Advertisement
Published: October 2nd 2007
Braydens 10th Birthday breakfast
Pancakes with nutella topping - hard to beat!Day 186
Monday, August 27, 2007
With the grandparents presumably safely ensconced in their own comfortable bed in Brentwood, Perth we were back to our 'normal' lifestyle. So up and at ‘em early(ish) to pack up and repack the trailer after offloading some ‘stuff’ we have been lugging around for a while. Brayden also had a dentist appointment booked for a 9:30 so our routine with the grandparents over the last week (ie: a slow and lazy start to the day) was banished to recent history and we were out the gate by 8:30 ish.
After a major shop up and replenishing of various essentials we headed north along the Captain Cook Hwy - supposedly one of the most scenic routes in Australia…although I’m sure there are several areas that would actively debate the point. In any case it was a pretty scenic drive once you hit the coast road proper and would have been brilliant on a beautiful blue sky day. We stopped at the Rex (?) lookout where a number of hang-gliding operators were doing their stuff. We watched a tandem flight take off
Noah Beach Camp
Moonlight walk along the beach and it looked so effortless - especially with a stiff breeze barreling up the slope. At $175/30 minutes we might think about it at a later date or on the way back down - maybe maybe.
Passed through Mossman on the way to The Daintree Region and crossed the Daintree river via the ferry (not that there was any other option really - other than swimming) for $13.00. They seem to do a pretty good business. Arrived at our pre booked campground of Noah Beach (about halfway up towards Cape Tribulation from the Daintree crossing) and found that the site we had selected from the internet didn’t quite conform to the description and just wasn’t suitable for our car and trailer and we had to share the carpark area with another car - just not enough space. We managed to get hold of the ranger from a public phone and were luckily able to change our spot. The campround is nestled within rainforest only tens of metres from the beach….unfortunately it is also not that far from the road also but you cant have everything I guess. It is still a pretty good little spot and the beach sand
Cassowary Encounter 1
out of the forest and on the beach and heads towards us... is quite hard when the tide is out so the young bloke could deplete his energy stocks by barreling up and down the beach.
Daintree National Park and surrounds Days 187 / 188
Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - Wednesday, August 29, 2007
With three nights and two days to spend here our itinerary was pretty easy - head south for one day and head north for the other! Such is our planning sometimes!
The big news of course is that our boy turned 10 today - into the double digits. Pretty scary to think our little fella is now 10 years old. We had a few more presents to give him and pancakes for breakfast - with a topping of Nutella which was one of his birthday presents!
Our southern sojourn required retracing of our steps form yesterday along the Cape Tribulation Rd. We stopped off at the Marrdja Boardwalk which showed the interaction of the rainforest and the mangroves and how they colonise the beach. Unfortunately the destruction from feral pigs is quite evident as they seem to trash almost everything in the course of their search for anything edible. Interestingly we have hardly seen
Cassowary Encounter 2
Making a beeline for us any canetoads since arriving on the eastcoast of Queensland….perhaps they have heard WA is a pretty good spot and most of them have left for the west!
Stopped at Thornton beach and kicked Brayden’s soccer ball around the hard beach sand for a while. With the weather being fairly blustery, overcast and fairly miserable the beaches don’t look anything special for THE Great Barrier Reef coastline…. but, then again, our WA beaches can pretty well hold their own in any company, so we are probably just a little spoilt in that regard.
We went up to the Jindalba rainforest boardwalk and we saw a large 2m plus amethystine python so we watched him for a while until he slowly moved off. Apparently these fellas can grow up to 8 metres in length so at 2m he was just a little ‘un. He was pretty self assured though as he was parked up right next to the boardwalk and seemed not in the least bit fazed when several people all started taking pictures with all that that entails (flashes, numerous electronic noises of cameras and videos all going off). After walking through the rainforest here we were less inclined to
Cassowary encounter3
Chasing us around the tree (at eye level the bird was about 5 1/2 feet tall) pay the $58.00 for the “Discovery Centre” (plus an additional $5.00 each for the audio) which pretty well covers the same sort of country but is a commercial enterprise. Went on up to the Alexandra Lookout which looks back over the bay towards the ubiquitous Port Douglas, made famous by our own Mr Skase. Again the weather made the view rather ordinary but on a good day I’m sure this would be an absolutely stunning vista.
Our last stop was another special treat for the day and that was the Daintree Icecream Company. They make a whole swag of special icecreams from tropical fruits. The selection for the day that we were there was ;
§ Raspberry
§ Coconut
§ Wattleseed (tastes like a mellow coffee flavour and really nice)
§ Black sapote. (commonly called the chocolate pudding for obvious reasons)
Not cheap at $4.50 a throw but really nice and worth the money for a special treat. They had a great little business as they seemed to be on the stop off for all the tours as they are located at a spot where the day trippers pass around 3.00 - 4.00 pm…perfect ice cream time!
Cassowary encounter4
The bird had a rethink after we made ourselves look ferocious!!!! We ended our day with a further bit of exercise when we got back to camp. The beach adjacent to our camp gets quite hard when the tide goes out, hard enough in fact to easily ride a bike. So we all got on our treadly’s and headed up to the creek south of our campsite to see if we could spot the croc that likes to frequent the area. Unfortunately this was not to be so we had a bit of a race back home to work off those ice cream calories.
That evening the weather stayed true to form for the “wet tropics” and it rained intermittently. Later that night I heard a series of sharp “cracks” at about 2 minute intervals and then…..a huge thunderous sound of what sounded like a tree falling. With the pucker factor quotient at a significantly high level and with the heart rate racing I only hoped we weren’t about to get crushed! Luckily we are still here to tell the tale and in the morning we surveyed the scene to see what had come down. A large tree not 10 meters from us had
Cassowary encounter5
back from whence it came thankfully.... dropped one of its limbs (about 60cm in diameter) - luckily in the opposite direction to our camp. Do you think we could find a newsagency to buy a lotto ticket …not on your nelly. Ah well count the blessings I guess. But this was not to be the only close encounter over the course of a few hours…..
The following day was a school day primarily, it no longer being someone’s birthday and all special privileges revoked! Spent a fair percentage of the day in camp interspersed with several rides along the beach at low tide until Madam teacher had decided enough was enough and learning / concentration span had been far exceeded. Accordingly something of a physical nature was required so we piled into the tojo and headed for Cape Tribulation. The tide was well out when we got there and as we passed the information shelter we quickly read a few small recent information bulletins from the rangers regarding Lace Monitors becoming aggressive and, more recently, reports of a Cassowary being more than inquisitive. Onto the beach for the standard tourist walk along the sand passing the various weird and wonderful patterns made by the small
sandcrabs and some unique piles of sand forced out by some animal into some form of contemporary art! We reached the northern extent and turned back when, about halfway along we saw a cassowary come out of the forest. We continued to walk slowly along the waterline but it only had eyes for us it seemed, as it was definitely making a beeline for us. We turned up the beach towards the edge of the forest, bearing in mind the recent information at the shelter, with a view to being able to put some form of barrier between it and us. Obviously the cassowary hadn’t read the manual on what to do to fend off an aggressive / inquisitive cassowary as it kept coming. We walked around some branches and it kept coming and coming and following us around. It was a fairly large animal - just shy of my height at approx 6 foot, and coloured a brilliant cyan / blue on the neck with a large bony/horn on the top of its head - certainly looked the goods. With its intention pretty clear I stopped slowly walking backwards to confront the bird and flung out my arms upwards
in direct copy of the animal world to make myself look bigger. Luckily Brayden followed suit and this seemed enough to make the animal reassess his inquisitive / aggressive nature. He eventually backed down and moved away to the edge of the forest and our cassowary encounter had made us all a bit more wary of wildlife - with the females amongst us a little more shaken.
All part of the adventure - and lets face it how many people have seen a cassowary. We have now seen two in the wild and still live to tell the tale! Its all good.
Noah Beach Camp via Bloomfield Track - Bloomfield - Bloomfield Falls - Ayton - Rossville - Home Rule ‘Lodge’ Days 189
Thursday, August 30, 2007
With visions of major 4WD tracks in our minds about the Bloomfield track based on various descriptions of “local” information we headed north - almost fully expecting to have to backtrack and use the blacktop route. As we have quickly come to realise, local road information needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The track, as it turned out, was a doddle. In fact I would have no
python
only 2m or so but grows to 8m qualms about taking the average commodore or Falcon along it. Apart from a couple of really steep hills (concreted but requiring low range first gear towing the trailer) and another near Wujal Wujal community the ubiquitous ‘Bloomfield Track’ was really a well formed road and an easy run. Don’t get me wrong - it was a scenic route and a nice drive - just not the challenging 4WD adventure we had come to expect. Well worth doing though as you do get to drive through some magnificent rainforest country.
Home Rule ‘Lodge’ and surrounds Days 190 - 191
Friday, August 31 2007 - Saturday, September 01, 2007
Relaxed in the grounds of ‘HomeRule’ - a camp ground run by an old couple who used to have several gold mining shows in the Cape. Fairly relaxed, very cruisy. Walked up to the Falls which provides their water and is also used to generate their electricity. Installing and maintaining the pipeline would be a bit of an onerous task in that hilly terrain. We had the place to ourselves except for one night where a German couple came in. Good little spot to rest up.
Saw a fair bit
of wildlife here - various types of marsupials, a large Lace Monitor who was forever trying his luck at stealing our rubbish for scraps and a long, thin (and very fast) snake who speared off into the scrub.
Home Rule ‘Lodge’ - Rossville - Cooktown Day 192
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Travelling day - the remainder of the Bloomfield track not providing any degree of excitement. Stopped at Black Mountain for the obligatory photo - rumour has it that anyone that ventures out onto the mountain usually disappears. With many large caverns amongst the large rocks and the ghostly howling of the winds through those same caverns its no wonder local rumours abound of tales of unnatural phenomena.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.19s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 16; qc: 59; dbt: 0.0607s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
