Gondwana Land

The far north of Queensland is the only place in the world where two world heritage sites join onto each other. We've already visited the Great Barrier Reef, and today it's a visit to the Daintree Rainforest.

We could drive there ourselves but we opt to take Tony's Tours, which will be easier and more informative. The tours also have a maximum of 8 people on them, so no crowds.

We're picked up at early o'clock and driven by Dave to the Mossman Gorge. It's raining and everyone takes umbrellas, apart from us. A) It's not that wet under the canopy and B) We're Scottish, it's not that wet.

After a short walk we are driven to the Daintree River where we board a boat for a cruise down this haunt of the estuarine crocodile.

3 metre female

A well camouflaged youngster

Green tree snake

As you can see, everything that lives here is well-camouflaged and perfectly adapted to this ancient environment. And, even though there are dozens of crocs in the vicinity, we only spot two or three. Which is good because it means they are avoiding humans, which works well for both species, but especially for them.

On the way to our next stop we hit a minor traffic jam caused by cars stopping to catch sight of something in the forest. Just at the edge of the forest a big black shape is bustling about. It raises its neck and reveals itself as a Cassowary, as close to a living dinosaur as you'll ever see on land. It's a realtive of the emu about six feet tall, black body, vivd blue neck and a large horny plate on its head. Although we can't see it, it also has a wicked 5 inch long middle claw which it uses to disembowel things it doesn't like. Which is why we don't leave the car for a closer look, unlike some other idiots.

Something like this (not my photo)

This is quite an amazing encounter considering the rarity of these birds, the lack of visibility in this location and the scale of the forest. This exaggerates the whole jurassic park feel.

The next stop is 'morning tea' at Cape Tribulation, with locally produced Daintree tea and coffee on offer.

Black Butcher Bird

We have lunch in the rainforest and the antipodeans on the trip convince an American girl to try Vegemite, with predictable results.

Strangler Vine

Inside the Strangler Vine

We take several more short walks with Dave bestowing a mix of genuine info and his own brand of practical jokery. The best example being when he reaches into a hole in the rainforest floor and threatens to draw out a local tarantula, which freaks out several people.

We finish off the day by returning back to Port Douglas and Dave pulls over to show us the local fruit bat population. Who knows how we missed them before cos there are only about 50,000 of them pretty much in the middle of town.

Sydney to Port Douglas

Another early start sees us leaving the house at 5.30am to get the shuttle to Sydney for the 8.15 flight to Cairns. We've scored a decent deal for 4 nights in Port Douglas and we're really looking forward to it, despite the usual drudgery involved with airports and other people in general.

Port Douglas is about 60km north of Cairns, which is in itself about 2500km north of Sydney, towards the far northern tip of the east coast. To put a bit of perspective on things that's like going from Edinburgh to Moscow without leaving the country. Although we are going from New South Wales to far north Queensland so there may be some who would disagree about that last bit. As I'm doing the whole perspective thingy (and I've just found a funky online distance calculator), our arrival in Port Douglas not only puts us firmly in the tropic of capricorn but a mere 500 miles from Papua New Guinea.


I'm sure that all of this is fascinating enough in itself but the real reason we are here is that Port Douglas is wedged between two world heritage sites, namely the Daintree Rainforest and that other natural wonder the Great Barrier Reef. Which promises a whole host of opportunities for new experiences and winter temperatures of 30 degrees, backed up with sea temperatures of about 24 degrees. Not too shabby.

We rock up to the hotel in the early afternoon, sort ourselves out and then head out to orientate ourselves via the many lively hostelries in the town.