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Well here I am - I've hit the East coast!!
I have not been looking forward to this part of the Australia trip as I've been told it's full of young kids on their gap year, and now I'm here I can confirm that this is indeed true!!!! I can see their objective is partying rather than travelling. I stayed in a hostel called Gilligans and lasted one night in my first dorm, an 8 bed female dorm, which became home to every man and his dog as nightime approached - the emphasis being on man!
Fortunately I met a couple of girls from Canada, Lindsey and Katie who I hung out with for the few days I was there. We had a good night out in the infamous Woolshed one night - a basic pub who's pulling factor appears to be that they let you dance on the tables - OK!!
Cairns is quite an attractive small town - as it has no beach to talk about it has built an esplanade along the sea front with a public lagoon. Partying aside, Cairns is a bit of a boring place, how some people can stay here for 2 weeks plus is beyond me.
The highlight of my time in Cairns was a trip to Cape Tribulation with Katie and Lindsey. The day trip involved visiting Port Douglas, the Daintree Rainforest, another croc cruise down the Daintree River, lunch at a private lagoon full of tiny turtles and finally a visit to Cape Tribulation beach for a spot of sunbathing.
The drive up was my first introduction to the sugar cane fields which dominate the east coast of Australia. It was the chinese arriving in Cairns who first introduced sugar cane to these parts and most of it is still exported to China. Unfortunately the harvest is late this year as it has been too wet, good news as it means Queensland is now officially drought free for the first time in 10 years but bad news because the sugar cane will start to rot soon if it is not harvested.
Port Douglas, a really pretty town, developed around the gold mines but in the rush to make a fortune the gold was all mined within 8 years. It was then time for the men to find another occupation so after the gold rush they moved towards the Daintree Rainforest and started felling the red cedar. In fact they felled it to such an extent that once again within 10 years all the red cedar had gone - it is estimated that it will take 900 years for the trees to regrow. All the red cedar felled was shipped to the UK and allegedly the furniture in Westminster is made from it!
As a rule Aborigines are not cannibals but there is evidence that the tribes who lived in Daintree were. There was a problem with Chinese gold miners going missing, so a search was launched and eventually a cave was found with human remains in it, suggesting that these men were being eaten. The story goes that the aborigines, having a taste for the chinese, liaised with a British man to bring this delicacy to them. He was supposed to be guiding the men safely out of the area but instead would guide them straight into the hands of the aborigines and their death. The greedy British guy did really well out of this arrangement as he was not only rewarded by the aborigines but took the gold these poor chinese fellas had mined too!
Cape Tribulation is a beautiful spot and was made famous by our very own Captain Cook. In a nutshell Captain Cook had been asked to map Eastern Australia and whilst sailing up by Cape Tribulation his boat, Endeavour, got stuck on a reef patch. The boat was high and dry so they jettisoned as much excess weight off the boat and got as many of the 92 crew off as they possibly could. They then took advantage of the next high tide to dislodge themslves from the coral but the damage to the bow was so great that they were sinking. Pickersgill, Cook's assistant, then came up with a cunning plan which he'd seen the Spanish do - wrap a sail around the boat covering the hole thereby, through the force of gravity, stopping the water coming in. It worked and the boat was able to run onto the beach at Cookstown where the coral was removed and the carpenters set to work repairing the boat over a 6 week period with spotted gum and tar.
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