Trials and Tribulations - Northern Queensland

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The furthest North you can travel in a conventional vehicle up the East coast of Australia is Cape Tribulation. North of here is 4 days of rugged 4WD track to Cape York - the very tip of Queensland. Cape Trib' is unique in that it is the only place on Earth where two World Heritage sites meet - the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. Jungle to coral in one stride. This is also the wettest area in Australia, perhaps even the world some years. Last week they had the annual UK rainfall in just a couple of days causing the roads to flood and the community up there to be cut off. Glad we missed that!

What's it like? You might ask. Remember that we went to Borneo about, oooh, a thousand years ago? Well, this really quite similar. There is just something about a wet tropical rain forest - the humidity, the smell, the biting creatures - this is travelling again! Even the accomodation, though vastly more expensive than Malaysia, is wooden and damp. People do actually live here in this tiny town (?) surrounded on three sides by dense trees and on the other by the beach. The beach, however, is really not much cop. It looks nice when the tide is out but the sea does come right up to the mangrove trees when the tide is high. Not a beach for sunbathing. Especially as that is exactly what the saltwater crocks use it for! They are worse than the Germans - out there with their towels first every morning. We spent two and a half days up here and were really luck to get decent weather for the most of it. We walked along the beach over rocks and mussel beds for 4 km then followed a path through the jungle, being razered by rattan all the way to a swimming hole in one of the creeks. It was very beautiful but a little crowded reminding us that it may look like the wilderness but is in fact a very well touristed area. Give me the rainforests in SE Asia any day.

The best thing going on up here is Jungle Surfing. There is a network of cables linking platforms built in the trees and, under the close supevision of profesional jungle surfers, you sport a harness and crash helmet to swing agound like a monkey. It was pretty awsome fun and needless to say Lara shook off her anxiety at being 15 metres off the ground to leap from the platform with gay abandon. The only blood curdelling screams occured near the end. As always, even with a trip to Alton Towers, Lara likes to cover all safety aspects and emergency rescue procedures before we undertake to do anything - must be the Lawyer in her. So, by now, having completed all but one of the 'surfs' her nerves were put royally to the test by her supervisor. Everything was going well and she stepped into the take off position (basically hanging off the platform but kind of still clipped on). Just as she was let go he yelled "stop...take my hand". At first she thought he was joking, but he was panicikng and as she looked back he was stretched out holding out his hand. As she screamed and tried desperately to reach back he shrieked and sent her hurtling down the zip line, howling as she went! I really did think that she was a gonner. Think of all the extra food I could eat....

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