For the first time however on this trip it would be the East Coast.
So, as will be the case in the interest of keeping the blog going, it'll be a photo heavy post from here on. All photos are in chronological order though!
I hadn't realised that we'd spent all our trip so far up in the hills! Is the coast line in the West and North higher?? How did we get up here? Either way, we needed to go down off this hill. I tweaked up the brake controller and checked all connections. This was to be the start of many hill descents and climbs over the next few months.
Even the GPS looked windy...
And if anyone wants a bit of motion sickness, here's a little sample of the road...
And just like that we were down... wasn't too bad, and car and van did fine... Not something you'd want to do every day though... And so the exposure to the cane fields began!
B had found a beautiful little park down the road from Mossman in the little settlement called Wonga Beach. What a little gem it was. It was a mix of drop ins like us and nomads who call it home in their vans for a few months each year... I'm talking pot plants and gazebos set up for your car park. Which is understandable as the Wonga Trees (which you can see us parked underneath in the pic above) drop their nuts which can dint car bonnets. So each spot comes with complimentary blankets to tuck your car in each night. Not sure why the solar panels on the roof of the van go uncared for but... it was nice of them to provide them.
And this is Wonga Beach, looking down towards Daintree Rainforest. No swimming in this beach, it's open water and the risk of nomadic big salties cruising past. Even still, it was lovely walking and strolling up and down it of an evening...
...as can be seen here. Being only 50m from the van, we were happy to meet the dating cliche of "walks on the beach" whilst the kids stayed behind in the van.
Pano! Not quite clear, but the cloud provides a nice contrast.
Just missing "Wilson" from this shot.
To get to Daintree NP you have to pay for the barge to ferry you across. Was a bit of a novelty, but someone's making a sweet bit of coin running this thing back and forth everyday all day.
The windy roads of the Daintree made us grateful for deciding not to bring the van over as well. Areas just too tight to navigate the Lizard through. We took full advantage as a result and packed the day with a heap of sites and scenes.
First stop was the highly informative Daintree Discovery Centre (https://www.discoverthedaintree.com/). Like an interactive museum cross boardwalk cross park walk cross theme park, it had it all. Including a motion triggered animated dinosaur at the entrance!
So as you walked around the rainforest canopy, you were given handsets, like telephones which you plugged the numbers into and a talking guide gave you a run down as to what you were (or were supposed to be) looking at. Not new tech, but what I loved was that they had adult handsets and then a separate set for kids which simplified some of the information. Smart...
In the middle of the park, there was a centre with many displays and touchscreens where you could choose what you wanted to learn about. We spent a good 90min here learning about everything from cassowaries to conefish. Also covered weather and geological processes.
Here you can also see me exhibiting brilliant "I work at a desk" posture....
Click on the image to enlarge the awesome facts about the Daintree Rainforest. A truly wonderful and important place.
Anyone wondering how big the Cassowary can get, here they are scaled against James. That's one big bird!!
They have a tower where you can climb the stairs and look down at the Rainforest Canopy. The biggest thing I found was how much light was actually blocked by the tree tops. The view wasn't that great (was basically tree tops at 360deg!) but you couldn't see the ground unless it was looking straight down the tower structure.
I recall going to the Dinosaur Park at Creswick near Ballarat once (or twice) and thought it was so cool as a kid. I suspect this is what it was like. In a few spots they'd set up scale models of the megafauna that existed in the area once upon a time.
James had a bit of birthday money left over after his geode opening experience and saw this snake in the giftshop. Apparently when you soaked it in water it'd swell to something like 5 times the size it is here. It didn't. It was a dud. What a surprise, however, the snake made for a handy way to keep people away from the van if you left it lying around on the mat...
We then trekked on to the famous Cape Tribulation. We didn't quite have the postcard blue skies we'd been accustomed and it was quite busy. If I'm honest, the reputation was lost on me. Didn't really connect with it...
...however Evie did manage to sneak a cartwheel in on the beach.
What I did enjoy however was going to the end of the tarmac road and then doing a portion of the Bloomfield Track. In hindsight it would have been great keep going all the way up to Cooktown, but time wasn't on our side so we only did a few creek crossings and some cool hill climbs and descents. This from a lookout was back towards Cape Tribulation Beach.
What we found though was an amazing beach all to ourselves (well so we thought until we found some backpackers hiding in the mangroves... not sure what they were doing ;) ) Cowie Beach was brilliant though and we spent a good hour just walking around finding things to look at or talk about.
This is how mangroves start out...
The beach, like a few we'd found, was littered with balls of sand created by small ghost crabs. Walking on those sections was like walking on a padded part of the beach. Was really cool.
On the wetlands boardwalk we found the best example of a Strangle Fig so far on this trip. Looking back I have to think it must have had some help. For those that don't know, Strangle Figs a seeded from seeds landing on a "host" tree. The fig then sends it's roots down to the ground where it takes hold and the literally starts to strangle the host. Hence the name. Eventually the host is squeezed to death, rots and the fig is left behind! In this example, the host obviously started to teeter and lean...
...and then I was able to take a shot up the trunk of a tree. How many trees can you do this with?!?
Who would have thought a rainforest would have a multitude of ice cream factories to choose from. But it does... So a quick stop off at Floraville Ice Cream Factory for us gave us a nice little treat. Some real interesting flavours too, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it.
Mount Alexandra Lookout...Yeah... it was pretty nice.
We were waiting for B's folks to fly in to Cairns to surprise them at the airport when we found out it was delayed by a good few hours. So what else to do but to have a day out in town. We treated ourselves to lunch at our favourite burger chain and it was smiles all round. Sometimes 'civilisation' has it's perks!
One thing about this trip we love is that we can do things "out of synch" with the school holidays. So going to a kids movie on a random weekday means you literally have the place to yourself. Unfortunately the movie, which I believe was "Captain Underpants" did not live up to the experience.
One of my favourite photos of the entire trip.We didn't actually take any others when Nain and Tadcu arrived, but snagged this one of Evie excitedly waiting for the board to say that their flight had landed. It was a beautiful little moment to surprise them, give hugs and kisses before letting them go and hide at their hotel for 2 nights to try and appease the Jet Lag Gods!
Whilst Nain and Tadcu slept and walked off their 'lag' in Cairns, we took to Mossman Gorge for a bit of bush walking amongst the souther region of the Daintree.
A really well built suspension bridge. Unfortunately B was across my silliness and didn't cross until I had walked the span... No bouncing...
Sometimes you get blase to things around you but we couldn't go past this enormous boulder without hamming it up for the photo.
It was greenery and lushness like we had rarely seen. And it it basically untouched.
Another gorgeous evening on Wonga Beach. Always games to play, things to explore and trouble to get into!!
Off to Port Douglas, we took the 'back way' through the cane fields. There is a lot of cane fields!!
At the Port Douglas Markets there was the opportunity to 'mill' the sugar cane into juice directly. Talk about great business plan, get your customers to power your plant and the charge them from the product!! Win!
Evie was particularly good!
With a bit of time up our sleeve we decided to take the train out for our picnic lunch. The steam train!!
This is the Bally Hooley (Website), an old steam train that runs on the small gauge railway previously used for the cane trains. As it pulled in the driver was so taken by the kids enthusiasm, they asked if they wanted to jump in whilst they turned the engine around?
Well they needed adult supervision now didn't they!!
Old school turntables... I think the kids thought they were in some live Thomas The Tank Engine episode.
Family selfie on the train.
Like the cinema, it was REALLY busy!
At the other end, where the track met the boundaries of the Mirage Country Club at St Crispins. No automated turntable at this end. It's all human grunt. I happily supervised...
Not quite the steam trains the kids have experienced in Wales but this was certainly a Far North Queensland spin on it.
Upon returning to Bally Hooley HQ in Port Douglas, I was afforded an hour or so to enjoy the samples of the local ale, Hemingways. They were OK, nothing brilliant, but the beautiful marina setting, live music and kid-free time was nothing short of enchanting.
And as I 'brewed' the crew sampled the ice creams in town. Apparently they were pretty handy.
And with that our time at Wonga Beach was done. It was now time to join Nain and Tadcu as they jumped in an RV to follow us down the Queensland coast for a few weeks.
It was a beautiful spot, one we enjoyed immensely. The park was well kept and services more than suitable. The regulars were a little bit "You're not local" from a distance, but were warm enough. The park host, Bob, or as we called him "Big Bob" was nothing short of exceptional with advice and help where required.
Anyone heading to FNQ along this route would be very well serviced to go through Mossman and use this place as your stop over.
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