Advertisement
Published: September 12th 2006
Part I: Far North Queensland We arrived in Australia on a flight from Auckland, New Zealand. We’d spent just one night close to Auckland Airport where we had a cold night and found it bizarrely enjoyable: mosquito-free and blankets on the bed. Great!
We arrived in Cairns to a beautiful, hot, sunny day…this is what Queenslanders call winter! Despite our travel-induced fog of tiredness, we were pleasantly surprised by Cairns. It’s a laid back sort of place with a nice esplanade and a man-made lagoon (deadly jelly fish make swimming in the sea risky for much of the year).
Cairns is full of backpackers starting or ending their East Coast travels and the night life and tour companies are geared up for them. So we used our time in Cairns to get organised and book some tours of the East Coast highlights. We also had our first taste of Tim Tams - tasty chocolate biscuits that become a lovely mess of chocolatey goodness when you suck hot tea up through them - and now a daily treat. Apparently you can also buy them at home now, so go try them!
Cairns is also one of the cheapest
Scuba man!
Rod emerging from the intro diveplaces to experience the Great Barrier Reef, and we managed to get ourselves on a bargainous catamaran day trip to the GBR with an introductory scuba dive thrown in for a mere $14! It was just as well the dive was cheap as chips because I barely made it a metre under water before I completely wierded out and bailed! Rod, however, managed to do the full intro dive despite much trepidation…although even he’s not caught the diving bug. We both got our Introductory Dive Certificate, which left me feeling like a bit of a fraud.
The snorkelling, on the other hand, was fantastic and the GBR really was amazing. We bought ourselves an underwater camera, but the photos didn’t do justice to the coral or the fish, some of which were pretty big. I even saw a reef shark, but thankfully it was a fair way away and heading in the opposite direction. We’d had strict instructions to swim only at the back of the boat…the promise of “big sharks” elsewhere kept us in check.
The weather had looked ominous all day, but the rain held off until we headed back to Cairns and the journey back
Out on the Great Barrier Reef
Drying off after much snorkelling was pretty lively. Several passengers lost their lunch but we were fine and we continued to munch our way through cheese and crackers and attempted to drink red wine…not a great idea on stormy seas!
After that one rainy evening, the sunshine returned. We squeezed in a visit to Cairns botanical gardens and a small pocket of rainforest next to it (the only rainforest still remaining around Cairns), where we saw some of the damage from the cyclone that recently hit Queensland. We also saw our first Crocodile warning sign: cue photo opportunity.
Before we left Cairns we collected the car that we’ve rented for our journey. Since we were traveling such a distance, they’d promised us a car in decent nick, so we were a bit concerned when we got our 1994 Ford Falcon station wagon. It’s full of, er, character, but it’s big and we can always sleep in it if the money runs out. Worryingly, we were back at the car hire place in less than an hour when the foot-operated ‘hand brake’ stopped working - a bit of WD40 did the trick.
After Cairns, we headed north to Port Douglas past North Cairns’
Cairns
Colonial building on a warm Cairns evening beautiful, near-deserted beaches (and losing a hub cap somewhere along the way!). Port Douglas was lovely, if a smidge up-market for our budget, but Four Mile Beach was definitely the highlight so we took a bottle of wine down there one evening to enjoy the view.
While we were staying in Port Douglas we spent a day further north at Daintree Forest National Park. Daintree Rainforest is apparently the World’s oldest surviving rainforest (despite the best efforts of Queensland’s logging industry).
In the morning, we took a guided walk in the heart of the Daintree Rainforest. Pru, our guide, started the walk by pointing out what looked like a bit of mould on a tree. It was actually a wolf spider, but the message was clear: don’t expect to see too much wildlife! The walk was great though, largely down to Pru’s great story-telling. She even got a guy in our group to lick a green ant’s bum because she said it tasted of lemon sherbert…and he confirmed it!
After the walk, Pru pointed us towards a swimming hole that she said would make us feel 10 years younger. She promised there were no crocs in there,
North Cairns beaches
Quick photo stop on the drive to Port Douglas so Rod and I took a dip in our own private pool. Can’t say we left it feeling 20 again, but it was lovely anyway.
After that we drove to Cape Tribulation (so-named by Captain Cook after a botched landing). Cape Trib is part of the Daintree National Park, and it’s the only place where two World Heritage sites meet: namely, the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. Since this was a whirlwind tour (you could easily spend days in this area), we had no time to do a crocodile-spotting cruise on the Daintree River, but we just managed to stop at Mossman Gorge on the way back to Port Douglas. Very pretty indeed.
Part II: Far North Queensland to Whitsunday Coast The next day we headed south again down the coastal highway, a long way past Cairns, towards Townsville. On the way, we saw our first Kangaroos, but they were squashed on the side of the road so I’m not sure that counts.
Townsville is the third largest city in Queensland and in true Queensland style it has none of the pace you’d expect from a city. It’s a strange mix of office buildings,
an ugly 60’s shopping precinct and beautiful sea-front; all overlooked by a big, red rock called Castle Hill. We climbed Castle Hill in the heat of the day (due to our usual lack of organisation), and enjoyed the views over the city, coastline and out towards Magnetic Island (just one of many great places we don’t have time to go to!). We also got to feed a cute little possum when it turned up for its evening snack at our hostel. Despite being used to human contact and cameras, it didn’t like our camera and scarpered back up its tree - hence no photographic evidence.
A few days later we rolled on down the coast past countless sugar cane fields to Airlie Beach, which is the gateway to Queensland’s famous Whitsunday Islands. We’d booked our 3 day/2 night Whitsundays sailing trip while we were in Cairns and, of the many Whitsunday boats, we’d deliberately chosen a small, traditional sailing boat with a reputation for a relaxed atmosphere….basically, the other end of the scale from the huge, party boats aimed at 18 year-olds and crawling with bed bugs!
Ileola, our wooden sailing boat, was 54 years old with an
impressive history. She carried just 12 passengers and 2 crew, although even that was cosy. After we’d got used to the size of the boat (and learnt to duck when walking below deck!), we quickly got in to the sailing life.
We left Airlie Beach in bright sunshine and the sea was like a millpond. Just an hour in to the trip we were completely spoilt when two humpback whales (and adult and a baby) started to play quite close to the boat. We watched them splashing their tales and blowing water in to the air for ages and then the adult suddenly breached the water, bending its body backwards. It took us all completely by surprise and it was spectacular.
Over the next few days we saw giant sea turtles, sea eagles and a big goanna (a huge lizard thing). As for the snorkelling, it was probably even better than our trip to the outer reef of the GBR and the fish were really curious, swimming towards us rather than darting away. Rod also followed a
giant wrasse around for a spell (a huge, blue, cartoon-like fish).
Added to all this, perfect weather, good company and a
plentiful supply of beer and wine made for a pretty idyllic time, but the highlight was definitely Whitehaven Beach. We’d anchored off Whitehaven (on Whitsunday Island) at the end of the first day, but from the water and in failing light it was difficult to see why it has the reputation of being one of the most beautiful beaches in Australia and probably in the World.
Straight after breakfast the next day, our skipper ferried us to the beach and it all became clear. Whitehaven is an incredibly long arc of super fine, almost-white sand fringed by forest and lapped by crystal-clear water…and we got there before all of the big boats arrived with their hoards of passengers. For a few hours we got to really enjoy it before we boarded Ileola again and she took us to Tongue Bay lookout, where we soaked up the picture postcard views back over Whitehaven.
By day three, our skipper was dying to sail rather than motoring around the smooth waters and (as forecast) the wind finally got up. We had our second attempt at hoisting the sails (much better, apparently!) and then we all clung on as Ileola began to
lean over and we sailed back to Airlie Beach. The perfect ending to a perfect 3 days.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.205s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 17; qc: 91; dbt: 0.092s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
