North Queensland - Cairns, Port Douglas, Cape Trib
Trip Start
Oct 18, 2007
1
23
25
Trip End
Jun 2007
Cairns,
Queensland,
Australia
Friday, May 23, 2008
We've quit our jobs, sold the car,
handed in our house keys and left behind cold Melbourne for sunny
Cairns, N. Queensland. Its really pretty up here with tropical
rainforest's and white beaches next to the turquoise ocean. Its taken
us a couple of days to adjust to the weather (in the 30's), and get
used to being homeless and jobless again, but I'm sure we'll cope ! We
hired a car for a couple of days. The first day we went to Port
Douglas to confirm we were booked onto a liveaboard dive boat for 6
days. In the afternoon we headed into Cairns center to buy a Diving
mask and snorkle each for a diving trip, before heading for the pub.
In the centre of town, the trees are full of bats, parrots and big
herron like birds. Its pretty amazing to hear them all screeching. We
got our free backpacker meal and then went to the Irish bar for a
Guinness.
The next day, we headed for Cape Tribulation, a 3 hour
drive along scenic coastline and into the Rainforest (with Gary snoring
all the way as he was up at 4am for the football !!). We crossed into
Cape Tribulation on a car ferry, and then drove into the rainforest in
quest of the Cassowary, a giant vicious bird with a blue head. We
finally arrive at Cape Tribulation, which turned out to be the most
amazing beach I've ever seen right in front of tropical rainforest.
After the beach we decided to do a short walk into the rainforest. The
trees were amazing. Just a short walk in, we heard a rustle in the
leaves. We stopped to look, and saw a big strange looking bird with a
blue head. Two other people came behind us and we showed them the bird
and told them it was a Cassowary. (Later we found out it was an orange
footed scrub foul). Another few minutes in, I heard leaves rustling
again. This time a huge Iguana thing (a monitor Lizard), about a metre
long emerged from the leave and walked along to a log. We then saw a
huge spiders web with a spider bigger than my hand in the middle, and
huge bright blue butterfly's.
We then headed back towards the
Daintree river to try and catch a Crocodile cruise. We'd prepped
ourselves the night before by watching the film Blackwater, which is
about a group of travellers who go on a fishing boat, and end up
getting eaten, one by one by a saltwater crockodile !. We just made it
for the crocodile cruise. The boat owner was like Steve Urwin and
talked us through the wildlife on the river banks. We saw 3 or 4
crocodiles on the river banks. They were pretty much still and looked
placid, although they can be very dangerous. We also saw a bright blue
Kingfisher and 2 white Kites. On the way home we also saw a
Kookaburra.
Today we've come back up to Port Douglas for the
Carnival, and our dive boat leaves from here tommorow night. We head
out overnight to the far Great Barrier Reefs to take part in a research
boat including shark tagging, Minke whale, giant clams and big round
prehistoric shell things research. We'll also see giant potato cod
(the size of cars) and giant wrasse as well as turtles. We should see
hammerhead sharks fingers crossed, and the Minke whale season starts
next week. A couple have been seen, so were hoping to see those aswell
!!! We'll be back on friday, when we pick up our campervan and head
down the coast !
We'll let you know how we get on !!
Luv Nikki and Gary xx
