Instead of heading back to Cairns after leaving Port Douglas, we headed west inland to the tablelands. Its an area of forest and farmland, as you could imagine from its name, up fairly high and therefore a few degrees cooler than the tropical coastline.
Unfortunately it had been hit really hard by the cyclone, so we saw plenty more evidence of the damage, which as well as problems for property and farmers, also meant that many of the walks in the national parks around here were still closed. We still had a good few days though and managed to see one of the most elusive Aussie animals, the Platypus. We tried three times to spot them in all, twice at dusk and then finally with better luck, at dawn the day we left. Luckily Herdy had been a couple of times before so we were able to try a spot not mentioned in the usual guide books, I think that paid off in the end because we ended up being able to sit on the side of the river bank watching 2 or three of them swimming around for about 45 minutes - awesome!
No pics of that (light was hurrendous) but Herdy got some cracking video footage... Pretty cool to see these animals in the wild. More thumbnails ...
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