It took us three full days of driving to travel the 2200km from Alice Springs to Cairns. We crossed over to Queensland on the way and passed a number of small and medium sized towns the biggest being Mt. Isa and Townsville. The road between Mt. Isa and a small town called Cloncurry was really nice. It went up and down through the mountains and the views were great. At Townsville the road hit the eastern coast and we had to head north to get to Cairns. That we had entered the wet tropics became quickly clear. We could see a lot of palms growing and the plantations along the road were bananas, sugar cane and other exotic fruits.
As we arrived in Cairns our money ran more or less out. Our comfort was that we would soon get more money, but in the meantime we had to wait and make due with what we had. Luckily Cairns has awesome free public showers with warm water. It's also easy to sleep in the car. Just find a parking spot in the dark away from the street lamps. In the week or so we camped in our car we only got asked to leave once during the night. Cairns also has nice picnic benches for cooking dinners. Not only is Cairns a good place to be for a broke backpacker, it is a nice city for anyone that likes warm days and tropic weather. The only thing it lacks is a beach, but it only takes 10 minutes north by car to find that. To make the days pass we used the free wifi at McDonald's a lot. We also went to the Cairns botanical gardens where I saw these two spiders!
I am sure some of you back home are following the Football World Cup in South Africa. The world cup fever is also noticeable in Australia especially among backpackers. We have been watching as many games as we can. The main problem is the time difference. The first matches start at midnight and the last ones as late as six in the morning. We have still watched a good deal of games, even the late night ones :) Almost every pub here in Cairns show the world cup games and a few have massive screens making it all the more fun. I am hoping USA wins, Annina is hoping for Germany, and we both hoped for Australia as well, but they are now out after the group stages.
North of Cairns
As soon as we got money again we headed north towards Port Douglas and Cape Tribulations. Our first stop was a beach called Trinity beach. Trinity Beach is a nice little beach about 20 minutes north of Cairns. We spent the morning swimming, relaxing and getting some tan again after a prolonged period away from the coast. We then continued on to a small town called Port Douglas. In Port Douglas we walked along the four mile beach and found coconuts that we could open. Opening a coconut proved to be a bit more difficult than first anticipated. But in the end we had a cup full of coconut milk and coconut to eat as well. To my surprise fresh coconut tastes more like almonds than anything else. The whole process took about a hour, but now I can say I have opened a coconut by my self.
The next morning we visited the Port Douglas market. The market is full of various vendors selling everything from fresh fruit and vegetables to hand made items. It took quite some time to navigate the whole place and look at all the different products available. The most interesting booth featured a man pressing the juice from sugar canes and making lemonade. It tasted delicious and refreshing.
We left Port Douglas that day and headed towards Mossman Gorge. Mossman Gorge is located in the south tip of the Daintree rainforest, a part of the world heritage listed Tropical North Queensland. Mossman Gorge is not really what I would call a gorge but it is still a beautiful place. The Mossman river trickles through the rainforest forming nice swimming holes and beautiful scenery. There is also a nice rainforest walk around Mossman gorge that we enjoyed. The rainforest is full of cool looking trees and vines growing around each other. We went for a swim after the walk, but the water was very cold so it was just a short dip under. It was so new and different to see a rainforest like the Daintree national park after coming from the red centre where there are hardly any trees at all.
From Mossman Gorge we decided to go north to Cape Tribulation. Cape Tribulation is another piece of the Daintree national park where the forest meets the ocean. To get there we first had to take a "ferry" across the Daintree river. Then drive a narrow and winding road through the hills along the coast. We stopped at the highest point of the road where a lookout has been made. Here we could see out over Cape Tribulation's beaches, rainforest and coastline. We spent the day exploring the cape, including boardwalks through the rainforest, beaches and more lookouts. The wet tropic coastline is home to a large flightless bird called the Southern Cassowary. It looks a bit like an Emu, but has a distinctive blue head. The Cassowary is almost extinct because of loss of habitat, dogs and traffic accidents. In the dusk before we camped we got lucky and saw a Cassowary with it's baby walking at the side of the road!
We now had two choices to continue our trip. Either head south again and take the "ferry" back or drive north on the Bloomfield track. We chose the second. The Bloomfield track is an even narrower and steeper dirt road running some 30km north from Cape Tribulation to south of Cooktown. It's 4WD only and this became clear right from the start. We had to cross several creeks with water over the road, drive up hills so steep I never thought the car would manage and traverse sections of the road that were only rocks. It was a lot of fun! Almost through the track we came upon roadwork. In addition to the roadwork vehicles a number of other people driving the opposite direction all had to figure out how everyone were going to pass each other. This was while standing in an impossible steep hill. It all worked out somehow :)
Safely on the other side of the Bloomfield track we continued north towards Cooktown. Along the way we shortly stopped at Black Mountain national park. Black Mountain is a large hill made up of big granite boulders scattered into a big pile. There is hardly any vegetation growing and the hill looks very odd in the surrounding landscape. Apparently magma from underground was pushed upwards and weather broke the granite into pieces as it surfaced. The color on the rocks comes from an algae growing on them.
Cooktown has it's name from Captain Cook, the man who first made European contact with eastern Australia. While exploring the region he crashed on the Great Barrier Reef and damaged his boat. The crew had to go to shore and fix the boat and the spot they chose is now Cooktown. Originally we hadn't planned to go to Cooktown, but since we were so close we did anyways. We had lunch and walked in the botanical gardens, visited the site where Cook landed and drove up the small hill in the middle of town to get a view of the surrounding landscape from the lookout there. We started our drive back towards Cairns and the Atherton Tablelands in the afternoon and camped at a free campsite along the highway. It was a good campspot that even had free cold showers.
Southwest of Cairns
Southwest of Cairns are the Atherton Tablelands. Famous for the many waterfalls in the region, it is an area of scattered villages, lakes and hills. My first reaction was that it reminded me of Europe. Annina also said that it looked a lot like Germany with the small hills covering the terrain. The sky was gray and it rained on and off for most of our time in the tablelands, but that didn't stop us from exploring the region. Our first stop was the village of Atherton and the Crystal Caves. The Crystal Caves is a museum of sorts specializing in gems and fossils. A fake cave system takes you through the different exhibitions. The museum has an astonishing collection of rare gems and the best part is that you can touch and photograph almost all of them. The main attraction is a gigantic amethyst geode. It is the biggest in the world and stands over 3 meters tall and weighs more than 2.5 tons. Inside are countless jewelry quality amethysts. The geode was very impressive. All in all the Crystal Caves were very entertaining and fascinating.
With rainforest's comes strange and amazing trees and one of the most fascinating ones is the fig tree. There are two great examples of fig trees in the Atherton tablelands. The first is called the Curtain fig tree and is a beast of a tree. Fig trees grow around a host tree and slowly kill them. This is what happened in this case as well and when the host tree died it fell sideways and got stuck on another tree next to it. The fig tree continued to shoot down roots to the ground slowly forming a curtain of roots. The Cathedral fig tree is the second great fig tree we visited. This one has it's name because it grew in such a way that you can stand inside it like a cathedral. Both figs are many hundred of years old and truly amazing to see.
Atherton Tablelands is a great spot to see a Platypus, an unique Australian animal that looks like a mix of a badger and a duck. We went to a small village south of Atherton where they had a Platypus viewing deck. We got very lucky because we saw a Platypus after just a few minutes waiting. It was swimming up and down in the water catching food and eating it. Because the viewing platform was a little bit away from the water the picture is not that great. It was the best I could do :)
The next morning we started the Atherton waterfall circuit. A series of waterfalls all located a short distance from each other in the tablelands. The ones we visited were: Malanda falls, Dinner falls, Millstream falls and Millaa Millaa falls. There are over triple as many in total, but it get's boring to go look at too many so we picked the (in our opinion) best ones. There are no really impressive waterfalls in Australia in my opinion, but then again I always compare waterfalls to Niagara falls. Still, the waterfall circuit was nice and worth doing. Fun fact: The Millstream falls are the widest falls in Australia.
A few hundred meters from the Dinner falls is a steep crater in the ground. The distance from the viewing platform at the top of the crater and down to the water that fills it is about 60 meters. Then there is another 80 meters underwater that has been verified. It is speculated that the crater goes much further than that underground. The crater was formed by a gas explosion due to a old volcano located not far away. The green color on the water is a layer of duck weed growing on the surface.
While having lunch at the Millstream falls we saw a group of Kookaburras, the birds that sound like they are laughing when they "sing". They were used to humans I think because we could get really close and make good photos. So for anyone wondering what they look like here is a picture.
On our way to Millaa Millaa falls we drove a scenic road along the hills of the tablelands. At some point along this road we must have punctured a tire, because when we arrived at the falls the air was almost gone from one of them. As I mentioned earlier the weather was also not that great with rain on and off for most of the day. We ended up having to change the tire in the rain next to the falls. Wet and cold we headed back to Cairns and a night in a hostel.
The last thing we did that I will write about in this blog post was the Crystal Cascades. Just a short drive from Cairns is a stream coming down from the hills and forming a series of beautiful cascades. A short walkway took us along the stream about a kilometer inwards. There was also swimming spots along the cascades but the weather was still gray and drizzling so we didn't go swimming. Every time I start writing a new post I tell myself to make it shorter so that it is easier to read, but I realize that this one is enormous as always. I hope the wall of text is not scaring you readers away :P. I promise the next few posts will be a lot shorter and I have some great things to write about as well. So stay tuned! Miss you all!
The next morning we got up early and drove the short distance from where we camped to Movie World to get there before it opened. All of Australia's theme parks are located in the Gold Coast and after looking through brochures and reading about the different ones we decided on Movie World. We could see roller coasters from outside the entrance so it looked promising! Movie World reminded me a lot from when I went to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida with my family. Every roller coaster, ride, shop or other attraction has a theme connected with a movie or franchise. We went on a Saturday and I was afraid it would be as packed as Universal Studios, but I think we got extremely lucky. It was a gorgeous day, but because of winter it was the off season. The longest we ever had to wait in line was 30 minutes and on most rides we waited 5-10 minutes.
Movie World has two good roller coasters, Superman Escape and Lethal Weapon. We both decided that Superman Escape was the best ride and took that the most number of times. After a slow circuit inside a building where you get the story of the ride, the roller coaster shoots out of the building reaching 100km/h in 2 seconds and then climbs straight up a vertical climb. Here it almost stops before plummeting down again on the other side. The Lethal Weapon roller coaster was also great. It is a steel inverted roller coaster which means your feet are dangling in the air and the track is above you. The Lethal Weapon ride was the loopy ride of Movie World with many loops and twists. I won't go into detail about every ride, that would make this post both boring and way to long. However I will comment on a show we watched called Hollywood Stunt Driver. It was set up to look like a movie set with a director and crew filming a few car chase scenes from a movie. The show we (the audience) were watching was the stunt drivers driving around doing all sorts of tricks with the cars at high speed. The best trick was when three cars were all driving around on two wheels. Also the finale was really good. It is hard to describe but if you ever get the chance to go to Movie World Australia don't miss Hollywood Stunt Driver.
It was illegal to bring food inside the park (yet another way to milk money from the customers) so we decided to just go the whole day without food and then eat when we left. Although I was really hungry in the end I was also happy that we did it like this. Usually after I eat I start feeling a little bit sick after to many rides, but this time the whole day flew past and I could do as many rides as I wanted while feeling great. At 5:00PM the rides closed and everyone gathered along the main street in the park to watch the closing parade with all the different characters from the rides and shows. My favorite character was Batman. He even drove the real car that was used in the movie "The Dark Knight". We both agreed that Movie World was worth the money and that we both had a great time.
We reached Mt. Warning in the afternoon and set up camp. Mt. Warning is 1.156 meters over see level and because it is located so close to the easternmost point of the Australian continent it is the first place in mainland Australia to receive sunlight each morning. Our plan was to climb up during the night and reach the top in time for the sunrise. The path to the top is 8.8km return with 500 meters in the end that you have to climb with a chain. We got up at 2:30AM and started the walk by 3:00AM. We brought a bag with food and warm cloths and a flashlight. Without the flashlight it would have been impossible to do it. It was pitch black along the track and all we saw was the meter ahead of us that the torch lit up. After about an hour we reached the halfway mark where we stopped for a quick rest before continuing on. After another hour we reached the chain climbing section. Here we had to take turns climbing, first I climbed a few meters then I had to light the way for Annina who didn't have a flashlight. We finally reached the summit after two and a half hours of walking. The first light was just visible over the horizon but it would be another 45 minutes before sunrise so we sat down and ate cookies and relaxed.
When the sun was fully visible we started our hike back down. We could now properly see the track we had walked earlier in the night. The chain climb was the most shocking, that we did that in the dark was unbelievable. The path further down was also narrow several places with steep banks on either side. If we had fallen down there in the dark it would not have ended good. I don't want to scare anyone though, it is possible. I mean all 20 of us made it up that night and I am sure there are at least the same number of people any other night. And I have not heard of any accidents and it's not illegal to climb up during the night. Just be careful and you will be okay. The walk back down only took 1.5 hours and we arrived at the car happy and proud. We had done everything we wanted on the east coast and it was now time to drive back to Sydney and sell the car.
