Lazy day. It's quite hot today, >30°. Went for a ride, watched the sunset again. Main water pipe burst so no water for half the day. Jasper attempted to ride his bike across a muddy stream across the esplanade track that runs from Karumba to Karumba Point and got stuck and covered in mud. Then Amanda found a sign that gave actual examples of people taken by crocs and a severe warning to pleeease stay out of the water. Mild panic again. It's hot here du...

Rode our bikes around Croydon and found the Gulflander station. This was originally a steam train that ran from the port in Normanton to Croydon to service the goldfields, built in about 1890. In its heyday carried 10,000 passengers a year. Has declined since the 1920's and is now just a touristy thing and it's not connected to the rest of the rail system at all. There's an historical display with rusty steam engines and mining equipment near the info cen...

The early part of the drive today was excellent. We packed early (for the Dettricks!) and pulled out at about 8am. We drove north and took the main road up to Atherton. The drive up the range was twisty and leafy and fun. I love it when we're driving down a tunnel of trees. On the top of the tablelands, the temperature dropped and the clouds rolled in. We were driving through clouds at one stage! Today being the first day of 'school', Amanda drove for a ...

Cairns Botanic Gardens. My call to go here obviously and the kids were not over-enthusiastic at the idea but it turned out okay. I wanted to show them the tropical plants. Ferns with leaves as big as Claudie! Ferns about 7-8m high. Giant paperbarks. Huge trees absolutely covered in epiphytes that looked just like the tree in Avatar. Giant Bamboo (I could not close my 2 hands around the poles). And so much colour. Jasper dropped his soccer ball in a cre...

Kuranda Railway up and Skyrail down again. We saw a genuine wild crocodile in the Barron River Weir from the Skyrail! Even though it was a long way below. Today was another great day, and largely for a totally unexpected reason. We made some new friends. On the train, we sat next to a family from Melbourne who had children about the same age and we all got on great so we had lunch with them (Shane, Sandy, Georgia and Ryan, I think). The vill...