Solo Travel Adventure Number 1!: February 2015

My last week in Australia
It has been a wonderful week - exploring the most lush rainforest, spotting crocodiles along the Daintree river, gliding over the canopy of huge trees in a silent cable car and discovering quiet little towns in the Atherton Tablelands with historic sites along the way. My time here has come to an end and I will be sad to leave in many ways. It has been such a journey and the variety of experiences has been so wide that I find it hard to remember that the desert, the mountains, the wildlife, the storms, the cities, the beaches and the rainforests have all been in just one vast country. I was not terribly thrilled when I contemplated visiting this continent, thinking in my ignorance that as an English speaking nation, it would be similar to home. How wrong could I be! I cannot explain the diversity and 'difference' in any better way than to quote Bill Bryson who tells us that 80% of what you see in this amazing country is simply not to be found in any other part of the world ... now THAT really is something!

Paronella Park

Rainforest

Cannot get used to the wild birds here!

The curtain fig tree - blinking huge!!

On the Daintree river

A baby crocodile!

A well camouflaged crocodile!

A 3metre mummy crocodile!

Cassowary

Wild flowers with attitude!

This beach has a 'stinger net' so that you can swim in safety, not
amongst the lethal jellyfish - water about 27 degrees!

100 year old train - journey through the rainforest for 90 minutes - spectacular gorges!

Avoiding Cyclone Marcia in Cairns
The latest cyclone to hit Australia has turned south and crossed the coast at Yeppoon where I stayed a week ago. It is unusual for a cyclone to be so far south, but I am rather glad to have missed the 295kph winds and torrential rainfall. Instead I have stayed north and met up with my Kiwi travelling companion Dave once more. We have begun this part of our adventures in Paronella Park which is a fairytale castle built in the rainforest about a hundred years ago. These days the forest has rather taken over the castle and the rain is in evidence with a thunderstorm this afternoon briefly bringing down the temperatures and providing steamy vistas across banana plantations, huge lush forests and sugar cane fields.


A real Chinese dragon, we stumbled across these dancers		when we stopped off to buy bread in Innisfail.

The road to Mission Beach
The weather has remained relatively fine, considering that it is cyclone season and so I decided to move a little further north to Mission beach, via Halifax, Tully and Murray Falls. I met up with an extremely kind and generous hearted man in Halifax, found a giant, golden gumboot in Tully, saw my first snake on the way to Murray Falls, and am staying in a Cassowary conservation area ... quite an interesting day to say the least!

Heritage listed huge mango trees line the main street in Halifax

Halifax museum, shut today, but a very kind man from the garage opposite, opened up and
took me around, telling me some great stories all the way!

Halifax own flag with colours representing Aboriginal, Italian, Dutch
and British heritage: the tree has a broken branch showing that the Chinese no longer live in the township.

Tully has a giant gumboot because it receives over 4m of rainfall each year!

Murray Falls: as I was completely alone, I sang and stamped my feet loudly
all along the paths to get here ... did not want any unexpected surprises on the wildlife front!

Misty views over rainforest to Hinchinbrook Island

Houses built on stilts so that coll air can circulate, but this IS cyclone country??

The beach is 100m from my site for tonight ... so tough!

Ingham
The weather forecasters tell me that there might be 40cm of rain falling this weekend in Cairns and the north, so I decided to get just a bit closer to my destination, and stop for a few days to watch what would happen. I found Ingham and booked in for 3 nights. My inquiries about wildlife, brought me the news that one of the residents had 'had a little visitor which my husband had to get rid of' the night before, but I did not dwell on what form that particular visitor might have taken!The rain did come, but so far only during the nights and my decision to stay here has proven to be worthwhile. At church this morning I was given 2 packets of home made cookies to keep in the car in case I get stranded by floods, so that was a good start! Yesterday I visited Australia's highest permanent waterfall and was suitably impressed by its 260+m drop. Today I have eaten Spanish mackerel in Lucinda from the recommended fish and chip shop which is at the shore end of the world's longest sugar-cane jetty: it is nearly 6km long and follows the curve of the planet as it stretches out to sea and is used to export sugar - the main product of this area with thousands of areas devoted to growing sugar-cane.

Cassowaries - size of an emu but with killer claws!

Wallaman Falls

Local cattle - strange to my eye

There are a lot of these around ... even on beaches!

A few of these too!

Lucinda sugar exporting jetty

Ingham's impressive mainly Italian cemetery

A Kookaburra eating a small turtle - I spotted him in the town park!

Townsville
The poster in this lovely campsite advised that I should look out for the park's resident python, who might appear day or night, in buildings, in trees or just on the ground. The newspaper cutting next to the poster showed a picture of the ten venomous snakes which could be found in the Townsville area and as one of them was the Taipan whose bite contains enough venom to kill 120 people, I stayed for just one night! Although I did wonder why a snake would have enough poison to kill even one person, when their usual diet consisted of frogs, toads and rodents!

Bowen
The rain was pouing down by the time I reached this coastal town and so my first impression was not a very positive one. However, the girl in the Tourist Information centre told me about a campsite which she only rated 3 starss for facilities but was in a 5 star location, so off I went. She was right and so I ended up staying for two nights - the weather was glorious and the 2 beaches within easy walking distance were virtually empty. No neighbours and watching the sunset from my camper van was an added bonus!

The

Whitsunday Islands
This region is located just north of the Tropic of Capricorn and so has a Wet and a Dry season. It is currently the Wet Season and the rainforest has been true to its name for a few days: I can quite understand why the trees are so tall and their leaves are so huge: the whole area is lush and so green and pretty wet and humid! However, with the Great barrier Reef not far from the shore here, it is also a wonderful spot to stop for a few days and be a real 'tourist'.

Well I ummed and aghed about which tourist trip to take for ages until I finally decided that the shots I was admiring were those taken from the air: so a flight it had to be! A few 'bumps' put my heart firmly in my mouth as we flew over hills and up estuaries, but I would not have missed it for the world: the colours, the islands, the coral, the thought of lethal jellyfish and sharks if we ended up in the water!

Sitting upfront with the pilot! Treats!

The river was brown with tannin after the rain and mixed strangely with the turquoise ocean water.

The Great Barrier Reef can be spotted by of the white caps along its edge

Amazing colours - a little hazy in this picture sadly

Heart Reef .... of course!

Looking at the coral through the water: different colours = different depths

Airlee beach, where I am staying this week

Safe landing after a few bumpy bits!

The Town of 1770

Having discovered this beautiful little town at the north of a peninsular, I really could have stayed here for a month. The weather has been glorious and the nights much cooler so sleeping is easier now. Agnes Water is the closest larger town, but 1770 has grown up in recent years and is named after the year in which Cook first stood on these shores. Apart from walking along the beach which was less than 5 yards from my campervan spot, I spent my first evening here watching the sunset whilst sitting on a camping chair on the sand, with several other like-minded people doing the same thing! The following day I took a trip on the Lady Musgrave Cruiser, to a coral cay of the same neame: a cay is an island which is founded on coral rather than rock or sand, like Fraser Island was. It was simply idyllic: out of sight from the mainland, less than a mile long, and part of a coral lagoon. This meant that there was only one channel through which boats could enter and our boat had the only concession for this island so we had the place to ourselves - about 40 of us. The lagoon is warm so wetsuits are not needed and relatively shallow too with very little swell so my confidence was up when I entered the water to snorkel. Well the fish! I cannot begin to describe the varoety of shapes, sizes and colours of sea life which I was lucky enough to see: a huge and bright blue star fish, a harmless reef shark, literally thousands of fish ranging from large and plain brown to tiny and neon-like: clown fish, angel fish, yellows, blues, lilacs, striped ... if you can imagine it then I am sure I saw it! A magical place indeed and if I don't get to see any more of the Great Barrier Reef, then I am more than happy with the adventure I had on Lady Musgrave Island.