Cairns - more hurdles
Trip Start
Dec 15, 2007
1
8
24
Trip End
Jan 16, 2008
Since our last blog we have had even more unexpected and sometimes exciting experiences. For those of you who have followed our journey, you may have noticed we visited a dry waterfall. Well after over 24 hours of rain and on the day of our departure from Airlie beach we decided to go and see if it was flowing. We scraped ourselves out of bed after a suprisingly lively night out in Airlie where we managed to find a decent house music establishment. To say we carved up the dancefloor is a serious under statement. Anyway we'll leave the photos to descibe that. We headed off towards the fall with the rain still pounding down, as we went onto more secluded roads the weathers impact really began to show. Small rivers were flowing across the roads and our excitement was building at the chance to see this waterfall in full glory. When we were about a mile away from the fall we came to one of the flood cross points and decided that driving our hire car through may be too risky. We parked up the car and walked up to the crossing and on closer inspection realised that the flood water was 1 meter deep. After a cheesy photo and considerations some more budding waterfall spotters turned up. We all discussed the risks involved and decided to change into trunks and all cross together as the waterfall would surely be an amazing site with all the rain that was flowing. While removing unessantial clothing at the car Danny suggested that this was not such a good idea. Our adrenaline was starting to flow and we decided to not bail quite yet. We went back to the river and let the mad Aussies take the lead, once they got a third of the way across I decided it was time to tell them it was not a safe idea. From the edge we could see how dangerous this would be and one slip could be the beginning of some real problems. We all so badly wanted to see the waterfall and it was a very difficult decision to abandon the task. If we had 20 meters of rope then I am fairly sure this story would have taken a very different route but in the end we were defeated by a bit of water. Just so you can all realise the power of our obstacle we have included a small video clip. We retired to the car and I changed into some dry shorts commando style while Danny opted to drive in wet shorts. This may be more details than required but I've had a couple of tinnies and I'll add it anyway. We had almost 700km to drive and the time was now just before midday. It was a horrible drive and rained most of the way. Luckily there were no more flooded roads to get through and we arrived in Cairns at 9.30pm I felt like crap and Danny was not a whole lot better. I reckon Dan must have splatted about 200 frogs as they were all over the road and could not be dodged. We had a shower, checked out the town, had a couple of fast ones and then got a pizza and went to bed. We had booked a days diving on the reef the next day.
