It was our last day in North Queensland today, so we decided to have one last trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. Yesterday’s rain had stopped, but it remained overcast right up until the boat left to return to Cairns. Flynn reef is about 60 km off shore, so the land was pretty much invisible by the time we saw a line of breaking waves indicating that we had arrived.
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Month: June 2016
Kuranda
The skyrail trip from Cairns to Kuranda is one of the best attractions we have run across. The ride up in a gondola took almost an hour and a half, including a couple of stops along the way.
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Cassowary Coast
The area around Mission Beach is known as the Cassowary Coast, because it has one of the highest concentrations of this big bird in the country. You can’t drive more than a few hundred metres without seeing warning signs about them crossing highways. We were determined to see one.
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Dunk Island
This morning we were so well organised that we arrived at the water taxi office almost 20 mins before departure time. We had booked a trip across to Dunk Island, about 10 mins off the coast. Today was the first blue sky, hot sun day we have experienced on this trip to Australia.
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Mission Beach
The backpackers we are staying at is actually at Wongaling Beach, which is in between Mission Beach and South Mission Beach. Even though we were up bright and early this morning, it ended up being a bit of a rush to get to the Clump Point boat ramp, where a ridged-hull inflatable boat operated by Reefexpress was waiting to take us on another snorkelling expedition.
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Bingil Bay
From the deck of our backpacker’s hostel we could see the ocean through the trees, so the first thing we did this morning was to drive down to Bingil Bay and walk up and down the beach. There were signs warning about crocodiles, but I overheard a local saying that all the north Queensland beaches now have these signs so they are not particularly meaningful.
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Lake Eacham
Dunkly’s Place must be one of the most unimaginatively designed and badly situated motels we have ever stayed in – not surprisingly it is up for sale. It did provide everything we needed for the night, and there are lots of interesting things to do in the neighbourhood, so I shouldn’t complain.
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Mareeba
We left Port Douglas this morning and drove up to the Atherton Tablelands. After a bit over an hour’s driving we saw a sign pointing to the Mareeba Wetlands, and decided to take a look. While it is only about 30km inland from Cairns this area is over 400 metres higher, so the surroundings are much more like the rest of Australia than the steamy rain-forest on the coast.
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The Low Isles
We had such a good time snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef yesterday that we decided to do it again today, and booked ourselves on one of the Sailaway catamarans. Their trip is to the inner edge of the reef, about 15km off shore. The wind had dropped almost completely overnight, so we didn’t get to actually sail, but the water was almost flat, and perfect for snorkelling.
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Great Barrier Reef
The main objective of our Queensland trip is to see the coral reef before it gets bleached and dies. Reports of damage I have read range from 93% of the reef destroyed to less than 15%, so I was a little concerned we were too late, but while there clearly is a problem it turns out there is still plenty for tourists like us to see.
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Daintree
They don’t call it rainforest for nothing – it has been wet every day of our Queensland trip so far. As I have been writing this post we have been forced to move further under a wide veranda to escape the deluge. With temperatures around 27 degrees this is not as bad as it sounds, and we have been enjoying our adventures so far.
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Kerikeri for Queen’s Birthday
When we saw there was fine weather forecast for the long weekend, we decided to head north in the campervan. Realising that others would have the same idea, we hit the road about 3.30pm, and as a consequence got a pretty clear run to Whangarei.
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