Blogs from Cape Tribulation, Queensland, Australia, Oceania - page 4

G'day guys! I am still having a ball here in Australia - can't believe I'm half-way through the trip already! I wanted to post some photos today, but the internet access here is free, but limited and they don't allow uploading stuff! Ah well... Today we went into the Daintree rainforest. We did a couple of guided walks on the forest floor, which was great. The guide pointed out all the poisoness plants, etc and I got a few shots of insects and lizards. then we had a cruise up the daintree river, where we saw some crocodiles on the bank - I got some great photos of Nelson, the big male croc, sleeping on the bank! Plus a couple of females and a little hatchling. We had lunch in a tree house in the forest, ... read more

The car is packed, have found someone as a travelmate, a french girl with a 6,6feet Surfboard. Well, lets see how I get all her stuff in the car. We've planned to go to Cape Tribulation first, depending on how the roads are. Many of them getting floodet at the moment, we have rain here everyday. After the north trip, we're goung south, having several stops on the way. I'm happy to get startet, have been at "Aunty Lindas" for 2 weeks now, so I wanna hit the road now!... read more

When Captain Cook sailed by this stretch of coastline in 1770 he named it Cape Tribulation, looking at it from a non seafaring perspective in all it's tranquil beauty it's the last name you'd give it. Far more jubilation than tribulation. To be fair to Captain Cook he had sailed thousands of miles around the globe to reach a perilously rocky shoreline with no safe harbours and was greeted by very hostile locals. The story was very different for us. We meandered up the Captain Cook highway calling in at the rather swanky town of Port Douglas for brunch. The dramatically beautiful coastal drive from here up to Mosman gave us stunning panoramas along the coral coast. A sidetrack to Mosman Gorge gave Dad his first taste of the tropical rainforest, a surging river cutting through ... read more

Northwards to Cairns Heading up the Bruce highway the weather became very wet. At times the rain was lashing down. We left Cyril and Kasia and did a detour through some beautifully green countryside, long straight roads with little traffic. Farms set in valleys, cows, cultivated fields, small towns and villages. We carried on and on, stopping for lunch and filling up with fuel. Eventually we realised that reaching Townsville was out of the question and it was getting late, the rain was torrential and we were tired, so we decided wherever the next place to stay was, we were stopping. It was a caravan/camping site at clevedon, a tiny strip of development along the side of an inlet and a massive area of water. This was a fishing resort of sorts, and the people were ... read more

Hello again, On returning from the diving course I decided a lie-in would be a good plan, and in accordance with all previous good plans, I ignored it completely and got up at 7 to go sailing :). This time Troy wasn't around so I went out on a J24 with 4 others. I was put in charge of the headsail, one of the others helmed, one did spinnaker, and one was ballast. As it turned out I ended up doing the headsail, mainsheet, traveller and occasionally tiller because the guy on helm was incapable of multi-tasking, which made it a bit more interesting. We did the first half of the race with few issues, and were coming 3rd, until the crew decided it wouls be a good plan to cut across the main channel in ... read more