little so we could climb up without the huge leap. Kev went next and I followed, I was greeted with the image of Kev and Steve unwinding a hosepipe and trying to turn the tap, I must have missed a soaking by seconds but Ian was behind me and didn't get away so easily. The hose was turned on to its full extent and Ian had a nice shower before bed. To this day I can't remember how we got to our room afterwards but at breakfast the next day there was talk that the hotel was broken into the night before. We stayed quiet on the whole subject and moved on.