As soon as we drove off the small cable ferry that crosses the Daintree River it was like we were in another world. The Daintree Rainforest covers a large section of the Tropical North Queensland coastline and at over 100 million years old it pretty accurately feels like being in a prehistoric jungle. The ferns and leaves are enormous, there are vines everywhere, some of them as thick as my leg and strangling the trees.
The drive to Cape Tribulation felt like some kind of Amazon trek rather than part of a caravan tour of a commonwealth country. While I've enjoyed every part of our trip, from the big cities to the little beach towns, this was the first time it felt like an adventure. We camped right beside the beach in the thick jungle, surrounded by giant bats and brush turkeys. The palm trees and mangroves sprawl out of the rainforest and onto the beach in a perfect tropical setting. I'd really wanted to try cracking a wild coconut and there just happened to be a husking post at our site, only took two tries! Since neither of us have been to Southeast Asia this was an incredible new experience that we didn't really expect from Australia.
I sought a lot of advice for this trip, from friends and my own online research, but nowhere explicitly said crossing the Daintree River to Cape Tribulation was a must see. There are rainforest attractions closer to Cairns, but I think we'd have really robbed ourselves if that's all we'd seen. Being in a rental campervan we are pretty limited to how deep we can explore (dirt roads are uninsured), so the best camping has alluded us. Cape Tribulation marked the end of the asphalt headed north so it just made sense to explore that far, and I'm so glad we did.
A downside of North Queensland is that all the beautiful beaches basically become off limits past the Whitsunday Islands due to jellyfish and crocodiles. It's a big tease. There are croc signs at most beach accesses and estuarine rivers and creeks, as well as stinger signs, communal vinegar and netted swimming enclosures at most beaches. While we didn't see any on our own walks, we did take a couple cruises on different parts of the Daintree River in search of crocodiles. Despite high water levels from the cyclone last week we were lucky enough to spot quite a few, from a massive 15 foot male to some 3 foot babies and everything in between. It's a surreal experience to get so close to them in the wild, few things in Australia feel so far from home.
Cairns had a reputation for being a tourist trap city that parties too hard, couple that with on the spot fines of $220 for overnight camper parking and we didn't have a reason to spend much time there. We decided to stay in Port Douglas for a few days, which is a smaller town full of resorts and boat trips to the Great Barrier Reef. The guy who rented the van to us in Adelaide told us about a good seafood restaurant on the water and we had planned to treat ourselves when we got there. After the daily show of feeding 500 pound groper fish off the deck we settled in for some locally caught seafood. The barramundi was delicious, no wonder everyone is always fishing for it here.
We happened to be in Port Douglas on Anzac Day which was interesting to see. There was a small parade and service at the war memorial followed by an all day piss up at the local bars. Hard to imagine partying hard on Remembrance Day, but I guess that's how it's done here. That's probably what the boys were fighting for in the first place. Tradition for Anzac Day is to play an old war time gambling game called Two Up, which is basically glorified heads or tails. Everybody gathered at the biggest pub in town and started throwing big dollars around and flipping coins. We left for about 5 hours and came back to the same people gambling away, drunker and rowdier. It was actually a really good time. We left up $5.
My goal for the Great Barrier Reef was to do a 3 day multi dive trip on a boat that takes you to the further and less visited areas of the reef but time and money were against us on that dream. Next time. Luckily the consolation prize turned out the be one of the best days I've ever had. We took a day trip from Port Douglas that spent about 5 hours on 3 different sites on the outer reef, each one was absolutely incredible. It's hard to describe just how amazing it was to be surrounded by so much colour, the fish and the corals. My camera has been water damaged a few times and so close to broken I almost left it at home. I'm glad I didn't because while most of the photos didn't work the ones I got of the clown fish in the anemones do a good job of summing up the experience.
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