GBR Do-over & Kuranda Area

The four of us unanimously decided that if we were all the way down under, we needed to visit the great barrier reef more than once, so off we went, this time, with Tusa Dive. We met up with the boat at the Cairns marina at 7:40.

Wanda, Todd & Brent opted for the intro dive session, with 2 dives and Jill took over Wanda’s job of Snorkel Queen and photographer! We donned our gear and all got in the water. 

The intro divers had to prove their training through a few simple tests. 1. Regulator out of mouth while blowing bubbles and return to mouth 2. Regulator recovery 3. Clearing mask in water.

Wanda was first in these tasks and panic ensued! “there is no frickin’ way I can do this!” Elise (the dive instructor), tough loved Wanda by grabbing her and ordered her “you ARE doing this!”. As a result, wanda passed her test with flying colors and they went down into the reef abyss…

Needless to say we all had a great time and were amazed at all the sites we saw! 

 

 

Our last day in the Cairns area involved a scenic train ride up to Kuranda and the Skyrail back down overtop of the rainforest area.

This was pretty cool. The train was built in the mining era (1800’s) and built by immigrants by hand, in fact they could only get hired on if they brought their own tools. There were amazing views, 15 tunnels, and waterfalls along the way. The train ride was about 2 hours and took us up over 400 metres and 37 km to Kuranda. The passenger cars were all over 100 years old.

Kuranda was a very hippie/artsy fartsy type town (aka big tourist trap) but had cool things to look at.

After a short little walk, some coffee, shopping, lunch and touring, we headed back down via the skyrail.  This was a Poma gondola ride (without ski's and snow of course!) overtop of the rainforest canopy with 2 pitstops of scenic lookouts and boardwalks. Its hard to describe the rainforest, it is so thick and dense, you can’t see the floor. And the vast different colors of green, it is truly amazing.

That ends our week in the Cairns area (I hope you are saying it correctly in your heads “caaaans”) and the last of extreme heat and sweating for us cool Canadians. We are headed south to “acclimatize” ourselves slowly back to Canadian spring temperatures on Kangaroo Island (20C)

Great Barrier Reef, Where the rainforest meets the reef and Bloomfield track

Port douglas was a bit of a touristy town; filled with tonnes of people wanting to get to the great barrier reef and 4 main tour companies begging to take you to the great barrier reef. We opted for Calypso Reef Cruises, which included 1.5 hour motor out to GBR and 3 stops on the reef: Tongue Bay, Opal Bay and another one i forget.

back of boat snug up against the GBR

There are no words to describe all the sights you see under the water. If you have the chance to see it for yourself i highly recommend it! We learned alot from the amazing crew on Calypso that i will share with you:
- There was a male dominant fish on tongue reef and a harem of female fish (most reefs have the same) and this fish was named Angus. If Angus dies or goes to another reef, the next largest female fish will (over the course of about 4 weeks) have a sex change and turn into the next dominant male fish! Crazy hey.
- Same thing goes for (finding)nemo type of fish, except opposite. There is a female dominant with a harem of males. She emits a chemical in the water that keeps the males, male. When she dies or moves on and the chemical isn't dispersed anymore, the next largest male fish will have a sex change to be the next dominant female fish.
- the GBR is a) the largest living entity that b) can be seen from space
- Where we were snorkeling was about 5 metres max, if you motored another km east, it would be 300 metres and one more km would get you to 2km deep of ocean.
Here are some awesome pics:

large clam

I did three snorkels and todd did 2 snorkels and an intro dive.

Todds dive getup

The next day took us up to the Daintree Rainforest, for those who don't know the Daintree is the oldest rainforest in the world. To get here, we had to cross a river ferry and there were various spots along the windy road to take boardwalk treks through the rainforest. Not sure if you remember a few blog posts back, we talked about cassowary birds (from the Australia zoo) They had a weird hard thing on their head and they are almost extinct and play a big role in maintaining the rainforest. They only eat fruit and poop out the fruit seeds, which in turn, drops on the ground and grows another rainforest tree. Some people saw them along the boardwalks and we were looking for them but didn't find one. Only thing we saw was this:

The other claim to fame with the Daintree is that it is the only rainforest that meets the reef. In Cape Tribulation, you stand on the beach and see that the rainforest actually reaches out to the reef in the ocean. Crazy.

We landed that night at the Cape Trib Beachhouse, which was associated with hosteling international. The cabin was very rustic (plywood floors, walls and a tin roof!) but it was a pretty cool location.

There were some interesting creatures at the beachhouse area.

Monitor (aka komodo dragon!) at the main reception area at beachhouse

deathly spider and todds hand

Todd was very excited about taking the Bloomfield track, which was an old mining track and was only allowed to be used by 4 wheel drive vehicles. It was gravel road, with lots of ruts, creek crossings, steep inclines (30%) and a ford crossing. It was in true Donovan style that we took this road and ended up at the Lions Den (the oldest bar in Queensland built in the 1880's). This place had alot of character, history and a museum (that todd actually went into.

The floorboards, walls, roof, bar, etc were all from 1880's. It was a cool place and the lunch was great! The bloomfield track took us all the way to Cooktown, where Cap James Cook in 1770 hit a reef with his HMS Endeavor and beached the boat. He had to stay here for 2 months to fix the boat. A very laid back, hippy kinda town with alot of Cook history.

More boring vacation tidbits from Australia

We departed the marina on Wed morning and headed via Noni the Nissan, to Cairns (pronounced "Caaans", as Aussies don't say "r"s, so it looks like Cairns, but isn't). About 8 hours later, we arrived at Castaway Beach resort, at Trinity Beach. We took a short walk to the beach and this was our first site:

Gorgeous unobstructed, non-wavy beaches, BUT provided with nets for swimming. Why nets, you ask? Crocs and jellyfish are hazards in the ocean so this is where you have to swim so not to be attacked.

Todd and I decided to stretch our legs and head on a waterfall hike (i'm sure you are not surprised by this plan!) We went to crystal cascades and lake morris. Both were walks thru the rainforest. With all our rainforest treks, i kept smelling this familiar smell that took me back to 1980, but i had a hard time pinpointing this. Finally, i realized that the smell of rainforest is similar to the smell of the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon (my sisters might remember this flora smell if presented the challenge).

Todd walking up rainforest "bitchumen" or "sealed" pathway to crystal cascades

We also decided to drive up a 16 km windy zigzag road to Lake Morris, which was where all the potable water came from for the city of Cairns. It was gorgeous, a lake in the middle of the rainforest at 600 metres above sealevel.

Lake Morris

and here is the city of Cairns. Gorgeous veiw.

Our second day in the area, we thought we would drive around the country side and see what this part of Aus was all about. We took the scenic route up to Kuranda, then down to Atherton, Mallaa Mallaa and back to Trinity beach. The countryside included alot of shitty brush, termite mounds, rainforest and (shockingly) waterfalls galore.

termite mound, about 4 feet tall

here's a water fall

and a cool tree with mushrooms growing out of it

We were quite shocked at the countryside of the upcountry.

All in all, we saw 5 sets of falls and a crater before we made it back home. There is so much to see and do in such a small area.That night we ended up at an "abo" experience dinner and dance, which we thought was going to be just like a hawaiian luau, but this was so much better. The indigenous people have this center in  Cairns where you can learn to play the digerydoo, throw boomerangs and spears, start fires learn to dance, abo style. This was really cool. Look at us!

Day 3 took us out of Trinity Beach, heading north to Port douglas. The higlights of this area include Mossman Gorge (where we swam in the worlds second cleanest water source) and quick access to the GBR (great barrier reef). Today we saw the Gorge, and tomorrow we are headed to the GBR!