Northern Queensland

Townsville and the Atherton Tableland

In Townsville we made a nice walk in “The Strand”, a long park just next to the beach, with an amazing children’s playground, pools to bath, café’s, Vitaparcour and a lot of more activities. Townsville belongs to these towns, which has an amazing beach, but it’s too dangerous to swim in the sea from October till May because of the dangerous jelly fishes in the sea. That’s why we decided to have a refreshing bath in the artificial Rock Pool’s just in front of the beach. Our lunch we enjoyed on the Castle Hill, a hill nearby with a nice view of Townsville. While enjoying the view, we suddenly saw a big goanna walking in front of us (a type of a lizard) at least 1m long. It was exciting to watch this animal, how it moves itself forward and looks for food with his long tongue. This afternoon we drove to Tully, Australia’s wettest town with an iconic gumboot rain monument. Tully is famous for river rafting and for his sugar factories. Between a lot of banana tree farms, we drove to the Tully Gorge National Park, where we found another nice Campground like the one in the Alligator Creek NP the day before. On the way there, we saw the first crocodile warning. Now we finally arrived in the land of the crocodiles. That means, no bath in the sea because of the jelly fish, and no bath in the river because of the crocodiles. But still, we were lucky to find a pretty water fall the next day (Josephine falls) where we could have a refreshing bath in the falls pools. There was no warning about crocodiles and lot of more people were swimming inside too, so we did as well without fear. It was amazing fresh with crystal clear water! In the afternoon we wanted to see more animals like platypus and tree kangaroos, so we took a nice curvy road over the Mt. Mac to the Atherton Tableland. We made a beautiful rainforest stroll around the Crater Lake (Lake Barrine) for that reason, but all we saw were small rat-kangaroos hidden in the bush, which looks like guinea pigs. On the way to our next Campground for free in the Rifle Creek we saw a lot of cockatoos flying over the street instead.

In Townsville spazierten wir im Park «The Strand» dem Meer entlang. Wir sind vom Hafen bis zu den Rock Pools gelaufen. Da auch hier das Schwimmen im Meer nicht möglich ist, gibt es einige mit einem Netz abgeschottete Schwimmbereiche im Meer. Wir entschieden uns für eine Abkühlung in den sehr salzigen künstlich angelegten Rock Pools mit Blick aufs Meer. Am Mittag fuhren wir zum Castel Hill um unsere Mittagssandwiche zu essen. Dabei genossen wir die großartige Aussicht auf die Stadt und sahen eine riesengrosse Echse. Von einem Einheimischen erfuhren wir, dass diese ca. 1 Meter lange Echse eine Goanna war. Übernachtet haben wir in dieser Nacht in der Nähe von Tully, dem regenreichsten Dorf von Australien. Wir fuhren durch viele Zucker- und Bananenplantagen bis zum Tully Gorge National Park. Unterwegs sahen wir unsere erste Krokodilwarnung. 😉 Wir sind endlich im Land der Krokodile angekommen! Das heisst nicht im Fluss baden, wegen den Krokodilen und nicht im Meer baden wegen den Quallen…..! Zum Glück fanden wir einen atemberaubenden Wasserfall, Josephine Fall, ohne Krokodilwarnung, um uns ein wenig abzukühlen. Da wir unbedingt noch mehr Tiere sehen wollten, fuhren wir auf einer kurvigen Strasse bis zum Mt. Mac. Wir schlenderten um den klaren Kratersee in Barrine und hielten Ausschau nach Schnabeltieren und Baumkängurus. Leider ohne Erfolg! Das einzige was wir finden konnten, waren Moschusrattenkängurus, die wie Meerschweinchen aussahen. Auf dem Weg zu unserem nächsten Gratiscampingplatz the Rifle Creek Camping sahen wir viele Kakadus über die Strasse fliegen.

Daintree Rainforest

Before we had to return our campervan in Cairns we wanted to visit the Daintree Rainforest around 100 km north of Cairns. This Rainforest is with an area of 1’200km² the largest tropical rainforest in Australia and one of the oldest in the world. Our goal tonight was the Cape Tribulation but firstly, we drove to the Daintree Village. We had no idea what we can do there. On our way there we passed by a fresh tropical fruit market and we bought some passionfruits. Because we wanted to eat them, we found a table and a bench just next to the Daintree river. There, we saw a jetty with a boat and a lonely man in it. When we finished our passion fruit, we asked this man about a boat trip on the river. As lucky we usually are, he told us, that in 15 minutes, a river cruise starts and it was the best time to see Crocodiles. We jumped into the boat and waited for more passengers. We couldn’t believe when we saw Maarten and Heleen from the Netherland again, get on our boat as well. What a nice coincidence! This boat trip was a real adventure. We saw 4 huge crocodiles sunbathing along the river and we were very close to them (around 3 m away). But the crocodiles made no sign, that we would bother them in any way. We could sit relaxed in our boat and take a lot of pictures. After this boat tour, we were having lunch together with Maarten and Heleen in a small restaurant in the Daintree Village. Happy to see them again, we shared all our travel experiences so far. On the way up north to the Cape Tribulation we had to take the ferry to cross the Daintree river. It was a nice old road covered in the rainforest. We stopped at one place and made a very nice walk through this special forest. It was really one of the most impressive walks we made so far. We saw so many different plants in various colours and shapes and the smell was amazing. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, we haven’t seen any animals except the insects. There were a lot of warning signs about Cassowaries, which is an aggressive big bird. We would have liked to see one, but maybe it’s better we haven’t. At the Cape Tribulation we made another nice walk through the rainforest with a lot of different types of mangrove plants. Mangroves are plants which can live in salt water and their roots appear like a spider net. This evening we had a really nice campground in the middle of the Australian jungle. The next day we drove the nice curvy road back through the rainforest to the Daintree village again. After we visited the Cape Tribulation and its nice beach (with crocodile and jelly fish warning signs), we passed by many fresh fruits (we tried a delicious dragon fruit) and an ice creamery with many tropical fruit flavours, where we had to make a stop, of course. When we arrived at the Daintree river ferry, we made a second boat tour on the Daintree river and saw again big male crocodiles, as well a baby crocodile, many birds and butterflies and a huge tree snake. This Daintree Rainforest experience was really one of the most exciting ones, we had in Australia and we’re glad, we had the chance to go there.

Normalerweise steht hier die Deutsche Übersetzung. Da wir zur Zeit jedoch zu faul sind, um zu übersetzen, stehen wir euch bei Verständnisfragen gerne zur Verfügung. 😊

Cairns                                 

Before we’re driving to Cairns we spend our last night in our campervan at a nice campground in the middle of nowhere (Speewah Nationalpark). We spend this evening in a very quiet area without any light pollution, eating our dinner and drinking wine outside under the stars. This place was close to the hippie village Kuranda, with a nice market, which we visited the next morning. Then we were heading to Cairns on the coastal route “the Captain Cook Highway”. In Cairns we were staying at Craig’s place our next Couchsurfing Host. Before we went to Craig we explored the backpacker town Cairns on our own and enjoyed the afternoon relaxing in the sun at the lagoon pools. In the evening we met Craig and Henni another girl from Couchsurfing. Henni is from Germany and also travelling around Australia. Because Craig didn’t had to work the next day, he brought us to a very nice waterfall in the rainforest (Barron Gorge Nationalpark) close to Cairns. On the way there we saw our 4^th snake in Australia. Excited about that, we continued to the falls where we had a refreshing bath. Nevertheless the waterfall had very slippery rocks, Henni tried to climb up. Unfortunately, she fell from around 3m back into the pool. We all were very shocked, but lucky her, nothing happened only some scratches. In the evening we explored the nightlife in cairns. We went to the Night market, had burgers and beer for dinner and went to some club for having free Sangria. 😊 It was a nice evening we spend together with Henni and Craig’s neighbour Dwayne from Jamaica. The next day we had to say good-bye to Craig and Henni. We packed all our stuff, drove to the airport and returned our campervan. Because our campervan had a blister for some reason, we were glad to have an insurance, which will pay for this damage. After we had done all this administration stuff, we were waiting at the gate for our next flight back to Sydney, where we’ll spend the last 5 days in Australia. It was a special feeling, to travel without our campervan. After such a long time, travelling in a campervan, he became our new home for us.

Normalerweise steht hier die deutsche Übersetzung. Da wir zurzeit jedoch zu faul sind, um zu übersetzen, stehen wir euch bei Verständnisfragen gerne zur Verfügung.