Day 414: Atherton Tablelands

When you get to Cairns you are supposed to go drive around the Atherton Tablelands, sampling the local delicacies.  I can see how it's got a pleasant sort of almost provencal feel to it.  It's about 7 degrees cooler and a whole lot drier than Cairns.  We didn't have any particular plans so we just drove around in a big loop, stopping at a liqueur distillery to sample some very nice things we couldn't transport, and probably couldn't afford anyway.  And we found this amazing tree to look at for free.

It was only a quick tour because we were about to embark on the nightmare trip to Darwin.  We got on a Virgin Australia plane in Cairns, arrived in Brisbane at about 7pm, and connected to another plane to Darwin, arriving after midnight.  Mmmm... how we wish there was a train from Cairns through to Darwin. Anyway, we stayed at the airport hotel, which was very expensive, but a whole lot nicer than the hostel we went to the next day. 

Days 412 & 413: Great Barrier Reef

... by Antonia.

Daddy and I had booked a tour boat in Cairns to go to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.  When we got to our boat, we got on and signed some forms.  Then the boat took off.  It started to get bumpy.  Some of us started to get seasick. Just to reassure you, only two people started to really throw up on the ship.  The rest of us, except for the crew and my adult friend Eveline (who never gets seasick) just had tummy aches.  I liked Eveline. When we got to the Great Barrier Reef after three hours of getting bumped around on the boat, we got into our wetsuits and popped into the water.  Daddy went scuba diving while I went snorkelling with some of the other people.  We saw loads of giant clams and turtles and coral and starfish and fish!  After that we went to sleep and in the morning we snorkelled and scuba dived until we had to go back to the shore.  I was sad at the shore because I wasn't able to say goodbye, but I still had a nice time.

Day 413: Willie Gordon's Guurrbi Tours

The reason I drove all the way up to Cooktown was to go on Willie Gordon's Guurrbi Tour to look at Rock Art in his area.  His tours are very highly rated and this is because he has definitely got the gift of the gab.  It's quite amazing how he can talk, seemingly informally about art, the stories that go with it, family life, politics, history, land rights, personal anecdotes, flora and fauna of the bush, ... and then, the next day, he does it again, I guess. It is personalised: Willie was great with the three kids who were on our tour. He'd visited Britain so it was really interesting to hear what he had to say about us as well. He seemed particularly interested, though not impressed, by Richard Dawkins, but he also had things to say about several Australian personalities I never heard of. I managed to cause trouble by not caring where I had been born, being hazy about my national identity, and eating half the witchetty grub he had intended for himself!  I had a great time though. There's actually so much content there that it's hard to summarise, so if you get the chance to go on this tour yourself, do it. There's a lot of Aboriginal cultural experience tours in Australia, but Willie isn't easily replaceable, I imagine.

PS: I forgot to mention that the art was interesting, the witchetty grubs were tasty and the bit of bush we visited was beautiful even in the rain.

Rock art

Mid-morning snack

Days 412 & 413: The Inland Road to Cooktown

I dropped Mike and Antonia off for their sailing, snorkeling and diving tour and embarked on a longish journey to Cooktown were I was going on a guided bush walk to look at Aboriginal rock art.  When we rented our cheapo economy class car, we somehow got upgraded to a Subaru Forester.  It turned out to be a great car to drive and the inland road is like something out of a car advertisement.  Just a long straight, relatively narrow strip of tarmac with nobody else on it, through open savannah.  It was the sort of road it's easy to get carried away on, and I did a bit, but I got a come down on the way back. I had nearly reached the turnoff back down to Cairns when I got stopped behind an accident.  We were there for almost exactly two hours, while the emergency services tried to extract someone who must surely have been a corpse by them from a car that was reduced to a cube by being driven into the rocky embankment at the side of the road.

 

 

Day 411: Mossman Gorge and Cape Tribulation

Antonia's sculpture at Cape Tribulation

This was our first look at real tropical rainforest.  Antonia was sure we would get stung, scratched, bitten, pecked by cassowaries, eaten alive by triffids or saltwater crocodiles and I don't know what else.  Mike was the one who got a leech.  We didn't notice this until several hours after he had somehow brushed it off himself and we discovered he was leaving a trail of blood everywhere he went.  Fortunately, we were having coffee at a rainforest centre when we discovered this, and the guys there took it in their stride.  "Leech bite, mate?  No worries!"  Hmmm, a bit of surgery and a bandage later, and Mike is all ready to meet the sharks tomorrow.  We went to look at a mangrove swamp from a boardwalk after that, and were careful this time to avoid leaning against things.

Mike collecting leeches

Rainforest

Mangrove Swamp

Days 408 & 409: The Sunlander

The Economy cabin!

 We rolled our suitcases back down the hill from the hostel to Roma Street station.  They keep the Sunlander, the famous train that runs from Brisbane to Cairns hidden somewhere at the back of the station, and only inform you of where it is if you ask!  We reached the platform five minutes too late to check our luggage, but not too late for Mike to stand in a queue to see if he could upgrade our seats to a cabin for a smaller fee than advertised.  This resulted in a tiny economy triple cabin becoming available about five minutes before the train pulled out.  I should explain that we have Ausrail passes and can travel all we want for no extra money, but only in seats.  If we want to lie down at night we have to pay for an upgrade.  At the full rate, this comes to over $400 for three people, and the train companies don't advertise the fact that they have triples - and maybe they often don't.

It takes two full days and one night for the Sunlander to get to Cairns, but the time seemed to just fly by.  I should describe the scenery, though I spent quite a lot of the time reading, writing or dozing.  It started off with thin Eucalyptus woods that seemed to go on for most of the day.  This was especially the case since we had to stop for two hours due to some motorcyclists trying to ride along the railway line and one of them coming a cropper a bit ahead of us.  When we woke up the next morning, we were in savannah - very flat golden grasslands with occasional trees and blue mountains rising out of them here and there.  By the time we got near Cairns the hills were covered in the dense green rainforest we had come to see.

Day 407: Moreton Island

The beached ferry!

I decided we had to do a day trip to Moreton Island, so we spent an hour trying to book ferry tickets over Mike's cell phone.  Then we spent about $50 on a taxi to get us to the ferry terminal!  There is no other way to do it other than to take an organised tour, which frankly would have cost us an extra $30 for a lot less hassle.  Anyway, I was glad we went, because the ferry drops you on Moreton Island beach, right beside a line of wrecks where everyone goes snorkeling.  This may well be my main snorkeling adventure of the trip and I really liked swimming beside the wrecks. You get a really nice sense of depth when you swim beside them. I don't know how long they had been there, but they had already attracted quite big coral growths, lots of fish and the odd shark (the safer kind) and turtle.  Antonia and I have one set of snorkeling gear between us.  I can wear her flippers and goggles but not Mike's.  She can just about wear my wetsuit.  She looks kind of ridiculous in it, but it gives her a lot of buoyancy.  She needed it because it is quite a longish, deep swim from the beach to the wrecks, through a channel with a strongish current flowing through it.  Nothing much to an adult, but a bit challenging for a ten-year-old.

Part of the line of wrecks

After that we hiked along the beach to the resort to find some fish and chips, hiked back and went for another quick swim, before hopping back on the ferry.  That's about all you have time to do on a day trip to Moreton Island.

I don't suppose we will find one this big at Scarborough!