Blogs from Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia, Oceania - page 21

Cairns to Cape Tribulation Tuesday 20th January 2009 Northern Queensland is in the grip of monsoon rains. It is hot, it is silly heat, and the rain is torrential! Whilst in Cairns we were in the “dry eye” of this huge cyclone of weather that is circling around the north east. Townsville to the south was flooded at the end of last week and now, Port Douglas, where we are at the moment, is getting its share of the rain. To add to our little problems, thousands of Chinese tourists are arriving for the Chinese New Year, which is going to be a big event next Monday, especially as it coincides with Australia Day, which is a Bank Holiday, and accommodation is getting scarce. We have a brilliant room above a pub at the moment, but ... read more

After the rain, came the sun - no sooner had it finished lashing down the place was baking hot and with a humidity that makes it hard to breathe. Booked a trip up to Daintree rainforest and Cape Tribulation. Drove up Captain Cook highway and stopped off for a quick sail down Daintree river to see some Crocs in their natural habitat - seen a Croc called Scarface, basically he ruled the land in a three mile radius and he looked mean. No feeding them here as it’s a bit too dangerous, he had a nice female croc just round the corner a little baby hanging off a branch. Was funny to see a 4 metre croc and then a little 2 foot one - you can just make out the little fella on one of ... read more

Just a really quick hello to let everyone know we arrived in Australia safely eventually after spending time in Kuala Lumpar and Singapore, which was great. We're now in Port Douglas which is North East Australia and a baking 35 degrees during the day and about 30 at night. We picked up our camper after having a bit of a nightmare yesterday, a whole other story other. We're heading up to Cape Tribulation for the day and then snorkelling on the Barrier Reef tomorrow. Very exciting. Anyway just to let you know we're okay. Will do another blog asap. Lots of love Katie and Jez xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx... read more

The weather was humid and it looked like there was potential for more rain. The internet was back up and running (it was down the previous night) so after a massive fry up we used the opportunity to catch up on a few bits of admin online. Unfortunately we could only get a signal from the outdoor (but undercover) tv room which was infested with mosquitoes. Despite squashing plenty, we came off worst with a good 10 big red bites each on our legs. Somebody had obviously forgotten to tell them that they don’t like Deet. Around lunchtime, when we finally felt we’d caught up with things, we drove into the pretty seaside town of Port Douglas and parked up. The golden beach was near empty, and we were just thinking about diving into the netted ... read more

Day 4 Drove the main tourist trail of the Great Ocean Road taking in various landmarks- basically variations on the 12 Apostles with different names (London Bridge, looks like a bridge etc). All quite interesting but a bit relentless especially with the convoys of cauliflower heads being ferried from sight to sight in big coaches, stepping off the bus for 30 seconds, taking a snap then getting back on again, like some disturbing ritual of the living dead, consuming the sights with their cameras. Spent the night in a tiny village called Port Fairy where the only internet access was in a pizza takeaway which you used while waiting for your order! Day 5 The Great Ocean Road ends before Port Fairy so we headed inland into the Grampians, a set of small mountains inside a ... read more