Cape Tribulation

Once on the other side of the Daintree river we pull off to our first real tourist attraction, the Daintree Discovery Centre. The centre is set deep in the rainforest has a number of walks, a rainforest tower, taking you 25 metres to the roof of the forest as well as a visitors centre and an audio guide you can listen to as you walk the trails...

The gumphf promised to get us up close and personal with the wildlife of a rainforest... they literally must have just fumigated the whole place when we arrived as we saw nothing! Plenty of bird calls which on retrospect i think may have been played out on speakers cos even they weren't anywhere to be seen! The closest we got to the wildlife was the backend of a white lipped tree frog on the ceiling of the visitors centre...not impressed!

All along the roads of northern Queensland you see signs warning you to take care as Cassories are in the area. This endangured bird is a cross between an ostrich, a turkey and Rod Hull's emu - we think that by endangured they actually mean imaginary cos again we've seen no sign of the buggers!

Our accommodation in Cape Trib was, shall we say rustic, we did manage to see lots of wildlife though most of it whilst either using the toilet or having a shower...take a look at this lovely fella who accompanied me <Mark> for each of my showers.

I make no apologies for the quality of the shot, i was standing some distance away and shaking more than a little. We've taken the view that everything out here is likely to kill you so always best to err on the side of caution ;o)

Whilst basic the camp site is located right on the beach, perfect for spending some time chilling out and basking in the sun...oh wait this is their winter time isn't it...The weather was less than kind to us for our three days. The first day was the best so we ambled along the beaches, took in some boardwalks and lookout points and generally relaxed.

The 2nd day we wanted to take a trip out to the reef (it's one of the closest points to it) in the afternoon, but being their low season and the weather not being great there weren't any running so we booked up for the following morning. That night the heavens opened and didn't stop...trying to sleep in a tin van with raining hammering down is far from easy. Waking at 7am the following morning to prep for the trip we were told it had been cancelled as there seemed little chance of the weather clearing up which was a downer...glad they cancelled it though rather than subjecting us to turbulent unrelenting seas though!