Atherton, Cairns 20th-26th Dec

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We finally made it to our destination in Atherton to stay with our relatives for two weeks. The house was over a mountain range about an hour from the airport and the first thing to notice is how hilly the place is and covered in rainforest... looks like jurrasic park.
We passed mango farms and coffee plantations on the way to the house.
It wasn't long after we got there that we all had a crack at waterskiing on Tinaburra resevoir. I don't like to boast but I nailed it on pretty much the first attempt and so started to show off by doing the old one handed cowboy shortly before face planting the water.
There are loads of rainforests about and we had our own personal tour guide as our uncle used to work for the forestry department. Before we knew it we were sniffing tree bark that smelt of cucumber and getting up early to hunt wallabies. Did a lot of swimming in the Lakes and finally started getting a decent tan when we drove back down the mountains to the coast to spend a day at Port Douglas.
There was a 4 mile beach but you could only swim in a netted off area about 20m long because there are too many jelly fish in the sea that can kill you. It was good though and we spent hours getting battered by the massive waves before munching a fat 300g steak. After we had eaten at early evening there was a load of screeching coming from the park across the road. When we walked over there was hundreds of parrots squarking in the palm trees and flying all around us. A bit more interesting than pigeons!

One christmas eve we went to a Sues our 2nd cousin or something like that for a party at her house. She had an avery in the garden with a load of budgies, parrots and quails kicking about. One of the parrots was tame enough to wear on your shoulder so we were walking around like pirates. They have a creek in their garden big enough to swim in and we had fun spanking the aussies at cricket, sort of, and eatin a spit roasted lamb.... washed down by some cheeky lagers. We spent christmas day nearly exactly the same as at home although there were less presents and it was boiling hot. There was the usual food and plenty of it, nicely accompanied by a few games of Perudo and muchos lagers.

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Photos

Curtain Fig Tree
The fig trees start at the top of other trees then send roots down and strangle the original tree (and they get bloody massive)

Waterfall
One of many waterfalls that we saw

Tree Sniffing
Sean took the tree sniffing to the extreme, these didn't even smell of anything

Stingers
The Aussies call jellyfish stingers and I take it they're not good

Comments

[Chloe]

Absolutely brilliant commentary about ur trip so far as expected! Hope you're havin a wicked time and continue too! Im sure the girls send their love! xxx

[Twizz]

Chuckle Brothers around the world
Barry Chuckle's been getting around a bit!