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Cape Tribulation and Daintree National Park
We headed north in Sherbet (our camper-car)... after around 25km we discovered that the captain cook highway was closed and that we would have to do a big detour inland via a town called Mareeba. It cost us alot more fuel and took abit longer than we thought but it turned out to be a nice drive and good way of getting to know our new friend Sherbet! After a few hours driving, stopping a couple of times at look outs and taking photos, we finally arrived at our first destination... Wonga beach. It was a caravan site next to the beach which we had to pay $24 to stay overnight. Unfortunately north of Cairns we didn't know of any free rest areas or camping sites. Other than a few people who seemed to stay there permantly we were the only other people staying on site.
Before it went dark we made our first meal in our camper-car.... tuna wraps!! Thought we'd start with something nice and easy. It went dark around 6.30pm, so we tried to get everything sorted before all the mosquitos come out to play. That night we didn't get to sleep for bloody ages.... it was unbelievably hot and sweaty in that camper-car. If we opened the windows, the mosquitos would come in... If we kept the windows closed, we would sweat to death!!
Whilst staying at wonga beach we also discovered the cane toad... there were lots of these ugly warty looking toads hanging around the toilets. The cane toads were apparently brought to Australia to kill the problem of cane beetles the country had. A batch of 100 were released and they didn't take any notice of the beetles as the aussies had hoped.... now theres an estimated 2million cane toads in oz! HA.
After breakfast the following morning we left wonga beach and drove up towards Cape Tribulation. The village marks the end of the road, literally, the only way further north is along a track where you require a 4WD. To get to Cape Tribulation we had to cross the Daintree river using a cable ferry. The daintree river is full of saltwater crocodiles and theres plenty of signs making you aware of this. We didn't see any as we crossed the river though. On the lovely scenic drive upto cape trib we stopped at various points. The first being a lookout overlooking the alexandra range of the daintree river. We also did a couple of boardwalks around the forests. Coming across plenty of large spiders and some very large fruit bats. Before reaching cape trib we also stopped at Thornton beach which was lovely but didn't hang around too long as croc signs were about! When we finally reached Cape tribulation we walked to a lookout overlooking the splendid beach and coastline. On the way up there we got a couple of pictures of a wallabe... or as Peter asked 'are they wannabes?'....
On our way back from Cape Tribulation we had to use the ferry again to cross the river, again no signs of any crocodiles! Instead of continuing south we turned of towards the village of Daintree where we stayed the evening. The camping ground was very nice and we had a wondeful dinner.... bangers and mash! We can cook sausages to prefection! It wasn't easy though as some of the utensils we had been supplied with were absolutely useless!!
We slept a little better that evening as we decided to put the rear awning up for a little more air. Worked a little, BUT we got bitten ALOT!
In the morning we headed south back towards Cairns stopping at a view places on the way. First place we visited was Mossman Gorge, where we did a 2.4km walk around the forest which is on the edge of the Daintree rainforest. After being followed all the way around by midgies we continued driving south, stopping next at the lovely coastal town of Port Douglas. We firstly went upto flagstaff hill lookout where we got an amazing view of the four mile beach running down the coast from Port douglas. We tried to find out if the road back to Cairns had re-opened, but the police station was closed!! Whilst in town we did a quick shop in the local coles supermarket to top up our supplies.
Luckily the captain cook highway was open and proved to be much quicker than the way we had come north. The coastal road was lovely with some impressive views. We stopped a couple of times and took in the lovely scenery. Also we stopped at Ellis beach and enjoyed some sausage wraps from the sausages we had left over from the night before. Later that afternoon we returned to Cairns.
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