Enjoying the bug invasion with beautiful friends in the Daintree

Unlike us, most non-retired people do not spend their lives on endless holidays. So when friends and family decide to spend their precious annual leave coming to visit us, we are thrilled and grateful. Although we have met some fabulous (and not so fabulous) folk during our travels, the pleasure of spending time with old friends and family is inexpressible. You just know that they are not going to launch into an unexpected diatribe against Aboriginal people, dole bludgers or women with hairy underarms. They renew our sometimes shaken faith in the nature of Australian people. There is no small talk - just great conversations and easy silences. For all these reasons and more we were thrilled when a car pulled up at a rambling tropical house in Cow Bay and out tumbled Dave, Liz, Ada and Henry.

What followed was a wonderful week of catching up, chocolate-fuelled impossible early 80s trivial pursuit, beach visits, rockhole swimming, cubby building, book reading, hammock cuddling, rainforest zip-lining, great barrier reef snorkeling, local icecream guzzeling, cassowary spotting (not very successful - just one who was dashing over the road) and plenty of relaxing and chatting.

The house we rented for the week was called 'seascapes' and was just perfect. The views were amazing - the ocean and the rainforest on all sides. Everything was open - all  doors and windows were not designed to shut out the rainforest and all its inhabitants. Especially at night time when every big bug, moth and hairy spider entered to spend the night with us in the house. Fine if one is comfortable with bugs but possibly a little icky for anyone with a fear of creepy crawlies. Seascapes was also a house in which the kids could really hoon around in and we weren't worried about breakages and damages (only one lamp down in a whole week!).

It was lovely to get to know baby Henry who is very sweet and who not surprisingly quickly held Zara's heart in his little hands! Also great to see that the friendship of Ada and Sash hasn't suffered from their long separation.

A glorious week with glorious friends in a glorious location!

Cairns catch ups, cavorting hippies and fast friendships

Blissing out on post-eclipse ecstasy we happily packed up our gear, said goodbye to the biker dude and headed to Cairns. The road wound scenically and precariously down from the mountains to the coast. We were excited to be meeting up with Bill’s aunt and uncle, Prue and Graham, who had travelled up to Cairns from Melbourne to view the total eclipse. They had cleverly found a café in the middle of a great playground called Muddies, which greatly enhanced the likelihood of the adults actually having a conversation. But of course, the kids were so thrilled to see Prue and Graham that they just wanted to be sitting on their laps or having them push the swings the whole time! We all really enjoyed seeing them and catching up on some news from home. The kids were a bit sad to say goodbye after lunch but cheered up a bit when we told them they would see Prue and Graham again in a few weeks at Christmas in Melbourne!

The other consoling factor was the imminent arrival of a bunch of wonderful friends from Melbourne - Liz, Dave, Ada and baby Henry. We were all hanging out to see them and to spend a week together in a rainforest getaway. But we had a few days yet to wait and so made our way North, over the Daintree River on a barge and then up to beautiful Cape Tribulation – where the rainforest comes all the way down to perfect beaches and where gangs of red-eyed hippies cavort naked on the beach, twirl fire-sticks and earnestly discuss the perils of the world. We spent the first night in a safari tent due to the crowds of lingering eclipse watchers, then moved into a beach-side campsite the next morning. 

The beach was just beautiful but the possibility of lurking box jellyfish and crocs was a bit off-putting. Mind you the naked hippies didn’t seem remotely fazed and the friendly staff told us they swam each morning with only a blue-bottle sting every now and again… In the end, we did duck in every now again taking care to enter the water carefully and spending very little time in. But there were hammocks and rope swings to play on, palm trees to shimmy up and endless coconuts to throw so our days were busy! 

A friendly family from Melbourne were camping next to us and it didn’t take long for the kids to find each other. Their kids were really lovely – polite, fun and friendly. And if all 13 year boys could be like their son Kaiko – I reckon the world would be a less surly place. He spent hours giving Zara piggy-backs (we could see first love gleaming in her big brown eyes!) and wrestling and playing chess with Sash. Before they left, they took Zara and Sash on a rainforest walk, leaving us to blog and read. We were sad to see them go. However, the kids hardly skipped a beat and soon joined up with some more kids from Melbourne – Merri (named after Merri Creek) and Banjo. Merri and Zara had a fast and furious friendship – going from strangers to inseparable in just a few minutes. We set up the little tent for the girls to whisper in all night, whilst Banjo and Sash slept in our trailer – talking about chess and Tintin for about 5 minutes before passing out. As usual we felt like we we said goodbye immediately after we said hello - but that's the way of this traveling life... let's hope we can stay in touch with some of the cool people we have met along the way...
 

A total eclipse of the sun...

Hours spent in a wonderful little café and the local bookshop had me in raptures and I had mentally moved to Yungaburra before lunchtime. It was a bit drizzly and cool which was a relief to our sun-beaten bodies but did not bode well for the next morning’s solar eclipse. Our mission for the afternoon was to find somewhere to camp from which we could view the eclipse. Word on the street was that although thousands of people had flocked to Cairns from around Australia and the world, the forecast was that the best viewing would be from inland. How nice for us. So we set up in a caravan park in Mareeba and made plans to drive up a nearby hill in the hope of a clear view. It was 5pm before we remembered that we needed special solar eclipse viewing glasses and although Bill and the kids made a mad dash into town while I set up the tent, everywhere was sold out. The organised people had bought up all the eclipse glasses! Happily Bill was able to locate a friendly eclipse fanatic biker dude in the caravan park who very kindly gave us his spare pair of glasses. So we we were set and getting excited about the next morning.

At 5am we dragged ourselves out of bed and popped the kids into the car in their PJs. We drove up to our designated hill but discovered it was surrounded by trees too tall for good viewing. So we quickly drove back down the hill and found a spot where quite a few people were waiting by the side of the road. We knew we had found a good location because we spotted the biker dude as well as a gang of Japanese men with incredibly fancy equipment – telescopes and special cameras and the like - pointing at the rising sun. So we settled ourselves on the bonnet of the car and wished for some coffee. At 5.45am it all began. Taking in turns to watch through the glasses we saw the moon gradually eating away at the sun until, sometime after 6pm it started getting darker and colder and then the sun was hidden completely. It was an awesome, beautiful and inspiring sight. The small crowd cheered and clapped in excitement - and around town that day everyone smiled at each other and compared eclipse viewing stories and generally revelled in total eclipse camaraderie... We were all thrilled and felt so grateful for the brilliant view, for the borrowed glasses and for the opportunity to wake up at the crack of dawn in lovely Mareeba for the total eclipse of the sun. 

Photos here 

Walking through lava tubes, running from bulls and turning 37 on top of a volcano...

Undarra offers all sorts of accommodation options – old railway sleeping cars, spaceship-like safari tents, fancy cabins and more. But we opted to set up our crusty dusty camper, pull out our cracked plastic boxes and shake out the stinky sleeping bags. Whilst whipping up our Japanese pancakes at the camp kitchen we met numerous Europeans who had come to this part of the word in order to see the upcoming solar eclipse. We had been considering making it to the coast in time to see it, but listening to these solar eclipse aficionados made us start to feel much more enthusiastic. It seems such a risk for them though - to travel all the way from the Netherlands to see an eclipse that might well be covered in clouds and unviewable.

In the morning I struck out on my own to explore some of the walking trails while the others worked on secret plans and birthday surprises… I took a track called ‘bush walk’ which led me through the lovely bush. I saw heaps of kangaroos, pretty faced wallabies, turkeys and other birds, including a beautiful pair of brolgas. I noticed some hoof-prints in the path and some fresh looking cow dung which made me feel slightly apprehensive about meeting wild bulls. But I walked on and only turned around when I spied a MASSIVE bull right next to the path. Very glad no-one witnessed my nervous retreat.

That afternoon we took a tour to the lava tubes. We listened to the guide with one ear each whilst monitoring the kids who were both in crazy moods and were busy hyping up a previously quiet pair of children belonging to another couple. Hence we both missed out on some vital parts of the explanation about how these incredible lava tunnels were formed. Needless to say there was lots of volcanoes a long time ago and somehow the lava formed into tubes. The roofs of some of the tubes collapsed and so now we can actually walk through some of the tunnels.  Although we struggled to understand the science behind the lava, we could appreciate the aesthetics - the rainforest surrounded the caves and big tropical butterflies flickered in and out of the sunlight. We laughed at the brush turkeys that wobbled over the path, pecking in the dirt for insects. Zara cornered the ever-patient guide and let fly a stream of questions – and as usual we danced the delicate dance of encouraging our children to be interested and ask questions whilst ensuring they don’t dominate the entire tour. When we thanked the guide at the end of the tour he explained that he actually liked interested friendly children but didn’t appreciate bickering and whinging children. Phew. We laughed when the children threw themselves on him when we said goodbye – great big bear hugs fuelled by the instant love that they develop for tolerant tour guides…

 

I was ordered to go to bed really early and laughed to myself at the rustling going on in the tent. The sounds of balloons bursting was followed by mad giggling and shushing. A few party poppers went off and a string of streamers landed next to my head. Needless to say I awoke next morning to a beautifully decorated tent. Zara was bursting out of her skin to give me a present – a pair of earrings that we selected together at the Katherine market some time ago (which amazingly she hadn’t lost)! Then we all went across to a ‘bush breakfast’ where we cooked our toast over the fire and ate baked beans, eggs, bacon etc from tin plates. It was actually pretty similar to our breakfasts most mornings this year but still fun to have someone else cook it! After breakfast we went back to the tent where I was duly served with homemade lemonade and lemon slice – yum – and a couple of social affairs/politics type magazines to keep me busy in the wee hours of the morning! After the last party popper was popped, we packed up and drove to Kalkani volcano for a walk around the rim. It was of course quite thrilling to walk around the top of a volcano despite it having been dormant for many thousands of years – you never know do you?

On we travelled towards the coast and suddenly the landscape morphed into lush rolling hills, misty mountains and green paddocks of fat cows. We were reaching the tablelands – a beautiful, tropical area of waterfalls, dairy farms and cafes. It was strange to see so many curves and so much green after so long in flat, rocky desert country. We drove through drizzle but felt refreshed. We visited Miilla Miilla Falls – supposedly the most photographed waterfalls in Australia. A windy rainforest walk took us along a little stream and although we only ventured down it a few hundred metres it was enough to allow two fat leeches to attach firmly to my feet. Bill bravely flicked off the most tenacious of the two while I screeched like an idiot. Yuk.

The rain kept falling and again we treated ourselves to a lovely overnighter called The Gables in a charming little town called Yungaburra. It was incredibly cheap (only slightly more than your average campsite!) and very comfy. Yungaburra has a number of well-known restaurants and after a bit of umming and ahhing we settled on a place called the Vienna Inn – a strange find in a little rural Queensland town. But the meal was great – authentic and delicious Austrian food with big servings and good Austrian beer to wash it all down with. We even had strudel for dessert. A very memorable birthday.

Floods and time-travel in Hughenden and discovering the Yeti in Porcupine Gorge

We drove a short distance to Cloncurry and set up camp in the drizzle. Next morning, the kids played with the ugliest dog in the world and we chatted to its friendly owner – a well-travelled woman who was heading up to one of the isolated stations to act as a live-in tutor for the kids who were doing school of the air. As most dog owners (and indeed parents) seem to be, she appeared quite convinced that her weird, toothy dog was very charming and kindly allowed Zara to drag it around the caravan park on a lead. The kids even accompanied them up and down the street so that the dog could poo before they hit the road. Exciting.

We drove on east, stopping for lunch at Julia Creek – home of an extinct and then re-discovered (near Julia Creek) Bettong. When we reached Hughenden the rain was bucketing down and so yet again we were forced into a hotel room. Actually we were lucky to get anything because every other traveller had the same idea and the hotels and cabins were all booked out. The hotel we stayed at was half-flooded and we had to jump over a massive channel of water just to get into our room. We had no cooking facilities in our room and so debated having peanut butter sandwiches until we realised we had no bread, and so headed to the local Chinese restaurant. The food wasn’t too bad, and the décor reminded me of dining in China, which added a bit to the authenticity.  Next day, we realised that the whole town is stuck in another era – including coffee shops with carpet and lace at the windows (serving instant coffee and home-made cakes) and clothing shops with fashions from yesteryear. It was kind of a nice place.

We drove north, up the Kennedy Development Road. We had been warned about the condition of the road, especially after rain and so drove cautiously to Porcupine Gorge where we stopped for lunch and a walk down into the gorge. It was yet another amazing place – volcanic looking with big holes in the rocks and some weird formations. Not for the first time we wished we knew a bit more about geology. We decided that next time we do a trip like this, we’ll learn more about rocks and minerals before we leave. The rocks and stuff always look really interesting and we get the feeling that geologists would be drooling with excitement about some of these places. But the geological secrets remain locked to us and we end up using descriptors such as ‘holey rocks’ and ‘shiny stuff’… We did however find a hole in the rock that looked like a giant footprint, so we are pretty confident that some sort of yeti-type creature roamed this gorge thousands of years ago…

On we drove in a north-easterly direction and eventually arrived at the Undarra Experience – a private enterprise set up next to the Undarra National Park which provides an ‘authentic bush experience’ for the hordes but more importantly offers access to the park’s lava tubes – cool.

Bob Kattah, Alan Jones and the ever-present smokestack in 'The Isa'

We pressed on the next day, making our way out of the national park and skidding into Mt Isa on an empty tank. Mt Isa is big, dusty and totally dominated by the huge mine in the middle of town. What Sash excitedly pointed out as ‘the lighthouse’, was actually a smokestack which seemed to be able to be seen out of every window in town. We visited the 'Isa Experience' – a museum detailing the town’s history, which was mainly about mining. It should have been interesting but without a passion for mining we found it a bit hard to get excited. Nonetheless we dutifully watched a video of various Alan Jones lookalikes talking about growing up in ‘The Isa’. 

Next we drove through the town and doffed out not-oversized hats at Bob Kattah’s office before checking in at the local, caravan park. We were feeling a bit hot and dusty and tired by now and so splashed out on a little cabin, which felt like fabulous luxury. In the morning we went to the local library for school and books, whilst gazing out at the ever-present smokestack. While I shopped up a grocery storm, Bill took the kids to the local park which turned out to be the ‘best playground ever’ – another example of outback communities getting massive grants from the local government to build amazing and free amusements for local kids. It was so good that B and the kids picked me up from the supermarket and we all returned for hours of fun. Complete with water park and all sorts of swinging, sliding and zipping things that we had never even seen before, this park could almost have held us in Mt Isa for another day. But not quite…

We were, however, keen to visit the local fossil centre before leaving town – a place where the kids dug excitedly for fossils in a sandpit whilst we read about the amazing discoveries made between Mt Isa and Lawn Hill. Turns out this site was where most of what is known about Australia’s megafauna and other pre-human mammals was learnt (and most of that was discovered within about an hour sometime in the 1980s). We all found it more interesting than the mining history, but we had people and solar eclipses to see on the coast and so needed to move on – although only very slightly because we had spent most of the day mucking around in ‘The Isa’.

Finding paradise in the Queensland outback

People complain about the dull drive from Darwin to Alice along the Stuart Highway. But we chose to drive it twice because we backtracked all the way past Tennant Creek to take the Barkly Highway east. Still, with air-con fixed, the Harry Potter audio books and contact lenses back in, the drive wasn’t so bad and we arrived at dusk at a place called The Pebbles, just out of Tennant Creek. The Pebbles are like a mini Devils Marbles – and just as culturally significant to the local Aboriginal people. Some whitefella fools decided to pinch one of the pebbles and chuck it in a park in Tennant Creek to amuse the tourists – a move that was of course highly offensive considering the sacred nature of the place. Then when the local people next came to the site, they discovered mining equipment had been left there ready for imminent work. The people stepped up and voiced their anger by organising sit-ins and media coverage. They won and now the area is nominally protected for their use. The traditional owners have set up a free camp spot there, which was nice for us.

Next day, Kate’s eye was hurting again and so poor Bill had to do all the driving. Shame for him because it turned out to be one of the longest hauls we have done on the trip so far. We celebrated crossing the border into Queensland with a big cheer and then decided to detour North into Budjamulla National Park, famous for Lawn Hill Gorge and raved about by many fellow travellers. We had heard so many good things about the place that it was just impossible to drive past the turn-off and onto Mt Isa. So we calculated fuel amounts and distances and decided to just do it. But we must have misread the map because we just seemed to drive on and on and on. Bill was exhausted by the time we arrived in the dark – and we were all very happy to get out of the car and to know that the next day was drive-free. The next morning we noticed that we were the only people in the campground – clearly not a popular time of the year due to the intense heat. The campground was nice enough although not spectacular and it was insanely hot. But just as we were beginning to wonder whether we had done the right thing, we wandered down a path towards the gorge and found ourselves gazing down onto paradise. Lawn Hill is often described as an oasis in the middle of the Queensland outback – warm emerald water, waterfalls, palms – but neither words nor pictures will ever do this place justice. Needless to say we spent the day swimming, swimming and swimming. Each time we got out and wandered back to the tent, we were ready to go back in before a few minutes passed. The friendly ranger brought us a bucket full of green tree frogs that make a nightly pilgrimage to the toilets – and let us hold them and put them on our shoulders. We watched in anticipation for huge olive pythons that hunt in the gorge – but sadly saw none. I gather that in the cooler months the place is buzzing with tourists. We liked it just the way it was.  If you are ever driving past that turn-off, please take it.