Finch Hatton,
Australia
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Up bright and early as we were off to Finch Hatton to do the "Forrest Flyers' which is a little wire thing that suspends you in the forest. Anyway we got to Finch Hatton a little early so decided to drive to the Gorge, now to get to the gorge you had to drive over these water Fords, I can honestly say I was bricking myself going over these as they seemed to last forever and were very fast moving however Loz drove through them very confidently, although afterwards he did tell me that he wasn't as confident as he appeared. Once at the gorge we had a little walkabout and then it started to piss down..badly..so we decided not to bother with the forrest flying and just go for a walk instead. The only waterproofs that we have are these little rain ponchos that we bought at the Australian Zoo so you can imagine what we look like walking through these rain forests...not very professional but it got the job done. Anyway we did a couple of walks which were great but it did not stop raining for the whole time which was a bit of a bummer. After this we left the Gorge (not a moment too soon as I was sure we would be swept to our deaths on the way back) and headed off to Broken River which was up a huge mountain and when we got to the top it was dead foggy, it was like holidaying back home. Anyhoo we did a few more walks and then went to a little cafe for a drink where we met the rudest woman in the world! We walked in and she just stood there glaring at us so I asked if the Cafe was open and she asked me if the sign said it was open, I said yes but I thought maybe it was now shut and she wanted to know why I had to complicate things! Blimey we were so gobsmacked that we actually had a drink but I really wish I'd told her to F right off. After this we headed back to the river as there were supposed to be platypuses here but we waited for an hour in the rain and they still hadn't turned up so we gave up.
Next day we drove to Airlie Beach and we stopped off at Cedar Creek Waterfalls first which was very pretty. Then it was into town to check into The Backpackers by the Bay Hostel where we had a double room with shared facilities but it didn't bother me too much this time, maybe I'm getting mellow in my old age. We went to the agents to confirm our Whitsundays tour which was due to leave the next day and to confirm that the cyclone that was due to hit the same day wasn't going to cause us a problem, they seemed confident that we'd be fine so we just crossed our fingers all night. In the afternoon we climbed up Mount Rooper and oh my god that was hard, I don't think I've sweated as much in my life, it is so humid in Queensland and I find it hard to walk to the loo let alone up a mountain, anyway we got up and down in one piece so we were happy. We had an early night that night as we were getting our stuff ready for the cruise the next day.
