Final Stretch of East Coast Australia
Trip Start
Apr 09, 2006
1
Trip End
Ongoing
Cairns, Australia
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
But just to tie up the loose ends and take advantage of the free internet at work (in my lunch hour of course!) I'll tell you about my experiences in Cairns and Cape Tribulation. Some famous person once said "that all good things come to an end" and I would just like to say WHY?! Did they have to go and spoil it by telling me that? But it is true that things do come to an end and I can't be a beach bum forever - after all I still can't surf and not sure how long I could really last being part of the great unwashed masses! So it was with sadness that I greeted my final week in Oz but I've got so much out of my trip, no just a tan that it was time for me to come back and share my wisdom with you all....
OK so on leaving Maggie Island I headed north for Cairns. There I was meeting up with my friend Jess who was spending two weeks in Oz following the end of her secondment in Hong Kong. And six hours on a bus later I did rendevous with her as planned. On the way up to Cairns I did see the devastation left by Cyclone Larry in particular the area around Innisfail which is just south of Cairns. The girl next to me on the bus told me she grew up in Innisfail and she pointed out her old school and friends houses on the way through. Seeing houses blown down like cardboard and all the signs on the road ripped away was very upsetting and humbling when you remember the power of mother nature.
From Cairns we decided to do a trip up into the rainforest which according to our slightly mad and long-haired rainforest guide is actually six times older than the Amazon and one of the oldest areas of rainforest in the world. And its pretty impressive I can tell you, including the size of the mozzie and spiders there. Not for the faint hearted I assure you. Like the name suggests there was a lot of rain in the rainforest but in the dry spells we did get to go Kayaking and Jungle Surfing which is where you swing through the jungle canopy on a harness while your jungle surfing instructors show you big spiders and invite you to lick ants bums cos they taste of lemon. Yeah and I was rushing to give that one a go...
We also went on a river cruise to look for crocodiles - where we saw a mama croc and her babies, went for short treks through the jungle and swimming in Mossman Gorge where luckily there were no crocodiles. One of the best parts of the whole trip is that they got our booking wrong at the hostel/hotel and instead of being in a budget share we got upgraded to a delux double room with en-suite. It was pure luxury and I loved it! Well apart from the wild animals which seemed to make camp around the base of our cabin with odd scratching, banging and snorting... I was convinced it was a possum - only cos that sounded true Aussie-like but in fact it was more likely a jungle rat - only about a foot and a half long so hardly anything to worry about! Actually the spiders were the most dramatic animals we saw - even more than the crocs. I really don't want to meet one of those eightlegged monsters on a dark night!
Back to Cairns and from there we spent the last of our money on a day trip to the Agincourt Reef out in the Great Barrier Reef. The boat left from Port Douglas which is a lovely village just north of Cairns and with lots of quaint shops and golf courses etc. So a day on the ocean and I signed up for 3 dives. As I was a Divemaster they let me go off and have slightly longer dives with a fellow Divemaster which was really good. I took a lot of photos and fingers crossed some of them will look really good. Didn't see too many sharks, just a couple and a very large Bullray and lots of corral. I was a bit disappointed with the coral - it was rather bleached and there wasn't very much sea life around. No nemos to be seen at all! But was a lovely day on the reef and a good opportunity to top up the tan....Priorities as you can see!
The next day Jess left to the UK via Hong Kong and I spent the day with the olds (aka the parents) who were traveling through Oz in a slightly higher class than the one I had been! For some reason they didn't see the appeal of being on a Greyhound bus for hours at a time! So mooched around Cairns town for the day and then the next day we went up to Kuranda which is an aboriginal village up in the rainforest. We had to get a train there and then got the skyrail back which gives you really cool views over the rainforest.
And so that was my last day in Oz - I just had to figure out how to get all my stuff into my bag and get to the airport in time to start the long, long journey home. The flights were OK although I did have the worst turbulance ever experienced on my night flight from HK. Not really conducive to sleeping well for most people but I got a good few hours kip! Just goes to show that 3 months sleeping in all kinds of accomodation and buses means you can sleep just about anywhere and in any conditions!
So that is the end of the adventure. I'll have to start planning the next one soon. I hope you have enjoyed reading this log - its a great record for me to keep and re-read as the sun and seawater has made me pretty ditzy and forgetful!
I will upload more photos soon and will also send any round to you if you want to see them. If anyone wants me to get a projector screen and sort out an 800 slide PowerPoint show then speak now and I will arrange it....
Thanks for all the emails and texts while I was away - keep in touch now I am back in London and I hope to see you very soon.
With love.
Sam xxx
