Today was a bit of a ‘blah’ day for me – probably hormonal which didn’t help. We had a slow start to the day and I decided the kids probably needed to do a bit of schoolwork today. It was hard motivating the kids to do their schoolwork. It all seemed to be happening very slowly. Eventually Michael stepped in to help with maths for Hannah and Lauren – he could see that I needed some time out from trying to motivate them. They finally got through the work we wanted them to do by about 11am.

We then headed off to see some of the sights. There were a couple of interesting giant fig trees to visit. One was called Cathedral Fig and one was called Curtain Fig. These trees seeded on the branch of another tree quite high up and their roots started growing downwards towards the ground. They have quite large root systems and the result is an amazing structure. We went to see the Cathedral Fig first. It was great, but I really was feeling out of sorts today and getting annoyed at little things. So I asked if I could go back to the caravan while Michael took the kids sightseeing. We had been going to do the ‘waterfall circuit’ and see some of the many waterfalls around there. We’d packed the swimmers in the car in case any of the children had decided to brave the cold water.

So Michael dropped me back to the caravan and I was able to rest and have some down time to myself. The others did the waterfall circuit and Hannah and Beth had a swim in the Malanda Falls – but only stayed in for 5 mins. They came back not long before dinner. They’d had a nice afternoon, which was good.

It was time to start heading back south again and then inland. We planned to go to the Atherton Tablelands area today. We had been out of 3G range for a lot of the last 3 days, so hadn’t been able ring anywhere to book in.

Before leaving Cape Trib campground, we drove the 5-6 kms north to Cape Trib itself and did the short walk to the lookout over Cape Trib Bay. We could also see Mt Misery and Mt Sorrow. (As someone said, Cpt Cook obviously had a bad time here with the names he gave places). Then we walked down onto the beach and then back to the car.

We drove back down the Cape Tribulation Rd, this time stopping at the Alexandra Range Lookout to see the view south towards Port Douglas and beyond. We went back across the Daintree River ferry and then south towards Mossman. We were able to get 3G again, so I rang and booked in to a caravan park at Lake Eacham – only $40 a night which was a good price.

We had run out of bread and lunch things, so had decided to buy lunch at a cafe today – we did this at Mossman. We weren’t very impressed with the cafe though as we had to wait a long time for our burgers and chips to come. There was also a bit of a funny smell there every now and then – which we eventually found out from a local, who heard us complaining about the smell, was the burnt molasses smell from the nearby sugar mill. The kids had a play at the nearby playground, which was a very nice one with some interesting and unusual play equipment.

Then we turned inland towards Mt Molloy and then onto the Mulligans Hwy which would take us to Atherton. We passed through Mareeba again (coming from a different way this time) and got to Atherton about 3pm. We stopped here for me to do some grocery shopping, and then continued on the further 20mins to Lake Eacham. We found the caravan park with its very friendly owners and set up. It was noticeably colder here. The caravan park had a resident pig and 2 goats which we were allowed to feed (grass and leaves) and a duck pond with many ducks, hens, and scrub turkeys and fowls wandering around. The kids enjoyed seeing all these things and having a bit of a bike ride before it was time for dinner. Sam made tacos for dinner tonight. We actually had to put the heater on in the van for a little while (after having used the air conditioner at Daintree and Cape Trib).

We liked the van park right near the beach and rainforest, so had decided to stay an extra day to just enjoy the area, and maybe do some more walks. Here’s a few things we did that day:-
– slower start to the morning.
– Michael took the kids onto the beach to play soccer and then have races.
– Michael took the kids back to Mason’s creek to have a swim and swing off the rope.
– Andrea did some clothes washing and cleaning and airing the van.
– rest time after lunch listening to an audio book.
– went for a walk northwards along the beach and then on a boardwalk through the freshwater mangrove and rianforest area – we saw a cassowary on this walk and stopped and watched it for a few minutes – then it seemed to want us to leave its territory so it started to walk towards us – we’d heard they can be aggressive, so we calmly but quickly walked away.
– Michael took the kids for one last swim at Mason’s creek – on the ‘favorites’ list of places we have visited.

We got away from the van park just after 8.30, having packed up lunches, morning and afternoon tea, swimmers and towels etc. We headed north the few kms that were left of the Cape Tribulation Rd and then turned on to the ‘Bloomfield Track’ which is the 4WD only section of road between Cape Trib and Bloomfield, (halfway to Cooktown). In the wet season, this road is sometimes impassable. There were about 8 or 9 river crossings, but half of them were dry creek beds at this time of the year, and the others were not very big. There were also some very steep ascents and descents which would have been trickier in the wet. The vegetation here was more like normal bush than rainforest. We passed through the aboriginal community of Wujal Wujal which is beside the Bloomfield River and we stopped there to have morning tea. A little further on we passed through a couple of pretty little localities called Ayton and Rossville. One had a campground. We then passed through Cedar Bay NP which was rainforest area again. We also went passed the Lion’s Den Hotel, which apparently is famous for its atmosphere. We didn’t stop though. Just after this, we turned right onto the Mulligans Highway which was sealed and which was the last part of the inland route to Cooktown. So there were more motorhomes and caravans driving along here. It was about 28km from this turn off to Cooktown. Along this section, we passed through Black Mountain NP, of which ‘Black Mountain’ was the feature. It was a strange mountain with black granite boulders making up half of it. We stopped and read the information signs and took photos. We drove into Cooktown at about 11.30.

We were actually quite hungry when we got to Cooktown so decided to have lunch straight away. We had brought our own sandwiches, but Michael suggested we also buy some hot chips. I thought a couple of milkshakes to share would be nice also. We stopped at a cafe in the main street to buy these and were glad we weren’t buying too much – the 2 milkshakes and a serve of chips was $14. We didn’t know of any particular parks to eat at, but I’d read about a lookout area at the top of Grassy Hill, so suggested we go there to eat. We drove up as far as we were allowed to drive and found a place to sit and eat which was in the shade and overlooked the main street of town and the Endeavor River. After eating, we walked further up to the very top and saw the wonderful almost 360 degree view. We read about how Captain Cook and Joseph Banks had climbed the hill a couple of times during their stay to view the surrounding reefs out to sea and determine how they were going to get safely back out to sea after the Endeavour was repaired.

We walked back down to the car and drove down to the town centre again. I had also read of a walking tour taking in most of the historic sights around Cooktown. We drove to the harbour area to start this. Here was a statue of Captain Cook, a memorial to the beaching of the Endeavour, a cannon sent to Cooktown in the late 1800s to protect against the considered threat of Russian invasion (hadn’t heard that part of history before), and some other monuments. There was also a ‘musical ship’ which was a ship structure intended for kids to play on and they could make all sorts of music from different ‘instruments’. The kids enjoyed playing on this, and, true to form, Hannah and Bethany wanted to pretend they were Captain Cook and the crew sailing in and having to repair the ship. They convinced Sam to join their play (Lauren was feeling unwell today and so wanted to rest in the car at this point) and asked me to be the narrator. Since I had been teaching them this part of history, I knew the story, so was able to narrate. They had a practice run and then Michael started to video it – unfortunately the batteries ran out before we reached the end, but we got through most of it – I’m sure they’ll enjoy watching that again later – and hopefully that part of Australian history will stick in their memory.

We then drove to the James Cook Museum which we’d heard was very good. It was housed in the old convent building which was the oldest brick building in Cooktown. It had a story all of its own. We spent about 45mins at the museum and I really enjoyed it. We saw the original of the anchor and one of the cannons from the Endeavour which had been thrown overboard and which they’d recovered in about 1969. We read the story of the recovery expedition. One of the most interesting things I read at the  museum was the first hand account of the meeting of Cook and his crew by the aboriginal tribes of the area – the story had been passed down through generations and was told and written down. There were other aspects to the museum – the gold rush which brought people to the area in the 1850s, the Chinese influence (many Chinese came for the gold) and other local history.

Our last stop at Cooktown was the Botanical Gardens which had an information centre and also a display on local flora and fauna. We had hoped to do the walk through the gardens down to Finch Bay, but after doing what we wanted to at the information centre, we realised we weren’t going to have time. The kids were keen for a swim and we asked about safe swimming holes in the Cooktown area and on the way back to Cape Trib. We were given a few options, one being a swimming hole out the back of the Lion’s Den Hotel. We thought this sounded like a good idea. 

So we started the trip back. The Lion’s Den Hotel was only 30 mins from Cooktown. We found the river, which had several nice swimming areas. We had some bikkies for afternoon tea and the kids had a swim for about half an hour. 

Then it was back in the car and another one and half hours back to Cape Trib. It was about 6.15 when we arrived back at the van park. We had found out yesterday that they make wood fired pizzas here every lunchtime and dinner time, so we had decided we would do that for dinner tonight. It was a nice easy and yummy dinner. Usual night time routine.

Today we planned to do the cruise near the ferry terminal and then some walks and things on our way up to Cape Tribulation. We left the van park about 9.15 and drove the 15 mins to the ferry terminal. We booked our places on the 10am boat cruise. It was quite a sunny day, so we found some shade to wait.

This cruise was quite different to the one yesterday, both because of the different location and because of the different tour guide. This tour guide was a mangrove expert and loved the flora on the river, but didn’t seem to be as interested in the fauna (except for crocs). We saw about 3 crocs again on this cruise – 2 of them well known by the tour guides and given names, the other one too small to yet be given a name (apparently there is a 90 percent mortality rate with the baby crocs – eaten by bull sharks or larger fish etc.) He told us there have been only 35 recorded cases of humans dying from croc attacks since European history in in Australia – 2 of them have been on the Daintree River (didn’t find out when).  He gave us quite a talk about the mangroves – the adaptations they have in their systems to be able to thrive in salt water. There were quite a lot more mangroves here because it was closer upstream and so more salty. I enjoyed the cruise again for the different information we learnt this time.

We then went across on the vehicular ferry. It was not a very wide river, so this didn’t take long. Then we were driving thought he rainforest up the Cape Tribulation Road. From as soon as we drove off the ferry, this road was under a continual canopy of rainforest, with only the occasional glimpse of sky and occasional glimpse of sea. It was not at all what I had expected, but it was so different to any other region I had driven through previously. It was a slow winding road and we averaged around 50km per hour. There were a few stops along the way on our detailed map that we had. The first one, which was a lookout, we couldn’t stop at as they didn’t allow caravans on that section of the road. The next one was the discovery centre where there were a few walks. It was a narrow road into there, but we managed it and then had a walk along a boardwalk in the rainforest, once again with some informative signs. We found out how the scrub turkeys would build a mound for their nests and from then on Hannah and Beth would point out the scrub turkey mounds whenever we went on walks. 

There were a couple more places we could have stopped but we decided to get to our caravan park first which was right up the top of this road near Cape Trib itself. We had rung ahead that morning and they only had unpowered sites for 2 nights (we could have had a powered for one night but then have had to move to an unpowered the next day). The unpowered sites couldn’t be reserved so the lady I spoke to on the phone suggested we get there no later than 3pm. It was 1.30 by now and we thought we should go straight there. We arrived around 2pm and spoke to the lady at reception. Because we were planning on doing a day trip to Cooktown the next day, we wanted to be able to leave our camp fridge on power with refridgable things  in it. We wanted to ask the lady if we might be able to leave it with them plugged in to a power point. It turned out she had a couple of ’emergency’ powered areas up her sleeve which she said we could check out. One was right next to one of the amenities blocks which had a power point on the outside of it. Michael had a look at this and thought it would be suitable. So, as it turned out, we ended up with the equivalent of a powered site for the 2 nights. And the amenities block was not the main one – it was a smaller one down one end, out of the way a bit. We set up and the kids went to check out the beach – the campsite was right on the beach, like it had been at Armstrong Beach. The tide was right out again and lots of people had taken their camp chairs out onto the hard sand to sit and read or relax. There seemed to be a bit group of young foreign tourists there – German I think. Anyway, the kids enjoyed some time on the beach, swinging on a tree rope they found, while Michael and I did some tidying up and odd jobs.

One of the other places we had planned to stop was a swimming hole (croc safe). So we drove a little way back to that spot, called Mason’s Creek, and walked to the swimming area. To the delight of the kids there was a rope on a tree to swing into the water. The 3 older ones did this, but Bethany was not quite confident enough. She enjoyed just splashing in the water though. It was a nice end to a nice day. We went back to the van park, had showers and then had dinner (spag bol from the frozen meals). We hoped to get an earlyish start tomorrow for the day trip to Cooktown.

The camp ground and just the area itself was so nice, we thought we might even stay an extra night here and have a day to enjoy the area after our visit to Cooktown.

We decided to have a slow day today, just doing things around Daintree Village and perhaps a bit further afield on the south side of the river. This was because there was a vehicular ferry that crossed the Daintree which was $32 return and so we didn’t want to go onto the other side of the river until we were ready to go with the van.

We bought tickets for the cruise which was just near our van park and went on the 9am cruise which went for an hour. One advantage of the cruise company we choose was that it gave you a multi-pass voucher, so you could go on the cruise as many times as you wanted in a period of about 5 days. And the cruise departed from 2 different areas – from Daintree Village where we were and also from near the ferry terminal further upstream where there were more mangroves. We thought we would do the one near the ferry terminal either this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

The cruise in the morning was almost a private tour – there was our family and one other older couple on the boat. The tour guide, Lex, was a local guy who actually grew up only just across the river on a farm with cattle and pretty much spent all his life in Daintree. I couldn’t imagine growing up on a river where crocs were prevalent.Lex was very much a small town guy with such a slang accent, it was sometimes hard to understand him. We saw the big croc again that we’d seen the day before on the river bank – apparently he was the ‘big daddy’ of this part of the river – there were some other smaller crocs in this area too and we saw another 2 on this cruise. Lex was amazing at being able to spot birds and wildlife in the trees beside the river. We would just see trees, but he would suddenly stop the boat and point out a tree snake or a frog-mouth bird (both of which were camouflaged on the tree and quite hard to see, even up close). He also knew the plants around there very well. He went close enough to an hibiscus tree for us all to pick a flower and then showed us how to pull it apart to eat the bottom part of the flower. I enjoyed the tour very much. We got off the boat just after 10am and walked the 50m back to our van and had some morning tea.

The kids played outside for a little while and then we had an early lunch, because I wanted everyone to have a rest after lunch today. Bethany and Hannah seemed to be getting tired a lot – we were having fairly full days. We all lay down and put on an audio CD to listen to for a while – I ended up having a bit of a sleep, but Hannah and Beth didn’t – they had a quiet time at least. 

Around 3.30 we headed off in the car to have a bit of a scenic drive. We followed the road which ran beside the river downstream a bit. There was quite a bit of cattle around in the pastures – they were Brahman cows are Brahman crosses – they looked a bit more like bullocks than cows. We drove past some hills which the kids called ‘tiny wings’ hills (after the game on the iPhone/iPad) – they were smooth rolling hills with lots of little humps. We drove south again past Wonga beach and to an area just north of Mossman which had a scenic drive. There was also a WW2 historic site where a bomb had been dropped by the Japanese. On the way back towards Daintree we stopped at one of the beaches beside the road and went for a walk along it. Then back to the car and back to the van park. It was shower time for the younger girls while Lauren and Sam did dinner (BBQ meat and salad and bread). Usual night-time routine.

The next morning we packed up and headed out of the van park. We stopped at a nearby shopping centre for me to restock on groceries. The kids did some schoolwork in the car while I did this. Then we continued north along the Captain Cook Hwy. There were turnoffs along the way to several of the ‘northern beaches’ of Cairns, but we decided not to stop at these – it was not recommended to swim up here (due to stingers and possible crocs) so it would have been looking only anyway. However the highway met the coast at a place called Ellis Beach and it was a beautiful sight to behold – such azure blue sea. The highway followed the coastline for quite a few kms and is known as one of the most beautiful drives in Australia – I can see why. 

About 15mins along this lovely stretch, we came to Port Douglas. Having heard so much about it ( as the place for the rich and famous), we wanted to have a drive around. So we drove along Port Douglas Rd towards the beach area. There were many 5 star resorts all the way along this road. The beach itself was unusually normal and natural. Then we drove along the main shopping precinct and saw all the fairly upmarket shops. I jumped out to take a few photos but otherwise we didn’t stop. We got back onto the highway and continued north.

About another 15 mins further along, we came to Mossman. We had read about the walks at Mossman Gorge so wanted to stop and do 1 or 2 of those. We thought it would be like most NP walks – just driving to the carpark and going on the walk, but visitors to this area had been increasing so much, that the authorities had decided to protect access a bit. They had built a visitors centre where you had to park your car/van/motorhome etc and then take a shuttle bus in to the walking areas – at a cost of course. We had our lunch in the van before we left to go buy our tickets for the shuttle bus. It was a very short wait and then a 5 min drive in – the aboriginal community was still setup within this area, so we drove past their houses etc. We hopped out at the start of the walking area. The 2 smaller walks were still accessible, but the longer walk was closed due to damage to the suspension bridge. We had only planned on doing the shorter walks anyway, but it meant that these walks were probably a lot busier that they otherwise would have been – there were lots of people on the track. The walks were through lovely rainforest with informative signs along the way. The river walk ended at a vantage point overlooking the Mossman River. A few people were swimming in the river, although the signs said it was dangerous to swim there due to strong currents. We sat beside the river for a few minutes and enjoyed the surroundings and watched the goings on of other people. Then we walked back to the start area a different way. We took the shuttle bus back to the visitor centre carpark and got back in the car.

We were still trying to work out where we were staying that night. There were a few options – Wonga Beach (just south of Daintree River), a van park on the southside of the river, or a few van parks on the north side of the river or closer towards Cape Tribulation. Powered sites for 2 nights seemed to be limited, so this affected our choice. I would have liked to stay at Wonga Beach as I knew how much the kids enjoyed being right near the beach, but it was full. So we ended up deciding to stay at Daintree Riverview Caravan Park, right in Daintree Village (only 30 mins from Mossman). As it suggested, it really was right on the river, and one of the river cruise companies departed right from beside the van park. It was quite a basic van park, but it was all we needed and fairly good value. Not long after we’d arrived and set up, I was supervising the younger girls outside for a little while and a lady called us over to where she was standing near the fenced area which overlooked the boat ramp. She had binoculars and had been looking at a croc that was lying on the riverbank on the other side of the river and downstream a bit from where we were. We had a look too. Apparently he is one of the several resident crocs on the river. It was another reminder for Hannah (who is always asking when we can swim) why we can’t go swimming in the rivers and beaches this far up north!

I was feeling a bit headachy that afternoon, so Michael got dinner ready and I went to bed early.

We left the campground around 9.30 – a bit later than we planned to, but everyone had slept in a bit. It was about an hour to Mareeba up a steep, windy road. We passed Kuranda on the way and decided we would stop there on the way back for afternoon tea. 

We got to the rodeo about 10.30 or so. The Boldens were already there and had texted us to say they had saved us seats in the stands. We found them there and sat to watch the events for a while. We enjoyed the experience of watching the rodeo events – the first rodeo we had all been to. There were some events that were fun to watch and others (like the bucking bulls) where we squirmed a bit as some of the cowboys were getting hurt by coming off the bull badly. One guy had to be taken away on a stretcher in the ambulance, and another guy also went away in the ambulance but was able to walk in. The Boldens, who had been to 3 rodeos previously said it was the most accidents they had seen at a rodeo. We ate our morning tea and then lunch in the stands. We stayed for about 4 hours. Lauren was quite happy sitting next to Caitlin the whole time and chatting with her as they watched. Sam wanted to have a look around at the other stands and exhibitions a couple of times. Hannah and Beth also needed to go do other things every now and then. I took them looking at the other stalls for a while, and then later Michael took them for an icecream and a type of jumping castle ride. I enjoyed being able to sit and chat with Karen for quite a while when Michael took the younger girls for a walk. 

We all headed off around 3pm. The Boldens had planned to go and look at a horse near Mareeba which Caitlin was interested in buying as a better beginner rider horse than her current horse. She had saved up money from working at McDonalds. She invited Lauren to come along with her to look at it, and we said this was OK. Ryan wasn’t keen on looking at horses so he asked if he could come with us instead – we said that was fine – then Karen said she might come with us also. So Stephen, Caitlin and Lauren headed off to look at the horse, while the rest of us headed towards Kuranda. It was only 10-15mins there. We went for a walk along the couple of main streets but unfortunately all the eatery shops were closed (or closing) – the last train and skyway had left so the shops mostly shut. There were some souvenir shops open which we looked at, and then the kids had a play at the playground there. Then we headed back to Cairns. 

We got back to our caravan around 5.15, Karen and Ryan joining us there as Karen didn’t have keys to her house. We had a drink and a snack. It turned out that Stephen and the older girls were not going to be back until about 6.15, and the Boldens were planning to go to church again at 7pm (special speakers on). So we suggested we order in pizza and all have a pizza dinner at our caravan before they headed off to church. Michael went to the nearest pizza store and got the pizzas. He arrived back about 5 mins after Stephen and the girls arrived at the van. We were all hungry. We stood or sat outside and ate pizza from the box – saved on washing up! Then the Boldens had to leave. We had all really enjoyed reconnecting again after so many years. The older kids discussed getting together again soon – we decided maybe Caitlin and Ryan could visit us one holidays, and then Lauren and Sam visit them – we’ll keep that in mind. Us Branches then did our usual nighttime routine and got ready to leave Cairns tomorrow.