Cairns and surroundings

Where to start? This is going to be a loooong post, we have seen so much over the past 4 weeks. We flew over from Darwin to Cairns on 14 October. After 5 days in an appartement in Cairns City, we headed off for a 16 day roundtrip in our motorhome.

Cairns was alright but we prefer Darwin. Cairns is just really touristy, the whole city consists mainly of hotels, restaurants and tour booking shops. We did enjoy the lovely waterfront with Muddys playground. Swimming in the ocean is not an option in Cairns given the stingers and crocodiles, instead we went to the swimming pool at the Cairns Esplanade overlooking the ocean. Felix and Levin also got to sit in a helicopter after it landed right next to them (transporting people to the hospital).

From Cairns we headed north stopping in Kuranda and Port Douglas, two totally different locations. Kuranda is a cozy town in the tropics with several local markets that get flooded with tourists every day. We headed to Koala Gardens early in the morning before the crowds arrived to see some Koalas and feed wallabies/kangaroos.

In Port Douglas we stayed next to Four Mile Beach and really enjoyed swimming in the waves! This beach was as safe as it gets in Australia with a stinger net and lifeguard. The kids also took a horse riding class, which they loved.

Our next stop was the Daintree Forest, the oldest rainforest in the world. The road there crosses a river so we drove our motorhome onto a ferry to take us straight into the rainforst in Daintree National Park. Goodbye phone reception and WiFi….back to nature. We wandered through the rainforest and met our first cassowary (they look like a colorful ostrich). The big birds, which apparently can’t fly, cross the streets every once in a while so we stopped our motorhome to let them pass. Besides the rainforst we also visited a fruit plantation and tried to identify the different and unknown fruits growing in the tropics. Coincidentally ;), the fruit plantation offered a tasting of various fruity and yummi ice creams.

From Daintree we headed into the Tablelands, a lush area with many plantations (coffee, wine, fruit, dairy farms). On day 1 we wandered through Mareeba and enjoyed their free historical museum that gave us a good impression of life 100 years ago.

On day 2 Trucker Felix (Lena is not allowed to drive the 4.5t Motorhome) took us on a daytrip via partially unsealed roads to Chillagoe. Although the city is located just 140km from Mareeba it took us almost 3h to get there and it felt like stepping into a completely different world. The temperature went up to 40degrees, the phone reception was patchy, the road regularly turned into a gravel road, we saw no more than 5 other cars and the ground was red and brown instead of green. In Chillagoe we visited a limestone cave and the old mine ruins. Pure Outback experience!

From Chillagoe we headed to our campsite at Granite Gorge, a lovely nature park where we got to do some rock climbing (Melias absolute favorite) and were able to feed the wallabies with carrots and sweet potatoe.

Leaving Mareeba behind us we head up to lake Tinaroo. A lovely holiday park campsite with a jumping pillow and large pool plus a big lake to practice our canoeing skills.

By now we had seen it all: wild life, waterfalls, outback, farms….. We started to get tired and skipped a few waterfalls, viewing platforms, canopy walks. Luckily we did stop at the Nerada Tea Plantation where we got to see how tee grows, is picked and turned into tee. The highlight was spotting a tree kangaroo (look closely,it is on the picture below)!!!

Now it is time to head over to the coast. The beaches are absolutely amazing, however, also some of the most dangerous beaches of the world with crocodiles and stingers…..we did go swimming in areas with stinger nets but we never felt fully at ease.

One last highlight of our tour were the Josefine Falls. These waterfalls end in a plunge pool and natural slide. The water is really clear and cool, a very refreshing experience. Levin is our little adventurer so he was the first to hop in, swim to the other side and head down the slide. Even Melia decided that she would go in. Until this week she has been convinced that swimming in anything but a swimming pool is crazy but by now she plunges into waterfalls and loves jumping waves in the ocean. We even heard her say that the Josefine Falls natural pool is the best swimming pool she has been at…..