Four and a half thousand kilometres and three breakfasts

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On Wednesday morning, we arose at 3am (!!) to catch the early morning flight out of Christchurch to Brisbane. While we were waiting to depart we had a quick middle-of-the-night breakfast - a diet coke for Tim and a cheese scone for Emma - it was a strange time of night to be eating! We had a great flight (2940km) and ate second breakfast (a shared triple chocolate muffin and suitably bad airline coffee and hot chocolate) on the plane...

We arrived in Brisbane at the international terminal at 8am Australian time and caught the train to the domestic terminal. While waiting for the lunchtime flight up to Cairns we had third breakfast/brunch at "Hungry Jacks" (like "Burger King")...

We arrived in a hot-and-cloudy tropical Cairns at 2.30pm after another good flight (1390km) and over eleven hours travelling. After picking up a rental car we started the 120km drive north along the Cook Highway towards the Daintree Rainforest, which is the world's oldest rainforest...

We had a quick stop at the beach at Palm Cove and saw some tropical birds in the trees. We then proceeded to Mossman stopping briefly at the Rex Lookout for some spectacular views up and down the world heritage coastline and the Coral Sea. After picking up enough supplies for three days in the rainforest we continued the drive, through fields of sugar cane, eventually crossing the Daintree River by car ferry (staying in the car and watching out for crocs) at dusk and then driving the last leg of the journey on windy, narrow roads through the now-dark and raining rainforest...we spotted 3 bandicoots on the road.

We arrived late in the day at the 'Daintree Forest Retreat Motel' at Cow Bay, which is literally in the rainforest, and just had enough time to cook some steak, snags and kebabs on the barbie, eat and collapse into bed.

(Some of the photos are from the next couple of days, but this seemed the best place to put them)

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Photos

Palm Cove
On a broodingly hot day