OK, so I wanted to go to the Daintree area, mainly for Bennett's tree kangaroos but also some other little bits and pieces. I don't like bus tours in general, I prefer doing things my own way, but apparently its cheaper and more convenient getting up to Cape Tribulation and the Daintree via an organised tour than by just hopping on a bus. So I signed up for one of the idiot tours. The bus tour was all right although the commentary was seriously messed-up factually (especially in zoological matters). The first stop of the inbound tour was the Daintree River [View Full Entry]

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Yes its true, Yungaburra does have tree kangaroos. When I say I am going to be looking for tree kangaroos people reply "what's a tree kangaroo?" to which the only possible answer is "a kangaroo that lives in trees". Its pretty simple. So anyway, Yungaburra is supposedly the best place to go to see tree kangaroos (the Lumholtz's tree kangaroo to be precise). On The Wallaby is the backpackers in Yungaburra and as I said in an earlier post they do pick-ups from Atherton (and also from Cairns which is a bit easier for most people). I had booked a night [View Full Entry]

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The next stop on my little tour of the Atherton Tablelands was Atherton itself, originally known as Prior's Creek. The road to here is all dry eucalyptus forest, quite a change from the rainforest around Kuranda. I spotted some red-tailed black cockatoos at Mareeba which was the highlight of the bus ride. At Atherton I am staying at the Barron Valley Hotel. I found two pet shops in town, one that had burgundy-coloured freshwater crabs the size of big conkers, for $10, and the other with land hermits, baby pythons, scorpions and "Australian tarantulas". Five kilometres out of town is Hastie's [View Full Entry]

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West of Cairns are the Atherton Tablelands whose forests are home to such wonderful beasts as tree kangaroos, cassowaries and riflebirds. Of the places I wanted to get to, only Kuranda seemed easy. According to my internet searches there was no public transport to Atherton (where I wanted to go to visit Hastie's Swamp for brolgas) or Yungaburra (best place for tree kangaroos apparently), and the only way to get to Undara was by a tour that cost something like $495 (Undara is actually way way past the Tablelands but its still west of Cairns so I'm including it here for [View Full Entry]

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well I'm back in Queensland once again. As is usually the case when flying from Christchurch to Cairns, there is a transfer through Brisbane which kind of sucks. You spend several hours on a plane, get off and want to go exploring but instead you have to get on another plane for another couple of hours. Anyway, I stayed at a backpackers called Traveller's Oasis. I was going to get a single room all to myself because I've had enough of dorms, especially after the incident on my final night in Brisbane last month with a guy whacked off his gourd [View Full Entry]

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This is not a travel entry. It is a home entry. A strange and fabulous aberration, a marvellous whim of mother nature, has come into my possession. Whilst eating Ernest Adams apricot choc chip cookies, I pulled from the bag nothing less than a Siamese twin cookie! Two cookies joined in the middle during the process of creation; two separate cookies and yet they are as one. Such a thing had possibly not been seen by the eyes of man before and millennia may pass before such a rare event occurs again. The stern forces of nature do not lightly permit [View Full Entry]

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"Queensland: where its beautiful one day, perfect the next". That's the tourism slogan. It was just bad luck that I arrived in Brisbane right at the same time as an unseasonable severe storm warning was announced. I left Brisbane for the Lamington National Park in the worst rain yet, monsoon-style rain. Lamington is a couple of hours south of Brisbane just near the border with New South Wales. It is roughly divided into the Green Mountains section which is mainly rainforest (that's where I would be), and the Binna Burra section which is mainly dry eucalyptus forest. As well as such [View Full Entry]

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After writing out my last blog complaining that the rain hadn't let up since I got here, I went outside and the sky had suddenly cleared up and the sun had come out. I had nothing much else to do so I went back to the Botanic Gardens to take photos. It was quite a good decision as it turned out because I found a whole mess of water dragons around the lily ponds, a boobook owl roosting in the mangroves, and a group of six bush stone-curlews resting in a plant island on one of the lawns. Bush stone-curlews are [View Full Entry]

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Here are just some random photos of things that took my interest around Brisbane. I'm getting a bit peeved with all the rain, I'm hoping it won't be like this in Lamington National Park or my camping is going to be pretty miserable. [View Full Entry]

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Today probably wasn't the best day for a trip to North Stradbroke Island but when you're travelling you have to take the weather that's handed out to you. Let's just say that the day was basically rain interspersed with squalls. As may be expected I suppose, the weather cleared up a bit right at the end of the day when I was leaving back to the mainland again. Because that's just the way things go. On a fine day North Stradbroke Island would be fantastic, on a bad day its just sort of all right. Today was supposed to be a [View Full Entry]

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