Until Townsville (2weeks ago ;)

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Hi all you wonderful people back home

We guess, after having received complaints about missing further updates, it’s about time to write you all again.

We had to read our last entry in order to know where we let you guys sit and wait with eager in order to hear from us again ;-)

So, when we were in Port Douglas, we enjoyed our day, did heaps of laundry and went to the local sailing club, however due to bad weather, unfortunately we could not go out sailing since they cancelled the regatta. Up in the wet tropics one unfortunately has to be prepared for bad weather, especially in the wet season. We strolled around the town, and ended up sitting in a bar for internet and refreshments. The place happened to have a Trivia’s night (quiz night), so we participated as “The Kangaroo-Counters from the far North”. Apparently the questions were addressed more to Australians and maybe even older people, so we hardly had a chance. Or maybe we were just not clever enough – we believe in the first thing ;-). There was a lot of prices to be won, also one for the best name. That one we got J It was a voucher of 15$ dollars to “The Little Ladler”, a little breakfast restaurant in town. They also had a price called “The Wooden Spoon” – this price also landed in our hands, though it was a discount voucher for a massage place, so we gave it away to the neighboring table. The evening was fun and cozy though after the quiz we headed back to Neville and dropped dead instantly. The next morning we went to cash in our well-earned breakfast and choose a French toast with fresh berries. This was for Christian, whilst Louise took a delicious freshly squeezed juice. We headed off for our next stop, The Mossman Gorge. Here we did a nice long rainforest walk and it was very impressive to “study” a bit of the forest’s eco system. After the walk we went swimming in the refreshing waters of the gorge – no crocs were in the river ;-) The walk back to Neville was a bit long in the heavy pouring rain, though an interesting experience. When we call it heavy rain at home, its nothing in comparishment to being in the wet tropics. We drove on to the Daintree Village, where we camped for the night. The campground was well equipped, and we watched a movie outdoor with all the frogs jumping around us. We went down to the river in search for crocs, but so far no luck in spotting any. In the morning we opened up a Durian(Jack fruit/stink fruit), a gift from a stranger (Rob) who we met the previous day. It was a very interesting fruit, though we do now understand how comes it is often illegal to bring along to hotels, due to the strong smell before cut open. It was a sticky affair, nothing we need to try again, though a fun experience. The road took us up further north the coast, and we kept our eyes well open for Cassowaries (Australia’s biggest land animal – a blue-black huge bird), though the luck was not with us in spotting any. We drove out to Kimberley Bay and Cow Beach, two very beautiful, rather deserted beaches. On Kimberley Bay some of the sand was black and shiny, and Louise had fun by walked around writing all over the beach. The beaches up north are defiantly paradise-like, however it is a shame that one cannot swim on any of these, due to stinger season and crocs in the water. One should only swim in the stinger nets, and these are not provided up north.

We drove deeper into the rainforest and were really impressed on how dense everything grows here; sometimes one could not even look half a meter into the forest. We spend the night in the car at Noah beach, before we the next day headed off to Cape Tribulation. This was yet another paradise-like beach, and we went for a long walk, in order to visit Rob (the stink fruit guy). He lived very deserted, tried to live by the nature, and we were both rather impressed by his interesting personality and lifestyle. After spending a couple of hours in his company we headed to the car and drove back to Daintree Village, spend another night and in the morning we went on two river cruises in order to spot crocs. On the first cruise we were lucky to see the back of a 2meter long one, just before it jumped up and went into the water. Apparently it is too hot for the crocs to be laying around, they hide on the buttom and only come up for eating and breathing. We got told about the birdlife and the agriculture/farming. Was rather interesting. We headed back to Cairns, where we made it just in time for the local marked closing up, meaning heaps of good fruit bargaining. We overloaded us self with delicious fruits/vegetables and repacked the car, so it would be ready for a longer trip. Monday we finally hit the road going inland to Kuranda, a little rainforest village with marked, however mostly closed due to wet season. We passed by Barron falls/gorge, which was beautiful. One of the many waterfalls on our planned route. We continued on to Mareeba, where we stopped at a winery, to taste tropical fruit wines and liquors. Some was very delicious, others not quite for us. Passing through Mareeba we saw our first Kangaroos :D YAY – It was very cool to finally see them jumping around the golf course. We counted them to 54 ;-) (It is our goal to count all Kangaroos in Australia, before we won’t come home). It was getting evening time, so we headed off to Granit Gorge national park, where we parked the car for the night. We got instantly welcomed by heaps of rock wallabies, kind of mini kangaroos. They were very cute and ate food from our hands and we could also strike them. Even the mommies with their baby-wallies in the “caring-back” came up close and we could greet the little ones. We collected some wood for our evening bonfire, which we enjoyed under an amazing night sky filled with stars and a wonderful steak dinner. We watched the sunrise over the hills, before starting the day with doing laundry and going rock jumping/hiking through the beautiful, but deadly hot gorge. The following day we spend driving from waterfall to waterfall, one more beautiful than the other. We took a dip in Eacham Lake, and by Milla Milla Falls there was a fish sucking on our feet, and after getting out of the water, we saw a snake swimming around – we did not go in a second time ;-) We continued to the Josephine Falls, and slept on a rest stop just outside Innisfail. On the way to our next stop, we made a boardwalk in the rainforest. It was very pretty here with small creeks and we just enjoyed being in the total nature – until, just next to the path, a huge spider was sitting sunning in the middle of its huge web. Louise just wanted to leave straight away, however Christian found it very funny to take pictures and record its movements. Afterwards, Christian had to walk in front the whole way back, and was not allowed to leave Louise unattended. Next stop on our route was Mission Beach. Yet another very long and very beautiful beach, and we here took us some time to relax and for the first time we went swimming in the ocean J We allowed ourselves the treat of chilled prawns and a cool drink for lunch, whilst planning the upcoming days of our trip. The night we spend in a beautiful national park, and got up early to see the big Murray Falls, take a morning swim in the creek and did a short morning hike in the forest, until the path was blocked by another huge spider and its web. This time it was not possible to pass, so we hurried back out of the forest – Louise now not wanting to do anymore board/bush/forest walks!! ;-) We drove inland, a very far drive on a rather deserted country road (cattle standing around on the street), in order to see Australia’s highest single drop waterfall, The Wallaman. Although it was impressive to see the nearly 300meter high waterfall, we are not quite sure it was worth the several hours detour. But we enjoyed it nevertheless. Also the first time we met Danish people on the road. They had a problem with their van, so we gave them our spare water – and made them realize just how important spare water is on such a trip.

Our journey continued down to Townsville, from where we by foot took the ferry out to Magnetic Island. Here we put up our tent for the first time, and went for a hike to The Fort, located on top of a higher hill, with great views around the Island. Also along the path were heaps of eucalyptus trees, and the area was inhabited by Wild Koalas. We were lucky enough to actually spot one small and one big koala, chilling in the trees. The big one crawled around, and was surprisingly fast, whilst the small one didn’t even bother our presence. In the evening we ate a huge amount of watermelon before participating in another trivia-night at the camping site, this time we were not amongst the worst, so we slept well in the night. It felt a bit like sleeping in the jungle, due to so many wild birds, wallabies and other animals crawling around just outside the tent. The last full day on the Island we planned to make a round trip by boat though there were no official operators going out due to rough waves. Nonetheless, we stayed optimistic and went to the beach early in the morning and asked some locals if they knew of any possibility to go out anyway. We were insanely lucky to ask the right guy (Fred) since he offered us to fish from the back of his boat which was anchored in the bay. He even offered us his whole fishing equipment and freshly caught bait like sardines and squid. With his help we actually managed to catch 2 catfish, 1 stingray and a golden trivially although only the last was brought on board since the others were uneatable. In addition he took us to some remote place along the shore where we went rock climbing. It was really interesting to follow him since he just walked through the bushes and stones without any shoes so we thought, he is a local, he must know what is ok to do ;-) Some of the stones we jumped, Louise was not quite sure if she would manage, since you had to press your body against both sides of the walls in order to get down. It was very out of the ordinary. By the end of the day we grilled the fish on the beach front, but we were not able to eat even half of it, a shame since it was rather good. The next day we went back into Townsville where we spend a relaxed day strolling around the city and paid a visit to the public library in order to go online. We enjoyed a nice pasta dinner at the waterfront together with the German couple(Marie and Ruwen) with whom Christian took his diving course and who also just arrived that day in Townsville. After catching some sleep parked in a living area outside the town we spent a bit more time in the city before making our way towards Airlie Beach, the jumping board to the Whitsunday Islands.

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Comments

[Nicolw]

Love this sign! They actually told us the artist already had to renew it as it seems to be a well-liked souvenir ;) It\'s a shame you didn\'t see any Cassowaries. They are really cool! Did you see the signs warning about them, though? A Cassowary jumping at ya with both feet aiming at your tummy is rather scary... xxx Nic