Around Cairns

After a relaxed 4-hour flight across Australia, we arrived in the small town of Cairns in the state of Queensland in the evening. We had booked a hostel here for one night, which we took advantage of to take a warm shower. 😊 In the evening, we explored the city a bit, ate delicious Thai food at the "Night Markets" in Cairns, and enjoyed the humid and warm tropical climate here in the north. During our little walk along the coast, we saw a dolphin, two pelicans, and a huge flock of green birds chirping away above us. The next morning, we picked up our new home for the next four weeks, this time a slightly larger camper with enough headroom and a small kitchenette inside. From the outside, the old lady - whom we have named Lotte - looked in good shape. Unfortunately, we noticed several larger and smaller issues throughout the day, which is why we spent the night near Cairns in a parking lot right by the beach in order to return to the rental company the next morning. There, Lotte was completely overhauled, all the problems were fixed, and we were given a rental car to bridge the time, which we used to drive to a nearby beach. However, swimming was out of the question, firstly because it was quite windy and secondly - and this is the far more important reason - because there are crocodiles almost everywhere here in northern Queensland 🙈 Once Lotte was back in good shape, we continued north to Port Douglas, passing many green meadows, banana plantations, and sugar cane fields - the landscape was completely different from Western Australia and reminded us a bit of Indonesia. We found a nice free campground just outside the town, Chef Jana cooked something delicious, and we made ourselves comfortable with our newly acquired string lights and anti-mosquito candle.

The next day, we drove to Mossman Gorge (yes, gorges seem to have captured our hearts 😄), which took us through the rainforest on a slightly elevated wooden path and ended at a beautiful waterfall, where we once again jumped into the ice-cold water with complete determination. The rainforest was very beautiful and the swim at the end was very refreshing!

The following day, we had booked a boat tour to the Great Barrier Reef, where we were allowed to dive into the beautiful corals three times in total. We saw reef sharks (Philip: 1, Jana: 3), big fish, and a moray eel. It was great to dive again and for the first time outside of our familiar diving school in Indonesia, as real independent divers. There was a guide with us, but we did almost everything on our own and felt really comfortable and safe as dive buddies. In the evening, we drove back to the beautiful campground and fell into our bed, tired.

The next day, we continued a bit further north to Daintree, where we took a boat trip along the river and through the mangroves. The goal of the trip was to see saltwater crocodiles, which are the largest among the crocodiles, with females reaching up to 4 meters and males up to 6 meters! The alpha male in the territory is called Scarface and is almost 5 meters tall, but unfortunately he wasn't visible that day. Instead, we saw the second and third largest crocodiles at just under 4.50 meters and a female basking in the sun - apparently, even for crocodiles, it gets too cold in the water in autumn. We learned a lot about the animals and also saw birds, a well-camouflaged little python, and a baby crocodile at the end. Back on land safely, we continued heading south. We found a beautiful campground and set up our camp.

The next morning, we walked to a nearby natural pool where we could swim without worrying about crocodiles, but the water was really cold - well, at least it woke us up 😜 After that, we drove directly to Josephine Falls, a beautiful waterfall with a natural water slide on the rocks. That was so much fun! Then we headed a bit further south to Etty Bay, which was recommended to us multiple times because wild cassowaries roam freely there. We knew these emu-like, giant flightless birds from our time at WFFT in Thailand, where Bernie received his sanctuary after getting hit on the head by the villagers for not being a native animal and has been a bit simple-minded ever since. Here, the birds lived in their natural environment, but somehow they weren't much faster than Bernie - maybe cassowaries, in general, aren't the brightest bulbs on the cake 😄 On the way back, one was walking in the middle of the road and we were able to drive up close to take a snapshot from the safety of our car. Cassowaries can be quite dangerous if you get too close to them.

After this cool encounter, we drove a few more kilometers south to our next destination, the town of Townsville.