Cairns & Tropical Queensland

Rendezvous Point

This is my last new Oz adventure as I'll be finishing in Sydney, but I've saved the best 'til last. The East Coast of Australia is a long and seemingly never-ending trail of sights, activities and glorious weather and isn't something to be done in a hurry; myself, Jamie and Dave are going to take about 6 to 8 weeks to travel down it.

So, goodbye Sydney - again - and hello to my sixth and final Australian state, Queensland. For once I haven't started in the capital city (Brisbane) and have instead flown straight to the far north of Queensland to the city of Cairns.

Queensland is the home of Australia's rainforests, the Great Barrier Reef, beautiful island beaches such as Fraser Island and the Whitsundays and also rivers suitable for all sorts of extreme activities. No pleasure without pain of course - it's also home to Australia's most dangerous animals; crocodiles, cassowaries, some of the most deadly snakes in the world (including several varieties of Taipan, the most dangerous), and of course an abundance of spiders of all shapes and sizes. There's even some nasty flying things too - wasps, mosquitos that carry Dengue fever and even the flies in Queensland pack a nasty punch (e.g. the Mayfly). And if that's not enough, jump in the water and you might bump into the odd shark or two; take a swim in the sea between the months of November and May and you're almost certain to encounter some unfriendly jellyfish, including the lethal Box jellyfish.

No wonder it's such a popular place. It's also unsurprising that Australia Zoo (formerly of Steve Irwin fame) is based here.

Some good news - we have an old banger to take us down the coast to Sydney. We need to spend about 400 bucks to fix a few problems but in all it's only costing us about £700 between the three of us and it's a V6 estate that's pretty quick. And the cruise control works too - very handy on Australia's long and dull roads. Let's see how far it gets us, and how much we get back for it in Sydney.

Right, time to get moving...

White Water Rafting

No rest for the wicked. On Friday, two days after arriving in Cairns, we took a two hour bus ride south to the Tully River for some white water rafting. The rapids for our booking were grade 4 which is smack in the middle between 1 (a swimming pool) and 7 (certain death). It was awesome, the best thing I've done since arriving in Oz and I can't wait to do it again sometime, hopefully on grade 5 rapids and with a smaller group of people so that there's less waiting around. Amazingly I survived this water adventure intact and didn't even fall out of the boat once, which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. It's actually pretty easy - the instructor does all the work at the back of the boat - but it's still amazing how many people fall into the water and have to be saved with a rope. That's where the slowness comes in - every time you finish a rapid you stop, park up on a rock or a bank and set up safety ropes in case anyone slips through the nets. Safety first I guess.

So, an excellent but tiring day. Next update should be good...

The Great Barrier Reef

After the white water rafting on Friday we went out big time in the evening and took a day's well earned rest before jumping on our boat to the number one attraction in Queensland - the Great Barrier Reef. No introduction needed I think.

Dave and Jamie had been staying in a cosy little hostel called Rosie's and one of the useful snippets of info the manager gave them was to book a day tour on a little boat called the Falla. Most Reef tours are big cruiser boats rammed with tourists and little if any outside seatingg; ours, however, contained seven passengers and three crew - the guy who owns (and partly built) the boat, the dive instructor (a guy from Derby) and a girl who volunteers to help on the boat in order to get free diving experience. The boat itself was old school - mostly sails all the way - but it was very personal and everyone chipped in with the sails and you could even steer the boat if you fancied it. Unfortunately it was a bit too old school for Jamie who found it a bit 'sickening' and spent most of the 4 hour round journey to the Reef lying by the side of the boat.

You get two Reef areas on any boat trip; our first was an innocuous looking coral area and the second was called Upolu Cay, an amazing little sand island in the middle of the coral sea. Really spectacular. After donning the dive gear and going under I quickly realised that I wasn't ready for a dive and surfaced to swap into some snorkelling gear - for some reason I couldn't sort out the breathing and decided to give it a miss.

The snorkelling was great, as you'd expect - I saw loads of different types of fish, some very strange looking creatures on the seabed, a few stingrays and a couple of turtles. A nice lunch was put on by the cap'n along with cheese and wine on the way back, and then he sat down and told us about the history of the boat and how he rebuilt it after it sank 5 years ago. And a good job he did too.

So, another water experience survived - next up a trip to the tropical rainforests in the north of Queensland to see if we can encounter any crocodiles and cassowaries.

Cape Tribulation & The Daintree Rainforest

A brief summary of our two night trip to the tropical north of Queensland:

See crocodiles - no.
See cassowaries - yes.
Put the tent up correctly - yes.
Get the gas dual burner to work - yes but only one night out of two.
Get savaged by mosquitoes - yes.
Stay alive - just about.

It's quite surprising to find a big rainforest in Australia but, sure enough, the Daintree exists and is a popular tourist attraction all year round. We decided to spend two nights up there to test out our camping equipment and suicidally try to spot a few crocs in their natural habitat.

After filling up the car in the morning with camping equipment (and spending quite a lot of cash) we set off towards the Daintree via Port Douglas. No spectacular sights on the way - the weather wasn't exactly great either - and we decided to set up our tent at 6pm before it got dark. We asked a couple in a cottage where a good spot might be and they pointed us towards a small enclosure nearby, marked as 'No Camping' but apparently safe to use. After ignoring their warnings about mosquitos we drove over to it and stepped outside to be greeted by literally hundreds and thousands of blood-sucking insects. On with the repellant - but to no avail. I have about 10 bites to show for it but Dave is sporting at least a hundred - ouchy.

We couldn't get our gas stove to work so we had to eat cheese sandwiches, the tent was on an annoying slope and was too small for three people, and the cows in the nearby field mooed all night. And some mozzies managed to get into the tent too. All in all, not a great start to our camping experience.

The next day we took the ferry across to Cape Kimberley and then took the road up to Cape Tribulation. Despite trying our hardest to get eaten by wandering around some particularly dangerous looking places we failed to see a crocodile in the wild, although we did see a cassowary which casually strolled straight past us while we were putting our tent up. Slightly more success with the camping - we got the stove to work after buying a pair of pliers, had a flat pitch for the tent and didn't have too many mozzies to contend with (although I seem to have picked up just as many bites as the night before).

Some bad news on the way back from Cape Trib - I got caught speeding, doing 58mph in a 50 zone, a mistake that cost me 150 bucks (about 70 quid). Ouch. Next time I'll be sure to use the cruise control.

Hartley's Crocodile Farm

Having failed to get eaten by a crocodile in the Daintree Rainforest we decided to pay to see some at Hartley's Crocodile Farm, about 45 minutes north of Cairns, before heading off south on our road trip. It costs less than 15 pounds and lasts all day, very good value for money and I'd recommend it if you're ever in the area.

Lots of crocodiles and feeding sessions, a boat trip around the swamp, lizards, big spiders, cassowarys, a snake show, koala feeding and a crocodile attack show where a guy steps into a shallow pool with a croc and gets it to chase him around and do death rolls. Good work if you can get it I guess.

There's some big crocs there, some of them almost 4 metres long. One of the reasons they've survived so long (60 million years) is that they're perfect at what they do - their ears, nose and eyes are all at the same level and so by having their heads just above water they can see, hear and smell everything without being seen. They're not too dangerous on land as they can only move at a human's jogging pace but encounter one in the water and you're dead meat.

The main part of the farm is, as the name might suggest, a farm where they rear crocs for leather. Not something I knew existed but apparently crocodile leather is the best in the world and is VERY expensive. There's loads of little crocs in a big area, all being grown for slaughtering. Not particularly nice but the guide seemed very proud of it all.

They also have cassowary feeding sessions, previously mentioned in my diary as being the most dangerous bird in the world. There are only 1,500 left alive (estimated) but that's not the only reason they're so protected as a species - believe it or not their poo is vital to the continuation of the rainforests. They eat fruit whole and poo out the seeds, spreading the fruit all over the forest along with some manure to help it grow.

Having seen the world's most deadly lizards, birds and snakes (a taipan in the snake show) we drove down to Ellis Beach, just north of Cairns, and camped up for the night before stocking up on food in Cairns and heading off on our journey.