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Published: July 11th 2014
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Hello everyone!
We have now been a little more than 2 weeks in Australia and are currently in Richmond, Queensland visiting Jamie and Gayle.
We spent the first week in Cairns which offered heaps of sun and loads of nostalgia for us. We started the week by getting ourselves some Australian phone numbers and opening Australian bank accounts. After all that was done we stayed two days in Cairns to get rid of the jet lag and to just take it easy for a little bit.
Unfortunately the communal pool (lagoon) was closed for renovation during the total period of our stay so we had to enjoy the sun without cooling of in the water. The first two days contained of walking around in the city and visit familiar places such as "woollies" and "the wool-shed" etc. It's funny how you forget how different Australia is from Europe. In Cairns there are fruitbats hanging in almost every tree and parrots in beautiful colors flying over the streets, it's just so amazing and we're so happy to be back!
On day three we rented a Jucy car to go to Cape Tribulation for two days. Cape tribulation is
Cape Tribulation
Beautiful Viewpoint a cape just 130 km north of Cairns in the middle of the rain forest. The drive there is very beautiful. You drive on a road situated just on the edge of the sea, you drive past beautiful, natural and untouched beaches and on top of high cliffs just next to the ocean. We stayed one night at a campground and had us an "Aussie Barbie" (BBQ) with sausages, XXXX gold beer and UDL in the evening.
The morning after we woke up with the sunrise to be able to make it to a crocodile tour on the Daintree River. When we came to the tour office we had some tea and coffee while we waited. After some time one of the tour instructors asked "hey, would you like to see a frog?", which of course we'd love to. So he took us in to the store and went to a shelf were plastic bags with souvenirs where hanging and took some away and there this huge white lipped green tree frog was sitting, as big as my hand! It was super cool and he told us that they'd come into their shop during the night to hide from
snakes, they had a few common residents that they'd given names. He also told us that the frogs doesn't actually manage to hide from the snakes in here since they come looking for them in the shop to, he'd found some in the shop when they opened some times... only in Australia mate!
After that we started of our salt crocodile tour on the Daintree River. We were lucky because we arrived just one week before the season kicks off so we had the whole boat plus guide for our selves. It was really amazing, the river is beautiful and knowing that the biggest species of crocodiles swim in it was a fascinating, but scary feeling. We started out by looking at some local birds and a tree snake (see the pictures) and managed after 30 minutes to find a 1.5 meter long crocodile laying on the sands next to the river sunbathing. It was really cool, just lying there with it's mouth open. A little later we encountered a 3 meter long female crocodile called Lizzy (that's the female maximum length, males grow up to 5 meters). She was a beauty and she looked really scary just layin'
Cape Tribulation
Watch out for Cassowaries there observing every move we made, she didn't take her eyes of us for one second!
After that we found some baby crocs measuring about 20 centimeters and went back to the tour office shortly after. We spent the rest of the day driving back to Cairns and then went to a big outlet outside of town to shop some clothes for our visit in Richmond! Unfortunately Eddie realized later that night the he'd lost his driver's license somewhere along the way. Neither Jucy or the outlet mall had seen it so after a few calls to the Embassy there is soon a new one on its way.
At 12:30 AM on the following morning we took the greyhound bus to Townsville. This meant that our initial holidays were coming to an end since the bus from Townsville the following day will take us to Richmond where we'll start working. We spent one day in Townsville, we walked around the city and also visited the local Aquarium that holds the largest sea water tank in the world and most importantly a turtle hospital. It was a great experience and we got to visit a large female green
sea turtle who'd been both bitten by a croc and hit by a boat propeller, unlucky ey? Luckily she's currently recovering fro, her damages and will eventually be put back into the wild.
We've been in Richmond for about ten days now and it's a tiny little town with three streets, a pub, 2 hotels and a small supermarket. It's about 500 km west of Cairns in the outback (see the picture) and it is more or less a dessert climate here. It is now winter in Australia so we get about 30 degrees Celsius here during the day but because of the dessert climate it drops to about 2 degrees during the night, in summer they get about 45 degrees here.
We're staying at the Ammonite In which is a Motel that Sunny's friends and previous employees Jamie and Gayle runs. Here Sunny is working with cleaning the rooms in the morning and as a kitchen hand in the restaurant during the evenings. I help out with some laundry and at the butcher's shop in town.
We've been around the city a few times by now and we've seen most of it. It's a very different
experience for us to live in the middle of nowhere like this but it's pretty cool so far =). To get a photo for Eddies's license we had to make a day trip to the neighboring town, Hughenden to take the photo. It was a nice break from life hear and we got to drive Jamie's 4WD Toyota pickup like true locals.
We plan to spend three months in total here and afterwards go and dive the SS Yongala and then travel on for 4 months.
We will keep you updated on our experiences out here as soon as there is something new to report, there will be a Rodeo Show in 2 weeks which should be a cool experience.
See ya later guys!
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