Blogs from Atherton Tablelands, Queensland, Australia, Oceania

Travelling from one place to another with children in tow can be a daunting task. Even the most well-behaved child can be quite a handful during a trip. This can usually be attributed to the change in environment, moving from a place that they know to an unfamiliar area can be disruptive to their routine. However, children do not have to make the idea of travelling sound too hard, you just have to plan ahead in order to take care of any contingency that may arise. When travelling, the safety of your toddler is of utmost importance and listed below are a few tips for ensuring that your child is perfectly safe while on a journey Be prepared While travelling, your child will most likely come in contact with dirty objects or surfaces that are full ... read more

I got up this morning for the dawn chorus because although I was feeling coldy and I had seen all of the usual target species, I wanted to make the most of being in such nice habitat at dawn. I went down to look for the platypus because I thought it might be active in the morning and I would like to get a picture in daylight, but no such luck. O did, however find a particularly wonderful mammal out and about in the morning: a Yellow-footed Antechinus. After check out time, we headed on to our next stop in the town of Atherton on the Atherton Tablelands proper. I think this was the longest drive of the trip but it wasn't really very long at all and the whole tableland area is not very large ... read more

After a long day on the Great Barrier Reef we had a more gentle day pottering around our rainforest house. In the late evening we ventured out to Crystal Cascades, a beautiful nearby park formed around a river which dropped in a series of shallow waterfalls into swimming holes. We spent a little time in the water but not much as it was cold and the river bed was sharp rocks. Next day however we had some amazing swimming opportunities. We set off early and went southwards, through Cairns and then down the Bruce Highway to Gordonvale. Here we turned onto the Gillies Highway which is essentially 40km of bends winding up a steep hill through the rainforest into the Great Dividing Range. After two km I was bored, after five I felt sick and started ... read more

So Guys the bus picked me up nice and early, we then continued to get others from hostels around Cairns. After some roundabouts and U turns, just cause we could, cousin lynzy took us to the devil's pools. These are huge pools created by the water pushing small rocks around in circles, similar to a washing machine. This area is far too dangerous to swim in but I got some awesome pictures. We went down to a calm wide section where we could swim across the river. After the swim we had biscuits, cake and tea, before heading off to the next destination. Rock sliding, we climbed into the pool where the water fall ran into and swam across to the huge rock, climbed up and shimmied along to the water flowing over the rock, then ... read more

Geo: -17.2705, 145.58325 April 2015At the end of the last blog I mentioned that we were going up to The Daintree and that Jim had hurt his back. We rested in Cairns for a three nights and then the pain in Jim's back seemed to go much worse so he went to the doctor. After making him do a number of movements (some accompanied by loud groans!) the doctor decided rest and painkillers were all that was required. He seems to have been correct as Jim is almost fully recovered but it did take three weeks during which time he was not able to drive.So I drove up to The Daintree, and more scary, across the ferry. The Daintree area is where the rainforest runs down to the sea. Once you cross the Daintree River (that's ... read more