The Great Barrier Reef was at first disappointing. I think the reason is because it gets so much hype you just expect it to be better than anything you have ever seen in the sea. The reason however it is so famous is because of the sheer size of it. Something you cannot quite appreciate without doing a helicopter tour or diving / snorkelling in multiple sites. We did have a great time though after this initial disappointment passed. The coral is spectacularly colourful and whilst the fish weren’t as plentiful as what we’ve seen previously we did see some monster wrasses, GIANT clams and a very large stingray relaxing on the ocean floor. Also we were dressed as giant florescent condoms in our stinger suits because of the deadly jelly fish and stingers that frequent the waters at this time of year. We could have died without them, but it was a tough choice...On the way to the Great Barrier Reef we sailed through some of the Whitsunday Islands which were nice to admire in passing but the next day was even better as we got to explore Hamilton Island as a freebie because of booking the Great Barrier Reef trip. We climbed Passage Peak the tallest point of the island to get an amazing vantage point across some of the close by Islands. This is where we could really appreciate the natural beauty of the Whitsundays. Hamilton Island felt a little bit like a theme park village with people whizzing all over the island in golf carts, pretty marina and lots of resort style accommodation. Very nice if you can afford it!
The next boat trip for us was Magnetic Island just off the coast from Townsville (recently hit by a mini cyclone!). What a beautiful island, with barely any people on it. We walked all over the island as there are walk trails to get you around nearly all of it. We saw black cockatoos enjoy limes from a lime tree, picnicked on a near deserted beach, photographed a Koala lazing about in a low branch and saw lots of amazing views at every turn. 20km of walking later we were knackered as we caught the ferry back to Townsville!
After Townsville we started to head further up the coast and it started raining a lot! Enough to create massive flood damage which luckily we’ve mostly avoided. We tried to find some fruit picking jobs (bananas) but it was too wet for most of the farms to keep working. So we carried on up the coast and visited Paronella Park which is a Spanish Castle built in the midst of the Queensland tropics in the 1920’s! As it had been abandoned before the current owners bought the place it has a lot of moss growing on it and it survived massive flooding and a cyclone making it look all the more atmospheric! The castle grounds feature two waterfalls, one which generates hydroelectric power, a lovely botanical garden, a swimming area, a tunnel of love (once an aquarium, then a mushroom farm and now a bat hideout) and it used to have 2 tennis courts as well as a cinema. It was a great place to explore and stop for the night.
We then headed up past Cairns through to Port Douglas which had a great windy rugged coastal drive. Walked along the usually celebrity filed four mile beach then headed back down the coast and into the tropical north’s hinterland where we saw a multitude of impressive waterfalls bursting with massive amounts of water because of the torrential downpours each day and a huge fig tree. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to spot the tree kangaroo (yes it’s a real thing!) that hangs about in only this part of Australia. One night however as we camped next to a gorge we did get to handfed cute little rock wallabies that had long eyelashes and very politely hold onto your hand whilst they eat! The next day we stopped in Mareeba for a caffeine fuelled morning of coffee and chocolate at Coffee World where we spent over 4 hours enjoying the brews and nibbles as well as the surprisingly interesting coffee machine collection.Today we visited the Undara Lava tubes which are huge tunnels that have been formed from cooling lava millions of years ago. The sheer size, textures and colour of the tunnels were really impressive as well as the rainforest that surrounds them. Because of the flooding we got to wade in waters up to our knees as we explored one of the tunnels by torch light!
Floods have now stopped us from continuing inland towards the centre of the country as we had planned so we’re going to have to go back to the coast for an 800km diversion to avoid flooded rivers and try to head inland again.
Wish us luck!
Love Chris & Kat xxx
