The Redmans' Oz Adventure: Cairns, the Daintree and ‘The Tip’

JR sums it up:

Well, after the best stay you could possibly get in good old Oz we headed north through the Daintree rainforest then even more north to Cape York which is the highest point on Australian mainland. On the way out of Cairns we went to my mum’s friend’s house. I had a swim in her pool and she gave us heaps of info on the Cape. On a car we saw, it said “Cape York right, 9,336,000 corrugations to go!” I felt a bit impressed and excited. We drove straight through Port Douglas and Mossman and we finally reached the beautiful Daintree.

Our first night was in a little caravan park deep in the ‘jungle’. There were walking tracks in the rainforest which had had some sightings of cassowaries over the last few days, but (of course) we didn’t see any. But the bush, the birds, the insects, a rat kangaroo and a brush turkey made the walk special. Best of all, we were deep in a rainforest. The damp air and the smell of rotting vegetation weren’t always pleasant, but we loved it.

A welcome relief was a dip in a fresh water (croc free) pool. A rope from a tree lead to heaps of fun for us all, and the brim loved bread. These are Ruby’s legs.

Next stop was Cape Tribulation. Captain Cook named it as he had some dramas here, something to do with sailing ships and reefs. But again it was a rope hanging from a tree which stole the show.

We were working our way up the Bloomfield Track to Cooktown. This was a fantastic 4WD track – not rough, but tough in thick rainforest. Several hill climbs were quite steep. The first few were 25%. It was 1^st gear low range stuff. The tyres were gripping and slipping and gripping and slipping on the gravel track. We knew there were some 33% climbs ahead. With a 1.5 tonne TrakShak on the back we thought the steeper climbs would beat us, but thankfully they were concreted! Very steep and very slow, but great.

The Bloomfield Track was great for lots of reasons, thick rainforest, beautiful river crossings, pretty little towns/aboriginal communities. Ella especially loves this sort of driving:

Lunch was at the Lion’s Den Pub. At over 100 years of age it had heaps of history on its wall to read – interesting stuff.

Our push north started from Cooktown with full fridges and fuel tanks. We explored the Lakefield National Park. It was nice but we have been spoilt by the Gibb River Road, so we didn’t even take a photo! Our first night, along with all the other travellers up here at this time of year, was at the Musgrave Roadhouse.

The next night was spent at Coen where we met Leanne Ellis and Sean Sellwood for drinks at the Exchange Hotel (the only pub in town). Then we headed for Seisia, the northern most town on Australia’s mainland. There is only one thing going for Seisia – awesome fishing.

Ella hooked a good sized fish which she couldn’t pull in. The line cut her finger. I took over and was struggling with it when, just a few metres from the jetty, there was a huge thrashing about in the water and her line went limp, bitten clean through. Another rig and fish lost to a shark. Others fishing hooked sharks and got them to the edge of the jetty before having to cut them free.

We made the trip to Thursday Island. The boat trip was the best part. It was another tiring day.

The next day we made the push to the northern most tip of Australia. We were very happy indeed to have made it to this place. It is just a shame that a swim was out of the question (due to crocs and sharks).

The time had finally come to start heading south.

We made our way back to Coen again. On our way we stopped for a swim at Fruit Bat Falls and Elliot Falls. Beautiful …

At Coen we did a bit of cleaning up.

Then it was on to Port Douglas for a couple of nights. It was great to swim in the ocean, all be it with the protection of a shark, croc and stinger proof net.