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Published: December 24th 2011
After the incident with the beaver like looking kid on the train we arrived in red hot Townsville, It reminded us of America and some of the deserted streets that we had walked through while there. We walked into to town, shared an expensive sandwich and were picked up by our host Andy. Andy lived with his wife Nanny and their daughter Asha who had just turned 6. They were having a BBQ that night and at about 5pm Andy offered us our first bottle of beer, the bottles then didn't stop coming all night. The BBQ was beautiful and Andy and Nanny had a couple of friends over who were also really nice and friendly people, calling us pommys (Australian name for the English) whenever they could. While we ate and listened to Andy play guitar the ceiling was covered in Lizards, Matt after a few beers was feeling brave and held a Rhino Beatle (Google it) it was massive. The next day we had plans to have a look around the town but instead Matt went for a swim in the pool and we got our 2 week’s worth of washing done, eventually. We visited the yacht club with
Andy, Nanny and Asha that night and after coming back to the house, Matt learned how to play the Sri Lanka game Carrom.
We didn't get a host in Cairns where we were heading to next so booked a hostel online and get a little confused with what was on offer..... Breakfast, tea and coffee all day, evening meal and free internet for $12 each a night, what was the catch? Apparently, there wasn't one and when we arrived got upgraded for free to a private room, what luck! Cairns, although raining when we arrived seemed lovely, we spent 2 nights at the Asylum hostel and were then picked up early for our 3 day, 2 night trip further north to Cape Tribulation located where the reef meets the rain forest. The trip was brilliant, we got to take a boat up the Daintree River to look for crocs, a guided walk through the rainforest, to Mossman Gorge where you could go swimming in the river and to the wild life sanctuary where we got to feed kangaroos and see a cassowary. A cassowary is this large turkey looking thing with a horn on its head. The females are
the dominant (of course) and after mating, laying their eggs, leave, never to see the babies again! The male then takes over and looks after the eggs and brings them up after hatching. The cassowary to defend themselves would hit you with their claw and unzip your chest as if it were a jacket, scary. Did you also know that crocs live in the rivers but use the sea like a motorway to get to other rivers? People can get bit from a croc in the sea just like a shark! A funny story that we heard....
A mum and dad and grandma and granddad were camping one night. Everyone wakes up to loads screams as they see that the dad is being pulling out of the tent by the croc to the lake to be drown. The grandma jumps on the crocs back and starts to poke it in the eyes. The croc lets go of the dad’s legs and grabs hold of grandma’s arm and starts dragging her to the lake until granddad shoots the croc. Newspaper headlines read - 'Grandma saves the day'!
We stayed for 2 nights in the rain forest at Cape Tribulation,
a place I don't think Kerry will ever be returning. Very beautiful place but absolutely massive spiders, everywhere! We walked along the beach for a little but got a little scared as it started to look very much like a crocs hang out.
Do you ever wonder about if your path ever crosses the same person again unintentionally? Well here’s an unbelievable one for you. We were walking on the guided tour through the jungle with our group, when another group passes us. Matt looked up at someone who then said, hay didn't I meet you in Morocco? Can you remember we both done the hitchhike to Morocco and met loads of different people on the way, after taking the 7 days of unknown hitches and arrived in Marrakesh from Newcastle. We met Ed who had hitched from the south of England with his friends and spend an afternoon talking about the different hitches we'd all got. How random that a year and a half later we would see him again in the middle of the rain forest on the north-east coast of Australia! We were stunned, of the 7 Billion people in the world, what do you think
the odds are of meeting the same person on 2 very different trips, in completely different parts of the world?
We also learned about an interesting tree called a fig, the seed is pooped out by a bird ontop of another tree and grows towards the ground wrapping itself around the tree, stealing it's light and then it's nutrients and water. Over a timeframe of around 700 year the original tree then disappears leaving the fig with a hollow shell, there's a picture, they're called strangling figs! Also while on our jungle walk the guild was talking about the Greentree Ant that you can eat, Matt was brave enough to lick it's butt to taste the citrus flavour.
We headed back to Cairns for another 2 nights in the Asylum and took a boat trip, passions of paradise, to the Great Barrier Reef. This was a great day, we snorkeled and got to see loads of different kinds of fish and coral, we even got to swim with a turtle and Matt even touched the back of its shell as it swam. We met Ryan on the trip that was Irish and had studied in Newcastle, funny guy.
The three of us went for our free meals and got to witness the Goldfish racing, the Irish won!
Sending Love
Matt and Kerry.
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louise
non-member comment
wish you were here :-(
Looks like your having a fab time x missing you loads though wish you were here for christmas :-( But have a wonderful time. Love ya xx