Final day in Queensland

Hi all for the final time from Tropical north Queensland,

We had a great last day today. We slept in a little, then got up and packed up our room. Our first stop for the day was Mossman Gorge. We had saved this until the last day as there is nothing worse than having a late flight and just sitting around all day not doing much, watching the clock. On the way we saw the sugarcane train transporting lots of harvested sugar cane.

As a kid, I think I remembered just turning up in the carpark and walking straight to the gorge. Nowadays, you pay $12.65 per adult and get a shuttle bus from the Visitor Centre to the gorge. It was an easy process and probably means the area is being conserved and looked after more than it used to, which is good.

It was cloudy and rainy again today. But this made the gorge all the more beautiful, fresh and natural. We did a 2.4 km rainforest circuit first, which we accessed by walking over a suspension bridge. Our feet and legs got pretty wet and muddy. I decided to wear white shorts today - not my best decision!! The circuit was beautiful though. We particularly marvelled at the buttress roots of some trees - they waved around like ribbons and created a very stable structure for the tree, we supposed so it was safe in rough weather like cyclones. The other part of the walk we really enjoyed was a short turn off to a creek. I dipped my feet in - it was cold but refreshing!

Once we finished the circuit, we headed to the main access to the water in the gorge. There were lots of fish, and a few brave(?) people swimming in the even colder water here. We enjoyed viewing the powerful water rushing in between the huge boulders from a couple of lookouts before boarding the bus back to the Visitor Centre.

Next, we headed back to Port Douglas where we enjoyed lunch at the Grant Street Bakery again. I had a chicken and salad roll and a HUGE brownie and smoothie, Rob had a sausage roll, a jam donut and a milkshake. We went for a final walk up and down Macrossan Street to Rex Smeal Park. I sent some postcards to some friends overseas that have sent me some previously, as a couple of them are still in long term lockdowns and I found receiving them last year always put a smile on my face. Finally, we went for a quick final walk on Four Mile Beach.

On our way back to Cairns, we walked along the jetty in Palm Cove and drove through the town just to check it out, before killing our final half an hour walking along the Esplanade in Cairns. Funnily at this point we ran into Rob's aunt and uncle! What a small world.

Now we are at Cairns Airport waiting for our flight which departs in about 45 minutes. I am so grateful we got to go on this trip. As for anyone living in Melbourne this past year, it was such a relief to be able to go somewhere different, experience some warmer weather and feel less claustrophobic in this current world climate. It was a very close call with our recent outbreak and lockdown, and then the outbreak and lockdown in Brisbane. Someone was definitely looking out for us to have it all work out.

I am also grateful I got to spend some quality time with Rob. We both work very demanding, people centred jobs at home which means we don't often get to spend much time together. Rob is starting hotel quarantine work again for a month once home so it will be a hard slog. Having this week or so to adventure and relax together has been wonderful.

My next trip is to Darwin in September with Mum and Dad (I hope). I so hope that towards the end of the year there is more hope in terms of us being able to travel overseas, so this blog can once again live up to its name!

Thank you for reading and hopefully see you in Darwin in September!

Love to all,
Claire
Xoxox

Day by the pool

Hello all,

Not too much to report today, but it's nice to have some days like that on a holiday!

I got up earlier than Rob today and walked into town to buy an acai bowl at a place called Nectar. It was delicious. I walked back again along the beach. Then Rob and I drove back into town and had a coffee, and Rob had a croissant and a donut.

Most of the rest of the day was spent poolside. We found a great spot on some sun lounges by the pool with a big umbrella over us. I read some of my book, we had a couple of drinks, we listened to music and we just relaxed. I had fun recreating one more photo from 2004 too. At 2pm, we had a booking to use the tennis court for an hour. We played tennis for about 40 minutes and had lots of fun. Neither of us had played tennis in a very long time. I beat Rob 2 games to 1 - woohoo!!

We went for a short walk together and enjoyed watching the crabs in the shallow waters scurrying away under the sand as we approached.

Tonight we went out for dinner at a place called the Tin Shed with Ian, Robyn, Michelle, Mike, Ella and Sophie. We had a great time catching up with them about how their trip had been since we last saw them on Sunday. Rob and I both had the seafood basket which was very nice, as was the sunset behind the gloomy clouds and the rainforest.

We got a group photo so I could include it for you to see, Nan, but Sophie is in a "I hate photos" phase and wouldn't smile! I snapped a quick one of her shortly afterwards so you can see her smiling too.

The group of us then walked to get an ice cream before we said goodbye and parted ways. It was really nice to be able to catch up with them up here!

It is our last day tomorrow. I will post again then about what we get up to tomorrow as our flight is not until night time.

Love to all,
Claire
Xoxox

Cape Tribulation & the Daintree

 Hi all,

After two disappointing footy results last night, we had a burger at the pub and then a gelati at the ice cream place we spent half our trip at as kids. The ice cream was just as fab as I remembered!

This morning we got up fairly early and set off north of Port Douglas towards the Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation. We were disappointed that despite a sunny, rain free weather forecast, the weather ahead looked gloomy and it kept raining. We hadn’t brought our raincoats!!

We arrived at the river cruise station for our 9.30am cruise on the Daintree River. We were on a small, quiet boat with solar panels.

Our guide, Mark, told us that the Daintree is a tidal river. As a result, at times the river can have “beaches” in the middle, and at other times it is up to 6m deep. On Australia Day 2019 there were floods so bad that the whole office was underwater! You can still see debris and damaged trees by the water from this event. You can also see many mangroves by the water’s edge, and there are 34 species of them in the Daintree - approximately half the world’s species. They are the only tree that can survive in the saltwater, and are able to excrete salt or pump it into sacrificial leaves.

Speaking of saltwater, those are the type of crocodiles present in the river. They are the biggest and most dangerous type. Females can grow up to 3.5m long, and males 6-7m long. Their species has been around for millions of years - as long as the dinosaurs! One of their evolutionary features are ‘scoots’ (spikes) along their back and tail, that are positioned in such a way that this allows them to be aerodynamic and undetectable under the water’s surface.

We were really lucky on our cruise. It was meant to go for an hour, but our guide ran it for closer to an hour and a half. We saw tree snakes, different birds including Papuan frogmouths, a bird’s nest hanging from a tree and plenty of crocs. Apparently it’s more common to see them this time of year as the water is cooler, so they prefer to come out onto the banks.

There are ten regular crocodiles that frequent this area. We first saw Scarface - so named because of the scars on his face obtained from fights with other crocodiles. He is the dominant male in the area and is about 4.7m long.

Next we saw a few hatchlings, tiny crocodiles that were well camouflaged on logs. We had a few keen photographers/nature enthusiasts on our boat who were very good at spotting them. Around this area we also saw Elizabeth, a 40 year old female. Females lay between 20-80 eggs at the one time, and partially bury them beneath leaves etc in a creek off of the main river. The compost heats the eggs so the female doesn’t have to sit on them, but rather just guards them for two months from predators such as wild boars and goannas. Crocodiles are then the only reptiles that are maternal - the mother spends the first two months of the babies lives caring for them such as carrying them on her back or swimming with them. On average, only one crocodile out of two nests full of eggs survives to adulthood though. Apparently they start off weighing about 500g, and the heaviest weighed saltwater crocodile came in at 1000kg.

Elizabeth was pretty shy and went under the water once she saw the boat coming, but we turned off here and saw another female, Scooter, on an embankment. She was not phased by us at all. It’s illegal to feed wild crocodiles up here which is good. They don’t associate us with food, and they don’t rely on the boats.

On the way back we could see sugarcane through the forest. Mark told us that erosion means the buffer between the forest and the farms is decreasing. So it’ll be interesting in the future to see what happens there.

After our river cruise, we queued up for the ferry to cross the river. When we arrived at 9.30 there was no queue. Because more people had arrived by now, we had to wait about 45 minutes for the ferry. But we didn’t mind, we were just happy to be here. We had a good laugh at some idiot that tried to jump the queue by getting in the priority queue without a priority pass. The lady made him go right to the back of the queue which was double the length by that stage!!

The Daintree Rainforest is three times older than the Amazon, making it the oldest rainforest in the world at 180 million years old.

Our first stop after the ferry was Alexandra Lookout. The view was a bit cloudy but still beautiful. At least it had stopped raining! Then we went to the Dubuji Boardwalk through the rainforest. It was a nice loop and we particularly enjoyed the fan palms here. It was amazing that the path from the rainforest emerged and within metres you were on the beach. What was a bit daunting at this point was the “WARNING/ACHTUNG sign that warned of a “recent crocodile sighting in this area” - yikes. We walked along the beach for a little while, and saw some questionable footprints in the sand. When Rob googled “crocodile footprints” I’d be lying if I said they didn’t look similar. Then we headed back to the car.

We had a quick toastie and juice each for lunch at a local cafe, before heading to Cape Tribulation Beach (or Kulki to the Aboriginal people). Captain Cook named it Cape Tribulation as he had some trouble with his ship nearby being damaged by a reef.

Here we enjoyed more mangroves that looked really cool sitting right on the beach, as well as the patterns in the sand made by crabs. The short walk to a lookout was nice, as was a walk along the beach. I had fun recreating another photo from our 2004 trip. Again though we were greeted with “WARNING”, “don’t go near the water’s edge” etc on signs due to saltwater crocodiles frequented the area. Thankfully we didn’t see any!

On the way back down south, we enjoyed an ice cream each at the Daintree Ice Cream Company before wandering through their orchards. They make fresh fruit flavoured ice cream using fruit they grow on site. For $7.50 we had a taster cup we had passionfruit, wattleseed (an Australian fruit that had a hazelnut/coffee sort of taste), soursop (an Amazonian fruit with a creamy lemonade taste) and coconut - which we both agreed was our favourite.

Our final stop was the Jindalba boardwalk circuit. Once again the jungle was beautiful, but this area had more streams and was very quiet and peaceful as there were not as many people.

We once again waited about 30 minutes for the ferry and then headed back to Port Douglas, along the way seeing some sugarcane being harvested and transported in train carriages. We arrived back in Port Douglas around around 5.30.

Tonight we had dinner at Hemingway's in Port Douglas and now we are back in our room ready to watch 'Have You Been Paying Attention'.

Love to all,
Claire
Xoxox