We had originally planned to be in this region in September/October, which would’ve been ideal timing, but the delay to our travels meant that we were hitting rainy season or ‘The Wet’. as its known. With this in mind we decided to start our East Coast trip up North to hopefully avoid the worst of it, as it gets wetter as January and February progress – so an overnight flight from Perth to Cairns was booked for 30 December, arriving New Year’s Eve.

So that hope of avoiding the worst of the weather? In the week leading up to our arrival Debbie started monitoring the Cairns weather forecast – oh sh*t, The Wet was having a flying start, 2 weather systems had collided, a year’s worth of rain had fallen in 2 days, large parts of FNQ were under water, communities were totally cut off and thousands of cattle lost. Even the day before travel, flooding had closed the road to our destination. Should we abandon our flight to Cairns and invoke Plan B? Actually, what was Plan B?? It went to the wire but forecasts were improving so we went for it – worst case we could find accommodation near Cairns airport for a night if the road was still closed.

Our Jetstar flight from Perth to Cairns was barbaric, in both timing and comfort – a 23.05 departure and 05.30 arrival, but only 4 hours 25 minutes flight time as we were crossing time zones, so limited time for sleep. We’d paid for flexible tickets which came with long legroom seats – 1E for Debbie, 13E for Steve – our legs might not have been squashed but we both were, between people in aisle and window seats. By the time we collected our bags, from the entertaining (even when sleep-deprived and grumpy) luggage carousel, we only had an hour to pass until the hire car office opened at 7am.

Our car was a luxurious full-sized SUV for a bargain price of £110 for 6 days – until the scaremongering rental agent pressured us into taking the additional insurance which more than doubled the price. We have a car hire excess insurance add-on with our excellent True Traveller insurance, but the guy was quick to point out all the things it wouldn’t cover, including the full cost of the car if it gets washed away in a flood, roadside assistance if we get stuck in a flood, plus loss of income from any future bookings. He deserved an Oscar for the performance – but with the storm and flooding conditions as they were, we were convinced to not take any unnecessary financial risks.

Port Douglas

We’d opted not to stay in Cairns as it’s just a city and Debbie remembered from her trip to Oz 20+ years ago that Port Douglas (about 40 miles North) was lovely, offered everything that Cairns did, with arguably better access to The Great Barrier Reef and a better location to visit the ancient Daintree rainforest and Cape Tribulation. So we’d booked an apartment for 5 nights at Hibiscus Resort & Spa. Check-in wasn’t until 14.00 but we were there by 9am (the weather was sunny and the roads were clear!) and as soon as we could get a space in the car park we secured sunbeds at the swimming pool, told the cleaners that we were there and requested that they let us know when the apartment was ready – job done, by 11am we were in and could catch up on some much needed sleep.

We managed to wake up in time to get out for the New Year’s Eve celebrations though – a couple of beers, a couple of cocktails, some great fireworks on the river-front and then more wine on our balcony as we were now wide awake after sleeping most of the day.

Port Douglas is a lovely little village with some nice shops, exclusive restaurants (and more accessible ones), upscale resorts, plenty of bars, a superyacht marina, 4-Mile Beach and an amazing lookout point. It’s definitely the posh cousin of Cairns!

We didn’t eat out much as (1) we couldn’t be bothered getting ready some nights, easier to cook in our apartment while quaffing a bargain £7 magnum of Yellowtail Shiraz, (2) there was a biblical thunderstorm one evening and no sane person would venture out in that (except Debbie did, to collect a delicious Thai takeaway, and when she got back the thunderstorm had triggered the evacuation sirens in the apartment) and (3) we’d be bankrupt if we ate out every night as Port Douglas prices reflect its exclusivity. But we had to have one posh meal while we were there and Wrasse and Roe had caught Debbie’s eye – fabulous seafood with the menu explained by a waitress from Reading – starters of scallops and tuna tartare followed by Debbie’s first Moreton Bay Bugs (OMG!) and snapper for Steve, a bottle of Pinot Gris and a parfait/meringue dessert to share.

The Great Barrier Reef

Steve is no longer allowed to dive due to his lung condition so Debbie decided not to rub salt in the wounds by going on a boat that offered both diving and snorkelling – she didn’t feel the need to tick ‘Dive The Great Barrier Reef’ off her bucket list and had read that it wasn’t that amazing anyway, with significant coral bleaching. So we booked a snorkelling-specific boat with Calypso Reef Cruises, liking the look of this one as it wasn’t as huge as Quicksilver who were transporting 300+ passengers out to a platform on the reef. It was still big boat with around 60 snorkelers, but we were away from all the other boats and had the reef sites to ourselves. Summer in FNQ means that we had to wear stinger suits to protect us from the deadly box jellyfish – particularly flattering Lycra all-in-ones with hoods and mitts to cover as much exposed flesh as possible. The XLs were a bit tight but we managed with only minor circulation loss – and at the end of the trip that we noticed they had 3 sizes bigger available!

Anyway, was the reef as over-rated as Debbie had heard? Nope! Some well selected sites with amazingly heathly hard corals near the surface, all the usual beautiful marine life, a white-tipped reef shark whizzing past us, an incredibly large and very grumpy Titian Triggerfish below etc etc. We don’t have any underwater photos as someone couldn’t be arsed to carry his GoPro around Australia !

An amazing day and more enjoyable than we expected. There ARE better reefs out there (Red Sea & North Sulawesi spring to mind) but this is the iconic Great Barrier Reef and we were delighted to have experienced it.

Daintree & Cape Tribulation

About 30 miles north of Port Douglas we entered the Daintree Rainforest, one of the oldest in the world (180 million years). We took a tour on the Daintree River with Solar Whisper, a solar powered boat that would be able to get closer to the wildlife. We saw a huge water python (not dangerous) on the riverbank but that was it on the wildlife – not a bloody crocodile to be seen. The Dutch skipper/guide was very informative and dry-funny (as the Dutch tend to be), but the crocs had gone AWOL. Nevertheless we learned a lot about ‘salties’ and ‘freshies’ (avoid the former at all costs) and could’ve gone on another trip free of charge as we’d not had a croc sighting.

Onwards and upward, we crossed the Daintree River on a ferry similar to Kingswear-Dartmouth Higher Ferry – 2 minutes, £25 return – and set off through the amazing Daintree Rainforest, reaching Cape Tribulation after half an hour or so. It was dull and overcast, with rain threatening, but utterly spectacular nevertheless. This is apparently the world’s most dangerous beach – where saltwater crocodiles lurk in the coastal waters – and the warning signs are everywhere. But still the daft tourists go for a paddle, and turn their back on the water/crocs. Darwinian!

Sadly we missed the Mossman Gorge as we’d not researched properly, assuming it was a natural attraction that you could just walk to – but it actually has a visitor centre and closing time which we’d missed by an hour, so ho hum.

Many tourists come to Cairns for excursions out the The Great Barrier Reed and don’t venture this far North – big mistake – it’s wildly beautiful and atmospheric.

Kuranda

A village in the rainforest – getting to & from which is an extraordinary journey whether you travel by road, through the Barron Gorge on the world-famous Kuranda Scenic Railway or float above the rainforest canopy on the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway. We opted to do Skyrail up and train down, primarily as the weather tends to be better in the morning so more chance of good views from the Skyrail. As it turned out, that was a very lucky decision as the Skyrail was closed in the afternoon due to heavy rain and thunderstorms – we aren’t sure what happened to the people stuck up in Kuranda village expecting to take the Skyrail down!

Skyrail up was awesome – a 7.5 Km cable with 6-person pods flying high above the rainforest (we couldn’t see the floor, the trees were THAT tall), a little disconcerting when the cablecars stopped mid-way. We had a stop to look out over the forest and then an optional stop at Barron Falls. The family sharing our pod opted not to get off as they’d seen the falls before – OMG, they missed a treat. As it’d been raining (understatement), the falls were in flood flow with an unimaginable volume of water flowing over the edges. It’s difficult to describe the enormity and noise but Steve’s sister Linz sent us some compare/contrast photos of when she was there in dry season….

Linz’s dry season pics…..

The village of Kuranda is tourist-central but in quite a cute way – we ignored the shops, tried some ‘famous’ pies from Annabel’s (delicious), sampled a turquoise ginger beer (no idea why it’s that colour) at the Kuranda Hotel and visited the Koala Gardens. The latter classes itself as a ’boutique wildlife attraction’ – a small petting zoo with the opportunity to get close to well looked after and mainly friendly Aussie animals and reptiles. At this point we’d not yet seen a koala and were mesmerised by the cute fluffy creatures mainly asleep on branches. We chose not to stand in line to have a photo cuddling one as we’d heard they have a tendency to pee on people! We’d only seen a couple of kangaroos in the distance, or dead by the roadside, while driving through Western Australia so the opportunity to see various types at close quarters, and feed them if we wanted, was fabulous. One of the smaller marsupials, a red legged pademelon, was clearly carrying a joey in her pouch, but sadly he didn’t pop out to say hello. And after failing to see crocs on the Daintree River, there were plenty here, asleep by the side of a lake.

Our route down was the Kuranda Scenic Railway, a heritage train (vaguely resembling the Dartmouth Steam Railway which runs from our home village, but far more impressive and important), which takes 90 minutes to make the journey down the Barron River Gorge from Kuranda to Cairns. This feat of engineering provided crucial supply routes to support gold mining in the area and was completed in 1891 after 1500 men (mainly Irish and Italian for some reason) took 5 years to construct the 33Km of track which rises to over 300m above sea level, has 15 tunnels, 55 bridges and 98 curves – using only picks, shovels and dynamite. Even though it was now raining quite heavily, we kept the windows of the carriage open to take in the breathtaking views, stopping at the opposite side of Barron Falls to witness even more closely than we had on the other side of the gorge earlier. An amazing trip!

So a full-on time in Far North Queensland, and with weather that played nicely enough for us to do everything we’d planned. A really lovely part of the country, tropical, rainforest, reefs, sugar cane and a total contrast to what we’d seen of Western Australia. We loved it in wet season but can imagine it’d be absolutely stunning in the drier months – obviously the Barron Falls wouldn’t be so dramatic though.

We set off from Port Douglas early on 5th January, refuelled and returned the hire car (it turned out we’d not needed the extra insurance after all), then took an Uber to Cairns Railway Station to start our next adventure – the start of a 2,600 Km road trip by Greyhound Bus down the East Coast to Sydney….