Overland Australia

One of the main reasons for us coming to Cairns was to experience the Kuranda Scenic Railway and the Cairns Skyrail which we had booked onto today. We made our way to the Skyrail terminal at Smithfield and then caught the shuttle bus to the Freshwater Train station where we boarded the train to Kuranda. The kids were very excited as they had never been on a train before let alone a cable car on a sky rail. The train ride up the range was fantastic and we passed through 15 tunnels and over several bridges past beautiful waterfalls. to think that this railway was built by hand in the late 1880's is amazing. We stopped at Barron Falls to stretch the legs and take some photo's, the creation of Tinaroo Dam has reduced the flow of the water and I can only imagine how impressive they would be in full flow after some rain. From here it was another 10 minutes and we were disembarking at Kuranda Station. We walked through the township and explored the markets and then found a pub to ...

Today was another huge day in the car (not)… We had to kill time so we didn't get to the caravan park in Cairns too early so we took our time packing up and were on the road just after 10am. The drive from Port Douglas to Cairns along the Captain Cook Highway is very spectacular and to slow us down we stopped in at most of the look outs along the way. We also stopped at Ellis Beach and had a walk down the beach to stretch the legs. We got to the out skirts of Cairns by 11.30 and we still needed to kill more time so I followed some signs out to Holloways Beach where we found a park for the kids and had some lunch. After an hour or so we continued south to Sunland Leisure Park which seemed to have positive comments on Wiki Camps and was quiet cheap. As you will know by now we aren't fans of caravan parks and when we were handed keys to unlock the bathrooms and told to lock everything at all times to prevent theft we knew we had booked into a dodgy area... Anyway we had booked o...

Every Sunday morning there are markets in Port Douglas and my girls just love to wonder around markets, so off we went to seek out some bargains and unique market treasures…. The markets are quite big and very popular, after doing the rounds and the girls buying some goodies we walked down the main street of Port Douglas and had some coffee and cake. Port Douglas is a nice resort town if you like that kind of thing but its not our cup of tea and we were very glad to be staying out of town at the Big 4 which is great for the kids and the real reason we stayed here. Once back at the caravan park the kids were off to the water park and had a great time playing with the other kids and having a ball, I wished we had these kinds of things when I was a kid. Distance Traveled = 18 km Total distance traveled with camper = 37,223 km   Total number of nights in the camper = 274

It was with some sadness that we packed up our camp at Noah's Beach, we had a really great time here exploring the Daintree region and would recommend staying here to anyone passing through this way. Once on the road it wasn't long until we were at the Daintree River Ferry, just a heads up if you are traveling south you can't use EFTPOS its cash only. EFTPOS is available for travelers going north from the ferry terminal on the southern bank. We managed to scrape together enough cash for the $19 one way fare... For lunch we headed to Mossman Gorge and ate our wraps in the car park before jumping on the shuttle bus to the gorge. There is a nice boardwalk here through the rainforest and a couple of lookouts that give you great views of the water. On the walk Erin managed to spot a Boyd's Forest Dragon which is endemic to the wet tropics, she did really well as it took me a while to spot it. From here we were back on the road and before long we arrived at the Big 4 Ca...

This morning was another cracker start to the day with hardly any wind compared to the previous days, so after breakfast we decided to go for another walk on Noah's Beach. The tide was quiet low and we were able to walk around the headland on the northern part of the beach and found a beautiful little cove that you can only access easily on low tide. After our walk we jumped in the car and traveled south to Cow Bay and had another stroll along the beach, on the way back to the car the kids found a swing that was strung up in a palm tree and had a great time. After a quick morning tea of scones made in the Ecopot we drove a little further south to the Daintree Discovery Centre and spent a good 2 hours walking around soaking up all the information. Its a self guided tour but you have access to audio players that provide you with the relevant information along the way, very informative and the kids had a fabulous time. From here we moved onto the Jindalba boardwalk which was a nic...

I got up just before 6am and went down to the beach to try and get some time lapse photography of the sun rise, unfortunately it was very overcast and not the best sun rise but it was very peaceful to have the whole beach to myself. The wind had dropped this morning and after breakfast we drove north to check out Cape Tribulation and Myall Beach. Cape Tribulation was beautiful; and we thoroughly enjoyed walking along the boardwalk out to the lookout and then along a sandbar on the beach. Most of the clouds from earlier this morning had burnt off and we had perfect weather at Cape Tribulation. From here we took a short drive back to Myall Beach and whilst we were walking through the rainforest to the beach the weather changed again with the wind picking up and clouds coming down off the ranges behind the coast. Myall Beach wasn't as nice as the beach at Noah's campground so we decided to head back to camp have a quick swim there. Whilst Anna was preparing lunch I rotated our...

I was a bit excited this morning as we are driving the Bloomfield track down to Cape Tribulation, the Bloomfield track is a 4wd track and used to be quite challenging but the majority of the steep climbs have now been concreted and the drive wasn't very hard. The scenery however was spectacular with beautiful rainforest covered mountain ranges plunging into the sea. We started from the north at Bloomfield and stopped in at the Bloomfield Falls for a quick look around, these falls had a fair bit of water coming over them and the thundering water was quite loud. It didn't take us too long to drive the 30 odd kilometers and we were soon at Cape Tribulation and a few kilometers down the road we found our campsite at Noah's Beach in the Daintree National Park. The campground is located in the rainforest just behind the beach and is very shady and cool, once we had lunch we walked down to the beach and had a stroll along the stunning coastline. Unfortunately the wind on the bea...