Wednesday 01:
Crikey! What a country we live in (in our best Steve Irwin voice)
Our continent is so diverse, we really do have it all.
Yesterday we travelled further north to Palm Cove – a place I visited back in my early 20s on holiday. Today it is a hub of tourism with a palm tree lined esplanade with retail on the left, and beach on the right. However, unlike Bondi – this place keeps its calm due to the ever-wary idea of Crocs. Yep, this place is picture perfect, until you get in the water. Bottles of vinegar line the beach for marine stingers, and the looming idea of salt-water crocodiles in the surf keep the place small.
Remembering it is winter, this place is still humming with visitors, sunbakers and the jetty is full of eager fisherman. We stroll the beach and breathe in the fresh salty air, as the sun heats up this place pretty quickly. We’re keen to move on to the Daintree today, so make our way north.
We pull into Port Douglas – a much larger coastal town and have some lunch at Trinity Point. Our ‘rig’ is getting lots of compliments and a lady asks us all about our setup and where we got it from as she is keen to do the same. Seems everyone is comparing rigs here – canopies, trays, draw systems – if you haven’t got one, you want one for the dream trip around our great country. Aren’t we the lucky one’s.
The sight of the Daintree is a special one, and as we move on from Port Douglas I finally get the coast-lined highway I’ve been waiting for. Stunning. The winding roads are a drivers dream (less so the passenger) and the tree canopies make this stretch of highway one of the best!
This afternoon I’ve booked us in for a croc tour at the Daintree River Cruise Centre. Again, I did this trip 15 years ago and I’m interested in seeing how the crocs have changed.
They got bigger.
These prehistoric creatures really are something special, and to see them in their natural habitat – happily basking themselves in the low winter sun – is really something. We saw five in total, and the biggest, 3.6m on this trip. The guide mentioned the biggest ever caught was in Normanton at 8.3m… note to self whilst driving through this town in a few days. As an opportunistic animal, you really don’t want to be in its reach. But as we cruise through these waters, we’re happy we just get a glance for what they are.
Back in the car we drive to the cable-ferry to get over to the main side of the Daintree – boat people are special people aren’t they. We continue north and every turn continues to amaze us. Just beautiful, dense forest that’s on our doorstep.
Tonight we’re staying at the Rainforest village – a campsite next to the last petrol stop here in the Daintree. A really nice guy who owns the place gave us a rundown of the area: a lot of the 4WDing tracks have now been closed to the public, as are the swimming holes due to aboriginal land. But we wonder if its just the popularity of the area now – and it’s the council’s way of culling us.
Thursday 02:
In the morning the forest clouds had moved over and speckled rain filled the air. It felt cosy to be here in nature. A Yaris carrying backpackers had pulled up last night with two girls and a guy that set up a small tent for the night. They giggled loudly and tried to teach each other different languages – needless to say, they got shut down by a grey nomad pretty quickly. We wondered if they were starving as we remembered our pretty awesome steak sandwiches we cooked up last night, as they sat round flirting. Young is blind.
Our washing we had done last night unfortunately hadn’t dry, and after parking under some low hanging trees we needed to wash the ute and awning down. We packed her all back up and kept heading north for Cape Tribulation.
Originally we were meant to be heading all the way to Cape York – but as our prep time extended, we had to shorten our trip. We drove as far as we could today hitting the start of the Bloomfield track, pulled our awning out and hung our washing back out to dry. Ahh the camping life.
All the parking areas were full, so we pulled up over a river crossing – our first one for the trip. There was a walking track to the beach – so we waded our feet in the (thankfully) clear water and headed back south to find it. The looming track wasn’t signposted or inviting, but with ever-present husband encouragement we followed it. Again, thankfully, the track opened up to a small and secluded beach. Brilliant. The wind here has been quite rough making the seas cloudy and uninviting – and here was no exception. Keeping our eyes again peeled for any logodiles… or real ones… we strolled the beach. We saw our first tree snake and laid in the sand, in paradise. The sun again beemed down on us, but those pesky forest clouds began to move back in – and what was once paradise, was now threatening.
The woman who was taken here by a croc over a year ago is still spoken about. And you have to wonder what was going through her mind at the time. With the amount of signage and general feeling in the air that these creatures are ever present – you have to wonder. Everyone seems to have their own theories up here – was she intoxicated? Was she simply forgetful on a warm night and felt like a late night swim? The ocean seems uninviting today, and we just wonder at 10’clock at night with the idea of an opportunistic predator that is 80% nocturnal and who lives in the water… could you?
Our map notes an organic icecream shop and it’s on our must-list. We head south and pull in just as a few bus loads do too. We line up and are not disappointed. The place is full of orchards of different fruits and seeds and the four scoop cup is delicious! The wattleseed is amazing, tasting like biscuit or coffee, or something I cant get enough of. The other flavours are sour sop, banana and passionfruit. 10/10.
Belly’s full, we hit the road to join the queue to cross the ferry back to Cairns. Johny was finally able to use his tool box as a low hanging vine got caught on one of our side lights. With a strange pop, it completely pulled it off! Luckily we were able to pull up by the side of the road and fix it under 5 mins and keep going.
We spend the time organizing our stay at Lawn Hill/Adel’s grove on the Queensland border and try and organize a permit to travel through a closed community up in NT via Roper Bar.
We’re back at Cool Waters Caravan Park tonight, yet as they have no vacancy for camping, we’re in the ritz of a studio room on a cheapy rate – thanks Ladies! No bugs tonight! Our first night eating our dinner at a table since home – priceless.
One week in – cant wait for what the next week brings.
Night all.
The Cooks.
TotallyCookd. 