QUEENSLAND

We were positively surprised by the friendly welcoming of people and their kindness to help when we arrived in Cairns. We had 2 days to have a look around, hire a car and get everything sorted for our round trip. We visited close by Kuranda and its Barron Falls and were excited to pick up our car. Yes we were looking for the best deal in town and went the for a backpacker option but didn’t quite expect a 23 year old run down car. Never judge a book by its cover it did its job and ran very economically.

Our first target was Daintree NP and Cape Tribulation. There are many short boardwalks in the area and a fresh and cooling swimming hole and we even saw a cassowary. We booked a trip with Rum Runners to dive and snorkel on Great Barrier Reef. The visibility was not as good as we expected, the whole day trip seemed rather short and on top Petra got sunburned.

Getting in the area of Atherton tabletop was refreshing after the high humidity of the Daintree NP. We saw many waterfalls, spotted a platypus, two Lumholtz tree kangaroos, tortoises, snakes and spiders.

Our last destination was Mission Beach, to hopefully see a cassowary again. Early morning is normally good to spot them. Your best chance to see one is just driving along the road. We did that for nearly 2 hours but no luck. Instead, we couldn’t believe it at first, we saw a manta ray swimming around the pier for about 30 minutes.

One other thing we would like to mention is the laughing kookaburra. He did wake us up every morning at about 6am with his amazing laughter. It’s a funny noise to listen to.

For more photos please click here.