Roaming Kangaroos

Sunday 26 November

Another traveling day, as we make our way south towards Sydney. We were quite sorry to leave the hotel at Surfers Paradise, definitely the best accommodation on the tour so far and Colin munched his way through pancakes with maple syrup and brown sugar (!) on top of his usual five courses. We would be continuing along the coastal road, Pacific Highway 1, all the way to Coffs Harbour - 367 kms or 240 miles away. As we left the town behind, we almost immediately passed the border sign between the two states – very insignificant road signs saying “Welcome to New South Wales” on our side of the road, and “Welcome to Queensland” on the other. This was nothing like crossing the border from South Australia to Northern Territory and nothing to take any photos of to mark the occasion. The countryside soon resumed to green rolling hills and pasture, supporting herds of Herefords and Aberdeen Angus (no sheep yet) and fruit farms.

Our first stop was at Byron Bay, another centre for backpackers, a bit like Yangshuo, but on the coast.. The town was made up of small cafes – full of holidaymakers having a late Sunday morning breakfast/brunch - souvenir shops and beach clothes shops. We made our way along the high street to the beach – another beautiful strand of white sands, with huge rolling waves pounding the beach. There were lots of people in the water, and it looked so inviting, I couldn’t resist taking my shoes off and wading in – jumping over the waves like a child!! It wouldn’t have taken much to wade right in – but I didn’t have my swimmers. All that exertion made us thirsty, so time for a drink – the pub was nearest refreshment venue, and we had been told it also had the best loos. When Colin ordered the drinks – Sprite was off – so we just had to have beers – at 10.30 in the morning! But by this time it was very hot outside, so a long cool glass of amber nectar was very welcome. The lighthouse on the far side of the bay has become the most popular place for weddings in New South Wales. A few of the group took a cab up to the lighthouse, for better views of the bay, and were late back – tut! tut!.

We stopped for a short photo break at Lennox Head, another bay, a few kilometres further up the coast. Four hang gliders were taking off from the cliffs, the strong sea breezes taking them up into the thermals. I was amazed at how fast they could go and how much control of direction and height there was. People were flying tandem, so having some hunky Aussie holding on to you could also be a bonus. If we had been stopping longer, I would have loved to have had a go – apparently there are opportunities in New Zealand so I shall be keeping my eyes open for those.

On our way again, it was not long before we came on a “Road Closed” sign for an accident (at least they gave you a reason), but the detour meant, not only would we not be able to visit the prescribed lunch stop, but it would put an extra hour on our journey today. The countryside here was at its best in the sunshine, so we just sat back and looked out of the window. Many of the towns and villages in this area had familiar names – Lismore, Warwick, Glencoe – with smart single storey houses, many raised off the ground so appearing as if they were two stories, with very neat, pretty gardens with lots of flowers.

Our new lunch stop turned out to be at MacDonalds in Casino – a small sleepy town in the back of beyond. We were surprised that Maccy D’s was full of local people – having brunch with the children or grandchildren? – and also that most of our group chose this eaterie over KFC next door. The cost here is so much cheaper than at home – two Quarter Pounder meals for less than 5 GBP.

After lunch Jenn put on a video about the life of a koala bear, but I snoozed through most of it. We passed through Grafton, a fair sized city of around 30,000 inhabitants on the banks of Clarence River (locally known as Big River). As we entered the town we crossed over the river via a huge steel span bridge, which had the railway line running beneath the road. The city has a large redstone cathedral at the centre of the shopping area, standing tall amongst all the other single storey buildings. This was once was a wool port (so there must have been sheep here at one time), but now it concentrates on timber and logging from the nearby woodlands, cattle and potatoes. The residential area had sprawled about five miles out from the centre on our way in, where there is a cement works, and the city was still expanding with several new development sites. It has been called the “Jacaranda centre of Australia”, although most of the blossoms had now died – it was a stunning sight in October we were told.

We were nearly at Coffs Harbour, when we took a ‘surprise’ detour off the Highway to Heritage Village, a new development, still with many hectare plots for sale. As we wound our way along the new road, we saw groups of kangaroos sitting in the shady areas under the trees. One group had sixteen, another fourteen as well as some singles. They sat staring at us as we watched them, some females with joeys in their pouches. One big old male stood up and beat his chest with his front paws – he looked so funny, you could imagine him in the boxing ring – while others hopped with their great long springy strides across the grassy patches and into the trees. The houses in this village do not have separating fences, so the kangaroos are free to roam at will. They were a delight, especially as some of the passengers hadn’t really seen any kangaroos on this trip.

We then made our way into the Novatel Pacific resort on the edge of Coffs Harbour – a large green oasis, with lakes and a golf course, on the edge of the bay. This is another quite tired hotel, in need of some modernization. The rooms were all in a concrete block, painted in old fashioned cream, with heavy metal patio doors which clanged loudly as you opened and closed them. We had all the facilities we needed, and it was clean and serviceable for one night. We were on the fifth floor and from the open corridor outside our front door, we could see an ‘Olympic’ sized swimming pool, whilst from our room, we could see a large lake with lots of water lilies, when looking across the tops of the trees and shrubs reaching up to our balcony. I spent my ‘free time’ checking a couple of the blogs I had written on the coach, while Colin wrestled with the air con system, finally giving it up as a hopeless case – there was a large unit standing on the floor near the windows in the room, with a huge ‘box’ taking up half of the balcony (it didn’t work until a man came and fixed it later in the evening).

The reception and restaurant were in a separate building a short walk away, set beside another lake, with ducks and lizards. We all congregated in the bar for a drink and chat, one of the first times this has happened spontaneously on this tour. Dinner was a table d’hote menu – the entrée portions were huge – pea and hock soup in a large serving bowl, the mushroom risotto was tasty but more than sufficient for a main course. One of the main courses was blue-eyed cod, but it came us as a white fish fillet. For me, the dessert was the best course (how unlikely is that?) – lemon and lime tart – it was delicious. As this was our last dinner together we seemed to spend longer tonight at the tables chatting, and it was well past 22.00 by the time we got back to our room. We still had to sort our suitcases - putting more in our hand luggage, as we could be carrying our bags upstairs at the Victoria Hotel – and complete our comment forms – Jenn has said all the way through the tour, anything we thought could be improved should be mentioned on the comment forms – well there just wasn’t enough room for all we had to say, so it was a case of prioritizing and précising. Overall this trip has been fair, but there have been many instances where small changes could have made a big difference, and the food has not been as good as we anticipated for a premier tour. We have decided to book some day tours in Sydney and Melbourne with APT – we were enticed by the 20% discount - so I hope these are of a good standard – I have every confidence they will be.

Memories of Steve Irwin

Saturday 25 November

Another early morning on the move – another ferry to catch – we are becoming used to this pattern as we leave an island for the third time this week. By the time we boarded the ferry, the sun was up, promising another hot day. In Queensland, they do not have Daylight Saving Time (the equivalent of our British Summer Time) – the only state in Australia not to change their clocks to get lighter summer evenings, so the day starts. around dawn at 04.00, but is dark in the evening by 18.00. Although it is light by 04.00 the actual sunrise isn’t till around 05.30 and even then it seems to take quite a long time to come up far above the horizon – a bit like the Southern Cross at night cannot be seen in the night sky here until around 23.00, when it rises from the east – very strange.

The crossing today was very flat, the sea seeming like a mirror, reflecting the high white clouds floating overhead. The smoke we saw on the way over was now just a few thin wispy spires rising from the trees – presumably the burn was over. At Hervey Bay, all the luggage was checked – why it is not checked back the resort, when any problems can be sorted, I am not sure – but it was all present, and soon loaded on to the coach. It wasn’t long before we were speeding south along the motorway towards city life once more. Towns and villages were closer together and the traffic was building, as we made our way towards Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo on the outskirts of Brisbane. The countryside became rolling green hills, with some temperate woodland, and the grass looked lusher than any we have seen in this country so far – the drought has meant that the grass has been poor and scrubby or even non existent since we left Sydney four weeks ago. We watched a Steve Irwin video on the way, to get us into “Crickey” mode.

We were timed to arrive at the Zoo before midday so that we could see the crocodile feeding show, and we only just made it. The people were very welcoming, and we boarded one of the shuttle trains to take us to the crocoseum, a specially designed show centre for crocodiles. There had been displays of snakes, birds and reptiles in the arena before the crocodile show, but we were just in time to see, Murray, a large estuarine beast, being encouraged to swim through the channels, and into the pool as he was tempted with raw meat. These reptiles react to the vibrations of the keepers’ feet, walking along the edge of the pool brandishing long strips of raw meat. Crocodiles swim underwater without making any ripples on the surface, and when they sight their prey, they lunge upwards, if close enough, with just their head, and jaws wide open, snapping at the food, or they can stand on their enormously strong tails to reach their objective. When they sun themselves on the banks (or in this case, at the side of the pool) they lay with their mouths wide open, (not to catch insects) - apparently this keeps them cool. It was only a short display, but demonstrated the power of the reptile’s jaws. Everywhere we could see pictures and recordings of Steve Irwin, and “Crickey” and the Zoo is obviously making every attempt to carry on his love of reptiles and other wild animals as he would have wanted.

Our next stop in the Zoo was at the Tiger Temple, where we waited twenty precious minutes to see three tigers – Siberian and Bengal - fed milk from cartons, close to the windows of the large enclosure. They have five tigers at present, but space to hold sixteen which they hope to fill with their breeding programme. We had to be ready to leave by 14.00 and this did not give us any time to see much more of the Zoo, which was a great pity. It has been thoughtfully set out in gardens, with lots of signs and many of the enclosures are ‘open’ for you to wander around as well as there being lots of timed displays. We particularly would have liked to see the snakes and the otters, but ran out of time. We did meet a keeper carrying a blue tongued lizard which we petted – the skin felt just like a handbag! There were, of course, lots of people there – it was a Saturday – but it was by no means full, and we were able to roam and find our way around easily. If we are ever this way again, I am sure we could happily spend a day here with the animals.

We were then on our way to Surfers Paradise, the ‘playboy’ resort on the Gold Coast, with its high rise hotels, casinos and surfers beach. Not all our fellow travelers were pleased to leave the Zoo so early, to get to a destination that has been in the news all week, with thousands of school leavers from Queensland and New South Wales descending on the area for one big party lasting a week or more (known as Schoolies Week). It happens every year. We had heard several reports about injuries and riotous behaviour, and when we arrived at the hotel, the manager welcomed us by telling us to beware of gangs of young people currently marauding the city! We were staying at the newly refurbished Holiday Inn, and our room on the 12th floor overlooked the main street, although we could see the sea and surf close by between the hotels. The room was probably we have had on this tour so far, large, newly decorated in white and grayish green paint, with all modern facilities. There was a window in the bathroom opposite the loo, overlooking the bedroom, which seemed strange, but they had provided a venetian blind for a bit of privacy!. Soon after we settled in we heard lots of processional drumming and wondered what sort of evening we were in for. When we ventured out around the town later, and found the Irish bar for a couple of drinks, the ‘drummers’ came past with a pretty girl clad in a sequined sparkly bikini and feather headdress, seeming to enjoy their celebrations. We decided to eat Indian and the restaurant across the road from the hotel – we hadn’t eaten curry since Adolf’s on Koh Samui so it really was a change – we couldn’t face another hotel buffet. Although not up to Adolf’s standards, it was very tasty – we had asked for medium, but to us it was very mild, although we had chosen dishes with a good range of flavours. The cost was slightly cheaper than we would expect to pay at home.

When we went back to the hotel, we encountered several more groups of young people all conga-ing and chanting merrily on their way round town, and did not see any bad behaviour at all – although it was only around 21.00. The boys were still pushing supermarket trolleys with packs of beer, so it might be a bit more lively later. Opposite the hotel there was a bungy jump in reverse – people are strapped in a chair, which is then stretched downwards on the elastic, so that when it is released it pings you up in the air, usually spinning all the time! I watched for some time, but didn’t see anyone brave enough to have a go – and it certainly was not for us. As we were feeling fairly tired tonight, we decided on an early night.

Surfers Paradise was originally an almost unreachable beach, used only by the sugar cane workers, who were able to ford creeks and rivers in their beat-up farm vehicles, to reach the 50 kms stretch of gleaming white sand and good surfing rollers coming in from the ocean. It wasn’t until 1923 that the first hotel was built, and in 1925 a bridge was erected over the biggest river in the area – the Nerang River. In World War II soldiers from the US and Australian armies recuperated in this area, and many of the Australians returned with families in later years. In the 1950’s a group of entrepreneurs (including Keith Williams of Hamilton Island fame), got together to develop the area, but realized they needed a promotional expert to advertise the venture to make it a success. A cycle manufacturer from Melbourne got the job and he was immediately elected as the Mayor. His idea was to clad beautiful young women in gold bikinis to wander the beach area, hopefully gaining publicity for the resort. It worked, and the area became internationally famous overnight in 1956. It continued to grow throughout the sixties and seventies, but in the early eighties with the world recession, the area began to collapse, businesses closing at a rate of at least fifteen a week. People moved out, and the tourist industry declined. But in 1989 there was a really good summer, and tourists visited the area again, and it started to redevelop. It now covers and area of 1,100 sq kms or 450 sq miles, with a population of around 350,000, and still growing. It is a very popular haven for people from both Brisbane and Sydney to take a relaxing break.

There are several ideas as to how the area got its name – Gold Coast - the golden sands which are really white not golden – or the golden success of the investors – or more likely, from the golden bikini-clad girls. This town is a typical resort area, with lots of high rise hotels and places to eat. I am sure if it we visited at another time, avoiding the Schoolies Week, it would be a good place to spend a few days. I didn’t get to sample the swimming pools in the hotel – there were three plus a Jacuzzi - or to venture into the waves on the beach, which looked great fun.

Not A Dingo In Sight!

Friday 24 November

We decided to give the 06.30 bird walk with a ranger a miss this morning as there was so much else crammed into the day – and we would only have had about 15 minutes for breakfast – how many courses could you eat in that time? – definitely not ten, and probably not five, so we had an extra half hour in bed.

This island is 123 kms long and between 7kms and 23 kms wide. It was formed between 700 and 500 million years ago, when it was part of the large continent including Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, Africa and South America, which had mountains larger than the Himalayas. These were eroded and the debris was deposited off the coast of the continent, which became the base of the Continental Shelf, now off the east coast of Australia, and forming the bed of the Great Barrier Reef. Eventually Australia separated from the continent, floating north. 80,000 years ago there was a mini ice age, and the waters receded – sea level being about 35 metres below what is today. The base rock was exposed and sand deposited on the rocks, and when the ice age finished and the waters rose, the islands were left. Over the years, the vegetable debris on the ground has built up a layer of earth, which supports the roots of trees sufficiently for them to grow tall. The whole island is like a sponge – fresh water is always just below the surface at sea level - so no droughts here. It is estimated that there is four times the amount of water in these sands than in Sydney Harbour (there’s that measurement again!).

There are over 100 lakes on the island, which fit into three categories: a window lake – a depression in the sand that goes below the water table and fills up with water; a barge lake where sand has blocked a creek and a lake has formed behind the sand bar; and a perch lake where there is a depression in the sand, well above the water table, which fills with rainwater, into a lake.

We had to meet at the village store nearby, for the Island Day Tour – run by the resort, not APT. We were to travel in 4WD coaches! – like ten ton trucks with forty seats, so other visitors accompanied us on this trip – only three of our group did not go. We had been warned it could be a bumpy ride, As the island is all sand, the roads are like compacted sand trails, with humps and ditches, and we bounced along, up and down, side to side (we were even warned not to put our heads too close to the windows) similar to our journey on ‘Wavepiercer’! – but more frightening as I felt the vehicle could turn over at any moment – no self-righting gear here. Branches thwacked the windows, with loud bangs, making us jump.

Our first stop was at Lake Mackenzie - a perch lake – which is about 80 metres above sea level, covering a huge sunken area. The Ph level in this lake is the same as that of our skin, so swimming in this water is supposed to be very efficacious and keep you looking young! - as well as an excellent cleaner of jewellery. Well, we all had to get in and swim - couldn’t miss an opportunity to look younger. The water was not as cold as it had been at Whitehaven beach, and was very refreshing – even at 09.00 in the morning. Everywhere you walked or swum there was lovely soft sand to walk on – although not so good for Colin who hates sand. By the time we had finished swimming, our driver had set up teas and coffees, brownies and Anzac biscuits – a cross between an oatcake and a gingersnap as “elevenses” at ten o’clock.

We continued on our drive through temperate and rain forests to Central Station, an old logging station, where we would walk in the rain forest. The island was first settled around 1870, when Yankee Jack Piggott moved in with a logging team, looking for three types of pine trees – hoop, cypress and scotch spruce. During the 1900’s more and more mechanization was introduced and they began to log other trees, including the “satinee” tree, which is also known as Fraser Turpentine. At first it was used to make furniture, but they found it was resistant to marine elements and therefore an excellent material with which to build piers and bridges. This wood was used in the construction of the Suez Canal and the rebuilding of the London Docks after World War II, and the same wood is still there today.

In 1992 the island became a National Park after lobbying by conservationists to stop the logging – they had been battling for years, but were finally successful as ecology became an important focus around the world. A year later the island was proclaimed a World Heritage site, which means that it cannot be changed or developed in any way, and they are very strict about things that could possibly change the environment – such as you cannot put on sun screen less than 20 minutes before going in a lake or creek, as it may change the Ph factors in the water.

We walked through the rain forest under the canopy – a welcome cool stroll out of the hot sun. We saw kookaburras, kingfishers diving in the creek, eels and other birds. We searched holes for spiders, but although we saw lots of webs there were no creepy crawlies in the open. We did see an enormous butterfly, black and cream lace patterned with a couple of red spots at the bottom of the wings, but it flitted around and just wouldn’t settle so we couldn’t capture it on the cameras. There were one hundred and thirty three steps back up from the path to the meeting point – I must be getting fitter as they were no problem at all.

But when we got back to the coach – oh dear – we could hear hissing – and it wasn’t a snake. One of the rear tyres had a fast puncture and was visibly deflating as we watched. Everybody off! – most of the passengers had returned before us and were already seated on the coach. The driver, looking crestfallen, found the jack and some tools, released the new tyre from under the coach, and began to lever up the side of the vehicle. It was a hot day anyway, and he wasn’t a small man, so it was not long before he had to remove his spectacles as the perspiration was blurring his vision. The “deaf” man, Arnold was there, under the wheel with the driver, first giving his guidance on the best way to do the job, and then with his camera out filming the ‘workers’, as other male passengers gave a helping hand. The driver managed to get the offending wheel off, but fitting the new wheel was not quite so easy. Getting his spade out, he dug underneath the tyre until it could fit snugly on the hub, and the bolts could be screwed back into place. Half an hour later, we were on our way again.

Lunch was at another resort, Eurong – another enjoyable buffet – perhaps Australia should be famous for buffets instead of barbeques! It was then time to head for Seventy Five Mile Beach, running the whole length of the ocean side of the island. It is an amazing stretch of continuous white sand, almost straight, so you can see the waves rolling in to the beach for miles in either direction. The coach drove along the sand near the waterline, over creeks and large patches of surface water – this is where the freshwater comes to the surface and mixes with the salt water wavelets.

Our first stop was at The Pinnacles, an accumulation of sandy peaks which vary in colour due iron elements in the sand – there are supposed to be 72 different hues from pale cream to deep gold – a paint chart in the sand. I haven’t visited Alum Bay on the Isle of Wight since I was a child, but I remember collecting different coloured sands in bands in a glass lighthouse – and they were all colours from white through yellows, reds, blues and browns to black. This is what I had expected here when they told us we were visiting the ‘Coloured Sands”. Not quite so spectacular as at home.

There are no rocks on the island, but we did see some craggy points on the beach – that looked exactly like lava rock – low dark brown clumps rising out of the sand. These are areas of sand and vegetation compacted together and when touched break very easily in your hand.

Our next stop on the beach was at the shipwreck of the SS Maheno, built in Dunbarton, Scotland to sail between Sydney and Auckland. Its turbine engines could reach 25 knots - although it mostly cruised at 11 knots - and the ship held the record for 25 years for the fastest crossing from Sydney to Auckland, at 2hours, 13 minutes and 26 seconds. During World War I it was commissioned as a hospital ship to transport wounded soldiers from Europe to England, but soon after resumed its cruising duties in Australasia. By 1935 it had become uneconomic and it was sold to a Japanese company, for scrap steel. Whilst being towed to Japan, it was caught in a freak cyclone off the coast of this island and the towrope broke, and the ship floundered here on this beach. There were attempts to refloat the vessel, but by the time these arrangements were made, it was stuck firm in the sand. The Japanese took what they could for salvage and the people of Hervey Bay took a lot more, and the rest was auctioned. What remains of this liner has lain here ever since, rusting away, as each tide pours in and covers the wreck. It has been used as target practice for both the American and Australian Air Forces, who, between them dropped 225 bombs and only hit the target twice! We wandered around the rusting lumps of metal, amazed that the rudder was several metres away down the beach – showing the true length of the ship. But the tide was coming in fast, and the off side, nearest the sea, went from ankle deep to thigh deep in the matter of a couple of minutes. Time to move on.

The next stop was just further down the beach at Eli Creek. This is a freshwater stream rushing towards the sea at the rate of 4.2 million litres of water per hour – it didn’t seem that fast, but as we walked up the winding course, the current was quite strong. Several younger visitors were “floating” downstream in the shallow waters.

It was then time to make our way back to the resort, as some people on the trip had to catch the 17.00 ferry – last chance to return to the mainland today. The route again was over a different rough sandy track, and I was surprised that it took us over 1 ¼ hours – although our arms and bums being bumped about, definitely knew they had been riding for that long. Once back at the resort, we had only a little time to prepare for the evening activities, but from the balcony we spied a kingfisher across the lake, diving into the water to feed. We only was him dive a couple of times, but then he moved to a branch at the side of the lake and preened himself for over half an hour. So we were still rushing to be ready for our lecture on Bush Tucker.

This took place on the Barbeque Deck, next to the pool, and one of the lady rangers had set out plates with samples of herbs and spices, berries and nuts for us to sample. They were ingredients that the indigenous tribes would have used for hundreds, if not thousands of years to flavour their foods. Some were extremely sour, such as small berry type lemons that tasted a little like pickled lemons, then there were peppercorn type berries, that first tasted sweet, but when you chewed on the crunchy inside, they we hot like chillies. Other were sweet like honey or aniseed. Some were leaves, crushed to fine powder, some tasting familiar like ginger, and others strange to our taste buds. We even got to taste ‘pig grass’, a plant the aborigines eat when there is a drought to freshen their mouths. Some also had medicinal attributes – the lemony ones could be rubbed on the skin to keep away flies and mosquitoes, others could be eaten to avoid ailing stomachs. It was very interesting, although we hoped the chef, busy behind us cooking our supper, was not using too many of the ingredients.

Another barbeque, another buffet – again very delicious – this time including kangaroo, crocodile, steak, chicken and prawns with lots of interesting salads and – jacket potatoes. We haven’t had many potatoes on the menus on this tour, only potato salad (Colin really missed his roast potatoes with the roast lamb he ate last night), so we were positively drooling at the prospect tonight – could I eat two? Pavlova was again on the dessert menu – I know it is supposed to be an Australian dish, but they must have some other puddings in their repertoire. But there was a good choice of Australian cheese and biscuits.

To help our dinner settle, we joined a night safari with a ranger, who took us on a stroll along tracks around the resort, looking for insects, reptiles and mammals. We found loads of cane toads (introduced to the cane fields to keep the vermin down, but they have ended up eating most of the native Australian mammals, while they themselves are full of toxins, so anything eating one, will almost certainly die from poisoning. We also saw minute green and brown varieties of sedge frogs – both smaller than my little finger nail, but make a creaking croaking noise. They cling to the strands of tall spiky reeds, around the edges of the lakes and the noise is like having the radio on loudly. We didn’t see any bandicoot, or other mammals, but did spot a very venomous brown spider – a funnelweb spider - making his was along a log – he had long fangs protruding from his mouth, and looked very evil. Animals would probably only get a bit sick if he bit them, but in humans his venom would produce anaphylactic shock and almost certainly death within about 14 hours. We were assured that there hadn’t been any deaths from a spider bite for twenty years!

We made our way to the jetty, where in the strong torch beam we could see stingrays, some large mackerel type fish, and lots of smaller fish jumping to the surface to catch the night bugs. Not the most successful safari ever, but we did spy a few things, and the ranger had a few interesting stories to tell.

By the time we returned to our room if was after 22.00 and time to get our cases ready for tomorrow’s journey back to the mainland. Fraser Island is very interesting and it would be good to spend more time wandering in the forests and woodlands to see more wildlife. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see a dingo – this is supposed to be the only place in Australia that the original pure dingos can now be found as they have all been crossbred with other dogs on the mainland. Perhaps that will be another reason for returning to Australia.

Arrival At Island Number Three

Thursday 23 November

We were allowed a brief lie-in this morning, not leaving the hotel until 08.30, so we took the opportunity of a short stroll along the tow path, where we saw an eel (or it may have been a water snake) swimming round and round in circles in the shallows near the bank, before heading off downstream. There were five pelicans, one swimming in the river, and four sunning themselves on the rocks by the bridge. The temperature was already in the top twenties, so we were in for another warm day.

Our first stop, literally just outside Rockhampton, was at the Tropic of Capricorn marker. Of course, we had already crossed this line on our way north out of Alice Springs, and now we were making our way back south to Sydney. This imaginary line marks the zenith of the sun at the summer equinox in the southern hemisphere that falls on 21 December and is 2,311 kms from the equator.

From the start of our journey we followed an electrified railway line linking Rockhampton and Gladstone carrying coal to the port – it was built between 1988 and 19997, using 110,000 steel masts to carry the power cables. All the materials, the 3,000 employees and technical know-how came from Australian sources. Before the electrification the journey took about 14 hours, since the electrification the same journey takes 8 hours. We saw a couple of “coal trains” which have three diesel locomotives on the front, about fifty wagons full of coal (or empty on the return journey), another three locomotives and another fifty wagons. It takes a few minutes to drive past one.

The port of Gladstone is now second only to Sydney in terms of trade (everything here is measured against Sydney Harbour). They did try to set up a penal colony in this area in the early years of transportation, to provide labourers to work in the fields growing sugar cane, but the heat was too intense for white people to work long hours, so the plan was dropped. But fisherfolk did stay, and later miners came to this town, and now the port is a major exporter of coal, aluminum, and sulphuric acid – the only plant producing sulphuric acid in Australia is in Gladstone and seven ships deliver the chemical to industries around the coasts.

On the road, the landscape changed to temperate forests again, many showing signs of being burnt. This was probably “prescribed burning”, as the trunks were only black up to about two metres – anything over two metres is probably the result of a “bush fire”. Burning is needed as a natural cleanser of the terrain – it removes dead vegetation, and ensures that there are not too many animals for the forests to sustain. Indigenous people started using fire about 20,000 years ago, as a way to obtain food. They would make a fire, which would drive the animals out into the open, where they could be killed and eaten. Later, as the new plants started appearing in the ground, other animals would come to the area, which would provide more food. They would then move on to a new area to give the ground time to recover. Europeans did not understand “firing” when they arrived, and it was not until the 1950’s they began to set light to the forests to burn off dead material and prevent the more harmful “bush fires”. Bush fires are fires started by accident – lightning, tinder sparks or the reflection from the sun – and are hard to control. It is the heat from these fires – reaching to over 130 degrees C and even up to 1000 degrees C - that does the damage, not the flames, and most trees will be burnt to a depth of ¼ inch or more.

In 1995 it was decided to undertake a major reclassification of all trees in Australia, which they estimated would take about five years. It started in Western Australia, but they keep on finding new strains of eucalyptus trees, so it is still on going. Eucalyptus trees can be divided into four different types according to the bark – smooth, stringy, iron, no bark – no bark trees look as if they are wrapped in a thin paper. There are 111 different families within this classification and it used to be thought there were around one thousand varieties of the tree within those families. But they have been finding new hybrids each week, and it is now estimated that there may be as many as ten thousand different species of eucalyptus trees – some varieties being only a very few trees in one specific area.. Most of these trees - often referred to as “gums” - reach 30 feet or more in height when fully grown and their claim to fame is as food for koala bears. When there is a fire, each variety takes a different length of time for the bark to recover, some just a few weeks, some five years or more. Consequently when passing through the forests, some trees still have blackened bark, while others show no sign of fire at all.

We passed through Miriamville, a roadhouse café and few other houses, which was established by Arthur Chervill in 1854. He fell in love with Miriam and they looked round for somewhere to live after they were married and decided on this spot. Arthur went to Sydney to register the deeds for the land, and by the time he returned Miriam had run off with the local vicar! Arthur did not stay long in the area either, and nor have most other people. We also passed by the turning to 1770 – a settlement commemorating Captain Cook’s second landing point – strange name for a town.

Lunch today was at Childers, a long linear settlement, similar to lots of other inland towns in this country. There were lots of small cafes selling snack meals – no Maccy D’s or KFC for a change – but individual sandwich bars and hot snack shops, and a Vietnamese café advertising ‘Devonshire Cream Teas”. We settled on a recommended sandwich shop where Colin could not resist carrot cake and cream! Childers is now best known for the fire at the Royal Backpackers Hotel in 2000, where eleven young people died. The town apparently only started to recover a couple of years ago, when a Belgian investor came and set up a huge new pineapple farm, and provided economic growth for the area. Backpackers continue to come, as they work as pickers on the numerous fruit farms around here.

We continued on our way to Hervey Bay – the stepping off point for Fraser Island – our destination for the next two nights. As we neared the coast, we passed through a series of huge new retail parks, which continued as shopping malls, and then street shops and houses before finally becoming hotels, hostels and bars close to the beach – it must have taken twenty minutes or more from the first buildings to the marina. Ten years ago, there was just a motel and campsite, but with the development of Fraser Island as a major tourist area it has grown fast. We passed a pier, about a mile long into the sea, which apparently used to be about double that length, and was the main docking point for the ferries. When half of it was destroyed in one of the cyclones and a new marina and ferry point were built in a small sheltered cove. While we awaited the arrival of the ferry, we had time to wander around the few marina souvenir shops.

For once the crossing was very smooth, and after about forty five minutes we landed at the Kingfisher Jetty, close to our resort. This island is made completely of sand – a fine silica sand – that when wet, is a great exfoliant. The resort, situated just inland from the jetty, is a series of designer wooden buildings, around a teardrop shaped pool. The main building had looked like an armadillo shell, with several curved layers overlapping each other, from the ferry, and once inside it was a very tall airy building, containing reception, two large restaurants and a barbeque deck. Our room was off to one side, along a boardwalk, within two stories of terraced rooms, on stilts. We were on the lower floor, and our patio windows led out to a balcony overlooking an oval shaped lake, with trees of all shapes and colours reflected in the smooth water, in the late afternoon sun. We had been booked into a buffet dinner at 18.00 – very early for us to eat - so that we could attend a film show and briefing by an Island Ranger. We all gathered to hear about what we would hopefully see tomorrow on our tour of the island – insects, reptiles, mammals and of course, the famous dingos – supposedly this island is the home of the only true dingos left in Australia. We saw pictures of lots of flowers and trees, as well as geological formations, and physical sights like the shipwreck. There would be a lot to fit in to one day.

The rest of the day was spent blogging and emailing. By this time the frogs were out and croaking – the noise was tremendous as they all croaked together – you could even identify the different croaks from the different frogs. We are really looking forward to seeing some wildlife tomorrow. This island appears to be a real wildlife centre, with both rain forests and temperate woodlandss, and a seventy five mile long sandy beach.

Cow Country

Wednesday 22 November

Another early morning – up to catch the first ferry, this time from Hamilton Island back to Shute Harbour. We were accompanied by several of the high school children and night shift workers returning to the mainland. The crossing was very smooth and we were able to spend half an hour catching up on some sleep. This tour is called the “Island Discoverer” so I suppose that is the philosophy for visiting islands that really could be almost anywhere in the world – with pavement cafes and activity sports. It was great to see such a large number of islands here “untouched” by humans and to meet many other people, but Hamilton Island is really just a rich man’s (or maybe not so rich) playground. There has been very little of ecological interest.

Once aboard the coach we sped our way to our first stop for coffee at Mackay – a small town, where everyone seemed to be Christmas shopping. There were lots of decorations, a few shops tinkling carols, and invitations to meet Father Christmas when he arrived next Saturday were displayed everywhere. We decided to sample Australian scones again, and the pumpkin variety with plum jam and cream was delicious – I am becoming a bit of a scone aficionado. The countryside around was still very flat with large fields of sugar cane, but as we traveled south along the road, there were more and more trees, until by the time we reached our lunch destination, we were back to a similar landscape that we had seen in the outback – tall willowy eucalyptus trees in woodland stands, amongst scrubby grassland. The road was also long and straight, but with a little more traffic than in the outback.

We wondered why we hadn’t seen more sheep – surely Australia was famous for its sheep! Apparently here in the north the grass is not suitable for sheep – it is sharp and cuts their underbellies and legs, and they cannot survive in the drought conditions. Apparently we will see more in New South Wales and Victoria as there are millions of sheep in the country. Wool used to be the main export of the country. Now it is the third biggest export, behind coal and minerals and is followed by wheat in fourth place.. But sheep still provide a considerable input into the national economy, earning about A$5 million per year. Coal earns between A$180 and A200 million per year, with Japan the biggest buyer (who only take washed coal – no dust). Australia exports about 90% of what is mined, compared to about 10% by the US and 20% by most other exporting nations.

We watched a video about Sidney Kitman, who owned the largest cattle station in the outback early in the twentieth century, and successfully managed to move his herds around from waterhole to waterhole over his estate. He became very famous for his tenacity, and very rich, and an Australian song was written about him.

We stopped at Tooloomba for lunch, a roadside café, which has been run by the same two ladies for years and years. Inside there were lots of photographs of coach tour leaders and their groups and in one we saw Paul, our driver on the last tour, pictured beside his coach and party. Having enjoyed the short break, we were soon on our way again. We passed Capricorn Caves, the only location in the country where all sixty varieties of bats resident in Australia are found in one place. This includes the ghost bat, which is almost transparent and flies by sight like a bird, instead of the sonic method used by most bats. Bats eat half their body weight each day, and if they are pregnant, can eat as much as their total body weight. If they happen to be pregnant when it is time to hibernate, they can hold the embryo dormant during that period, and continue with the pregnancy later. Bats usually produce twins and despite the myth, they are not blind, just have poor eyesight.

The landscape had changed again this afternoon, to flat open fields, now supporting herds of cattle and we continued on to Henderson Park, a cattle station – or more correctly a beef producing station. Annika, the Henderson’s daughter, guided us around the station. The first thing we saw was a stand of completely dead trees looking eerily like tall, white ghostly spikes in the middle of a field. She explained that these trees had died because the trees on the higher ground were cut down in the 1920s and 1930s, and when the artesian water level rose in the 1940s, it swamped the root systems and they ingested too much salt and died.

The station here is about 5,500 acres supporting around 750 – 800 cattle, with about 350 breeding cows. The soil is red volcanic earth covered by a thick scrub pasture, not suitable for growing crops. In the 1960’s they changed the herd from solely European red/brown Herefords to include pure white Indian Brahmins and crossbreeds between the two known as Brahmfords (half and half) and Droughtmasters (three quarters Brahmin, which are much shorter and more stocky than true Brahmins), and a few black Aberdeens (these crossbreeds are known as Brangus). The Brahims naturally have a hump at the back of their heads, which fills with water and serves as a supply in times of drought, which makes them ideal for this part of the country. They also used to have horns, but interbreeding with the European cattle, has reduced these to small stumps. All the cattle here have large “briskets”, a flap of skin, under the chin, containing lots of blood vessels, which flaps and cools the animals as they move around in the hot weather.

The cattle have a nine month gestation programme, similar to humans, and from the age of two, cows are expected to calve every year – if they don’t, its meat market time! The station is EU registered which means almost all of the meat ends up in Europe, so there are strict guidelines to follow – the cattle must be fire-branded with the station logo, the month and year of birth and identification number, and they must also be ear-tagged. The cattle here are all completely grass-fed (some stations grow sorghum as a supplement feed which enables more animals to be kept per acre, but the price per kilo of meat is considerably lower). The non-breeding cows and bulls are now slaughtered around the age of two years as 30 months is the age limit set for imports by the EU, following the outbreak of mad cow disease. The breeding cows are usually kept until about 10 years old when they are slaughtered and the bulls are used until around seven years old. The best of this older meat goes to the US and the rest to the south east Asian markets. If the cows fail to produce a calf annually, or the calf is defective in any way, they will be slaughtered earlier. The Brahmin cattle used to suffer from eye cancer quite badly, when the pink pigment at the side of the eye became infected. They have now been able to breed a dark ring around the eye, which prevents this disease in most cattle.

The water here is supplied from the local creek, raised by windmills, which have to be replaced about every ten years when the wooden bearings (made from red spotted gum trees) wear out. It costs about A$10,000 to replace a windmill. But there is always sufficient water on this ranch.

We were introduced to Mr and Mrs Henderson, a couple in their early fifties. Mr Henderson has lived all his life on this station, and Annika is the fifth generation of Hendersons to farm here. She expects to take over the station when her parents retire. The Hendersons have two other children, a son currently teaching in Brunei and a daughter who is a designer/architect working between Rockhampton and Hamilton Island. We also met a group of five bulls, who live in the paddock near the homestead, mostly hand reared, a couple of the dogs (more pets than work dogs) and a stray wild pig, which had attached itself to one of the calves being hand reared at present. Apparently the big old black bull, Clive, now about eleven years old and a bit special, lost his mate a few months ago, at the same time as one of the geese lost her partner, so they became friends and look after each other – who says there’s no sentimentality on the ranch?

We saw the main house belonging to the parents, the grandparents house nearby, now belonging to Annika, and the great grandparents home, on the other side of the paddock, which is currently used by Kelly and Ryan, the other workers on the station. Two of our party were staying overnight in one of the cabin facilities here, that supplement the income of the station – we hadn’t known about booking this option before we left, but it seemed a great way to learn more about cattle stations in Australia.

We only had time to spend an hour here, and would definitely liked to have stayed longer - maybe a horse ride out across the fields to see the cattle and country beyond the homestead – now I am such an experienced rider! We were only an hour outside Rockhampton, our destination for the night, and by the time we arrived in town, it was already 17.00. Colin and I decided to skip the visit to the Botanical Gardens – it would be too rushed (the gardens were about half the size of Kew Gardens and closed in less than an hour, with a small zoo, which closed as we arrived – there had been some suggestion that we visit these gardens tomorrow morning when there would be a little more time, but Jenn and Tom decided on today – so we went straight to the hotel to publish some blogs and catch up with emails. The hotel was an eight storey building with one slow lift – thank goodness we were on the second floor and could use the stairs. We had been warned it was clean, but basic, but to us, who had stayed in huts in the jungle and motels in the outback, this was fine – it had all the facilities we expected and as a bonus, the windows faced west, so that we saw a glorious sunset – a big orange ball of fire, slipping slowly behind the trees – and rooftops close by.

Dinner was another set meal – this was basic, but edible and the staff were very friendly. APT have been using this hotel for many years and have had many complaints about it, hence the warnings beforehand – but it has recently been taken over by the Travelodge group, and so are hoping it will improve. We were told there were no 4* or above hotels in town, but we did spy a couple which looked hopeful. Rockhampton is a fairly large town, the beef capital of Queensland, as all the beef exported from Queensland goes through this town and the Beef Marketing Board situated here. To acknowledge this status, twenty seven statues of white Brahmin cattle are scattered around the town, at junctions, on central reservations and in parks.

Rockhampton is spread out widely along the Fitzroy River, with most of the houses raised off the ground, by “open cellars” or stilts. The houses looked affluent with nicely manicured gardens with many trees and flowers. We actually saw a game of croquet taking place on a large lawn near the centre of town – hoops, mallets and red balls and several people dressed in white – reminscent of long lost England. The city has a really relaxed atmosphere – we were arriving at “rush hour” time and there was scarcely any traffic to be seen. Across the road from the hotel was the river, with a tow path that would have been very pleasant to explore – but the computer took priority, as we seem to have very little spare time (thank goodness for the coach journeys, when I can write the blog entries) to keep up to date.

After dinner and a chat to some of our tour party, we returned to the room, to post the blogs and download more photos. We will need to download to disks again soon – that’s the trouble with digital, you just keep snapping away – there will be a lot of editing to do when we get home.

Tomorrow we are traveling to Fraser Island, a more ecological area, we hope. One of the APT “options” for the day was a half-day visit a ship wreck on one of the beaches – a highlight of the island we are told – but it needed twenty people to run the trip, out of the 24 we now have left on board. So most of us have chosen the all day visit to Lake Mackenzie and the shipwreck, a public tour, in the hope that we will see more wildlife. There will also be an opportunity for bird walks in the early morning and evening safaris to see some nocturnal life. The hectic pace continues.

A Very Busy Day

Tuesday 21 November

Visiting islands for two nights and one day, doesn’t actually give you lots of time to look around and do things – as we found on Dunk Island. So this morning, rather than laying in, we were up and out by 07.00 to go to have breakfast with the koala bears. We We arrived slightly early, but soon several children and pushchairs arrived and in we went to the Koala Gallery – a café with a barrier to one side which was filled with eucalyptus branches and old tree trunks made into a climbing frame. Four koalas were clinging to the tree trunks, three asleep, and he fourth munching on the eucalyptus leaves. And he munched most of the time we were eating. It is no wonder they sleep for twenty hours a day, eucalyptus leaves contain a toxin that makes them sleepy and lethargic. They also have no predators, because their bodies are so full of toxins that any other animal eating them would be very ill, and probably die.
Seeing these furry creatures up really close was fun, but their claws used to keep their balance on the tree, or rip branches from the trees to eat, look very powerful.

From here, we returned to the hotel and took an ”orange” shuttle bus (the ones to marina only are called “green”) which is one of the two buses used to take service staff from their homes on the island to work – they have built large complexes of apartments for staff living on the island, complete with pools, and recreational facilities. They are for two people, unless you are over 40 when you can have single occupancy. Some of the staff still commute every day via Shute Harbour ferry, .but the majority “live in”. The shuttle in the evening is called “purple”.

This bus was driven by the only female bus driver on the island – Carina – who came here a few months ago to visit, and decided to stay a while. She returned to Sydney and put her belongings in storage, and is now happily esconced on the island, driving any of the buses or minibuses serving the community. There are few cars here (petrol would have to be brought over from the mainland) so everyone drives golf buggies. These race around the island, reminding me of “smart cars” on the roads back home. They probably only have a top speed of about 30 mph, but when they are racing around they look lethal. Strangely they are left hand drive, as they drive on the left too, so you quite often see very young children clinging on, on the road side of the vehicle. No one seems to worry – seatbelts – what are they here? On our tour around we visited One Shot Hill where Carina kindly stopped for a few minutes to let all the tourists take some pictures out over the bays around the island, the golf driving range –out into hoops in a lake, where the balls float and are collected at the end of the day, the local cement works and quarry, for their extensive building programme, a wind glider – a glider on a wire (a bit like bungy jumping) only the wire is fixed at both ends and the glider slides down the wire – wobbling in the breeze and looking quite precarious. Our hotel, having 18 floors, is the tallest building on the island, most of the resorts are bungalow style living, all with huge pools – because of the jelly fish.

Today there were two “freedom of options’ choices on the programme – dinner (for which we were given vouchers to choose from four different restaurants – we paid last night) and an activity. When Jenn told us about the choices for this afternoon, seventeen of us chose to go to Whitehaven Beach, a paradise beach backed by tropical rain forest right down to the white sands about half an hour’s boat ride away. Embarrassed she said there were only ten places and we would have to have a lottery. After a few phone calls, she managed to wangle the extra seven seats, so we were all going. So we were back from our bus ride in time to collect our swimmers and water and get to the marina to board the boat. We had lunch on the boat, while it was still in harbour – another salad buffet, which was very tasty - as the captain warned us there was quite a swell in the strong winds blowing off shore and people sitting on the top deck at the back of the boat were going to get wet! – that was us!!! They give out ginger tablets to anyone who thinks they may feel wobbly, but you have to see a doctor before they will give you “Kwells”.

We set off at a sedate pace in the harbour, but as we got out into the sound, the captain revved the engine and we were away. It wasn’t many minutes before we got our first drenching, as the boat rocked up and down and rolled from side to side. We were passing through the same area that James Cook sailed in the 1770’s and it was quite remarkable to realize he would have seen the same as we were seeing today, as only a couple of the 74 Whitsunday Islands are habited. The rest are just large lumps of rocks, rising from the sea (which is extremely turquoise again) covered in rain forest, down to the sandy coves and rocks, where the waves pound in. We had thought it might be showery today, after a bit of cloudy start, but the sun was shining very warmly as we sped along for about half an hour.

When we arrived at the beach – the boat, of course, could not get right inland - you had to travel on the raft (a flat platform with a small engine, which carried about 40 people at a time right on to the beach. We ‘landed’ and found a shady spot for Colin, as temperatures were soaring again, and coupled with the reflection off the white sand, it would be a burner. He listened to his MP4 player, under a palm tree for the rest of the afternoon. We had collected stinger suits again, for swimming, so I donned mine – it was very difficult in sandy conditions – and went into the beautiful waters. But it was very cold – much colder than when we had been out at the reef, so I decided the best idea was to just sit at the edge of the waves and build sandcastles. The tide was going out at first, but in fact, ‘turned’ while I was ‘playing’ and the waves, previously little ripples, became much larger and more aggressive, soon washing my sandcastles away. There were organized games for the more energetic of the party, like beach cricket and volleyball, but I passed the rest of the afternoon laying in the sun and puzzling. I love sandy beaches, and to me this was heaven, but I understand it’s not so much fun for Colin.

All too soon we were being called back up the beach to repeat the ‘rafting’ process. As we stepped on to a platform at the back of the boat, our legs and feet were hosed down, to prevent sand being carried on board as much as possible. We were given fruit cake before starting the journey back, which was not nearly so choppy, as the captain was able to sail through the troughs. We still had a few waves overboard as we went through the Solway Channel, a rough stretch of water guarding entry to this paradise island, but by the time we got back in the harbour we were dry.

We were cramming everything to this one day, and tonight just before sunset (about 17.30) Jenn and Tom were having drinks for everyone in Romanos restaurant at the marina, as five of the party – Cynthia, Fergus, Ruth, Helga and Ludo – were leaving the tour tomorrow morning. We will miss Cynthia, Fergus and Ruth as we have traveled with since Ayers Rock, and the “deaf” couple will definitely miss Helga and Ludo, who have stepped in and guided their compatriots along.

We arrived to find a plentiful supply of white, red and sparkling wine, with crisps and doughnuts? – strange choice for “nibbles”. But when everyone arrived, conversation buzzed – it was the first time that most of us were together (four were on the sunset cruise and Henny and Poul didn’t feel too well – a sore throat virus is circulating now) but we all took the opportunity to find out more about our fellow travelers. By not eating together each evening, we miss the chance of meeting everyone socially. The time passed too quickly as we had only spoken to a few people, but we had booked dinner at the Red Emperor, the only Chinese restaurant in town, and one of the eateries that would take our “option” vouchers. So we said our goodbyes to those leaving and departed, along with several others in the party.

As we were using our vouchers we were offered a choice of three set meals. We chose Menu B, which included dim sum, spring rolls, chicken and sweetcorn soup, lemon chicken and singapore noodles – all favourites from home. There were a few other dishes too, and although we munched our way through quite a lot, the portions were huge, and we probably left more than we ate! Which was a shame as it was delicious – not up to Slimy Slug’s standard but very tasty. Even Colin couldn’t manage the dessert options – he must have been very full – so we just had Chinese tea. We had had some more wine, so were feeling quite light-headed as we boarded the bus back to the hotel – to prepare for another early morning tomorrow.

Another Bumpy Ride

Monday 21 November

Today was another traveling day, from one island to another – a distance of 547 kms – 340 miles. This meant another early start to catch the first ferry from Dunk Island at 07.15 back to Clump Point Jetty. It was a grayish morning, with the sun trying to peep through the clouds, but at least it had stopped raining – it was pouring down when the alarm went off at something past five. Everyone ate a sparse breakfast, in case we had another choppy crossing. In fact it was smoother than, the outward journey and we need not have worried.

Tom picked up the coach from nearby, happily still with all the luggage that was left on board. Then disaster – one couple’s luggage had not been collected from the hotel on Dunk Island for some reason – it could only be our ‘deaf’ couple from Holland – they have made a bit of an impression on the coach – not necessarily for the right reasons - always late, never understanding what is going on, do not listen, but instead talk in loud voices whenever Jenn or Tom is speaking. There is another Dutch couple on the coach, and they, unfortunately have almost been ‘taken over’ by this troublesome couple. Desperate phone calls were made about their luggage, and it seemed that it would be impossible to retrieve it until tonight on Hamilton – it would be flown there during the day. Tom could not afford to spend any more time at Clump Point, as the journey time to the ferry for Hamilton Island is quite tight, and that ferry would not wait for us.

We set off, passing through Mission Reach. In the 1800’s Cutton brothers tried to settle in this area and get the aborigines to work for them, for tobacco and alcohol, commonly used as payments in other parts of the country. But the Aboriginals were not interested - they were already employed, seeking large sea slugs at low tide, which they then dried on the beach and sold to Indonesian traders, as they were a delicacy and aphrodisiac in south east Asia. As they were paid in drugs – opiates from the poppy fields in Malacca – they weren’t going to work for drinks and ciggys. A mission was established here in 1911 by a Rev Webb, and he looked after both aborigines and white settlers, who could not help themselves (probably as a result of the drugs) and he called the area Mission Reach. A cyclone came through in 1918 and decimated most of the buildings, and killed Rev Webb and his daughter. His wife stayed at the Mission, but never recovered and died after a year. The area was never settled again.

But another settlement nearby, Tully, is thriving – named after Alexander Tully, who opened the first Post Office in Northern Queensland and also was the first person to have a telephone in this area. Today, the town has a population around 3,500, mostly involved in sugar cane and timber industries. The local high school is here, and children travel in from as much as 50 kms away. Tully also has the reputation of being the wettest inhabited part of Australia – receiving an average of 4,338 mm per year – about 14 feet – and is most often the receiver of the Golden Gum Boat for this honour. Whilst most areas of Australia are suffering drought conditions at present, this area is not, although 3 metres of rain would be considered a drought here.

Sugar cane is very important in this area, and any vehicles concerned with that industry - harvesters, tractors, trains - have priority on the roads. Once cut, the crop has to be processed within 24 hours and within 16 hours to be sure of the quality. The fields are ploughed in one metre furrows and planted with cuttings about one foot long. The nodules germinate and growth is rapid - they reach about two feet in 6-8 weeks and in this area of Northern Queeensland are ready for harvesting after about 9 months. We saw signs along the road asking people not to transport sugar cane – seemed a bit weird – but apparently there are about 30 different varieties of cane, all with different characteristics, and consequently need different growing conditions. The cuttings are always planted so that they can be cut before the heavy rains and cyclones arrive in December. Further south the growing period can be up to 18 months. From every 21 tonnes of cane cut, they obtain about 7 tonnes of sugar.

As the cane grows it produces an ‘aro’, a pale lilac flower, which turns deep purple and falls off when the plant is mature. The cane must be cut within 24 hours of the flower dropping, so many farmers cut the crop, just before the flower falls, but this causes loss of return – approximately 1% for every week it is cut early. Of course if it rains before it is cut, the whole crop is lost anyway. Machines cut the cane into 25cm lengths which are taken by truck trains to the mills. They have ‘return crops’ which means that two cuttings are planted in a ‘x’ pattern in the field, to get a second crop, without reploughing – this can be done a couple of times, but the yield gets smaller and smaller every time ‘return cropping’ is done – about 2-3% each time. The fields need to be rested for a year or so before reploughing.

Each mill will work 24 hours a day at cropping time, in three shifts. The cane goes through a “washing” process where it is crushed firstly by a large roller with teeth about 10 cm sq, extracting the juice – sucrose. Any fibres that escape into the sucrose will float, and are skimmed off and with the residue from the first washing, it is re-washed a further couple of times, with smaller toothed rollers, until the fourth ‘wash’ when the rollers are completely flat, to extract all the sucrose.. Any fibrous cane left at this stage is sent to the building industry to make into ‘canite’ – a form of building block. The resulting sucrose is sent to be spun – again four spins, in what are like tumble driers - to complete the process of crystallizing the sugar. All sugar is brown at this stage, and has to be bleached to turn it white, the more acceptable form – which is usually done by the importing country. Any residue left after the ‘spinning’ stages is molasses which can be treated to become treacle, or used as it is in cattle feed. The leaves from the sugar cane are used as burning material for furnaces, and the resulting ash is used as fertilizer back in the fields. So nothing of the crop is wasted.

There was a pilot project here to grow pine trees, to be sold as Christmas trees, but the resulting trees were deformed due to the lack of nickel in the soil. They had no sooner found a solution to this problem, than the local bats made these trees their home, and being a protected species, the trees could no longer be cut.

Tom told us a lengthy tale about the discovery of this coast by James Cook in the 1770’s, embellishing the story Ruben had told us a couple of weeks ago. He continued the yarn to include the part played by Joseph Banks, the naturalist and botanist on the Endeavour, whose parents had in fact, financed the voyage, but who James Cook detested. Banks, together with David Solander, collected over 30,000 species of plants, animals, insects and reptiles, to take back to England, 13,000 of which had never been seen before and many are still unidentified. Unfortunately the ship’s artist, Sidney Parkinson, died at Mauritus, on the way home, after completing only 1,000 of the drawings. Five artists were set to complete the drawings, but in fact, they weren’t finished until 1984 – 213 years later, when the last few were rushed to completion, so that a book could be published to commemorate the bi-centenary of Australia. Only 75 copies were made, each state Governor receiving a copy, along with some Churches and schools. Joseph Banks was made President of the Royal Society on his return home, and he is still the youngest and longest-serving President of that institution.

Banks had opposed the possibility of people being able to settle in Australia while James Cook was alive – he would not agree with anything promoted by Cook – but after the Captain’s death in Hawaii, he actively encouraged the transportation of convicts and free people to settle in Australia, and took a lot of credit for his evidence about this new country, that had been gleaned from James Cook.

The Battle of Coral in World War II was fought in the waters off this coast, which was the first naval battle that did not involve any ship-to-ship combat, as only aircraft carriers were used. This led to the Battle of Midway with the US intervention.

Our lunchtime stop was at Townsville, named after a Sydney cotton merchant, Herbert Towns. He thought the area would prosper with cattle farming, but instead, mining became important, with copper, zinc and lead being found in the region. There are still smelters here today, but the metals come from as far awayas Mount Isa, 950 kms inland. There is some agriculture in the area, but this is mainly mango farms. Amazingly, although we have seen many orchards of mangoes, and you can buy them in greengrocers, they are never on the menus in the hotels or restaurants. Townsville is still a fairly prosperous town, and likes to think of itself as the capital of Northern Queensland – although most people from outside the town would acknowledge that Cairns is the capital of the area.

We passed through many small towns and villages on our way to Shute Harbour. One largish town was Bowen, which is in a mainly an agricultural area, growing mangoes, peppers, tomatoes and melons. They measure their crops in trays, and produce 10,000 trays of mangoes a year – a tray may hold about eight large mangoes, or sixteen smaller ones. In all they produce about 30 - 40,000 trays of fruit and vegetables and this area is known as the “Fruit Salad Bowl of the North” On the large patches of “dry area” outside the town, a few cattle are farmed. They also have salt pans on the edge of the town, which are filled with water from the river, allowed to evaporate and the crystals collected. These pans were small “paddy fields”, similar in size to the iodine salt pans we saw in Thailand, nothing like the large salt pans we saw in the outback.

The houses along the way resemble large mobile homes – single storey, with corrugated tin apex roofs, which in a very flat dry countryside, become almost indistinguishable amongst the shrubs and trees. But they are built in this style to avoid as much damage as possible from the cyclones each year.

Near our final destination to day, we passed through Cannonvale – a town built to service the Whitsunday Islands. All goods destined for the islands, come here and are transported in special containers across the water. This includes the laundry – all of which is collected at the back of what will be our hotel for the night, and sent here to Cannonvale, to be returned five days later. There is a primary school on Hamilton Island, but once children reach secondary age, they have to commute across the water every day to the high school here. (We saw several children making this journey on our crossings to and from the Hamilton Island.

Eventually we reached Shute Harbour – a small marina settlement, the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands. There are 74 islands in this group, most of which are still as Captain Cook would have seen them when he sailed through here while mapping the east coast of Australia. He named one of the largest islands ‘Whitsunday Island’ as he was passing on the day of that religious festival.

We were on the last ferry of the day at 17.15, and the wind was blowing fairly strongly. The first words of the captain of the ferry, after “hello” was that “the going would be a little lumpy!” It certainly was – not quite as bad as the journey on the “Wavepiercer”, but pretty close – and of course, we were in a much smaller boat. It bounced up and down, over and across the waves and the troughs for about 40 minutes. We did have a short respite when we called at Daydream Island to drop off a few passengers. It was lucky we had chosen to sit inside for the journey, as it was quite chilly outside, and we certainly would have got wet. Our luggage had been loaded into large metal containers – we were taking all of it this time – so at least it arrived with us. We were taken in minibuses to our hotel – on the opposite side of the island to the marina – through a narrow cleft in the hillside – looking out over Cats Eye Beach. All rooms looked out over the straights, and other islands could be seen not too far away. The room was enormous – the bathroom alone (really a dressing room) was a large as some of our bedrooms. We had two double beds, comfy chairs, tables and chairs, and a large balcony. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of white cockatoos flying around everywhere on the island, but especially into rooms to raid the mini-bar and even your suitcases, if you leave the verandah doors open. So sadly we never sat outside – although we wouldn’t actually have many spare minutes here to sit around.

It was almost 19.00 before our cases arrived, so we only had time for a quick shower and change, before going down to the front of the hotel, to catch the local shuttle bus back to the marina, to find something to eat. The bus halted outside Romano’s, an Italian restaurant, but more than half the bus (holds 20) descended in front of us and piled into this restaurant, which was looking fairly full already. So we went next door to Manta Ray’s Café – serving pasta, pizzas as well as salads and meats. . We had to wait 20 minutes for a table (the girl on the door taking names was spot on) and in that time, around the bar there was some good conversation and laughs with others holidaying on the island. I chose a seafood pizza – very unusual for me, but it was the best pizza I have had in a long time – even better than those from Pizza Express. The marina is full of very expensive motor cruisers and yachts, but the clientele in the restaurants is Australian holiday makers – some with young families – and tour groups – not at all smart, so we are not sure where all the rich and famous go to eat, We caught the shuttle bus back to the hotel and feeling quite exhausted, decided to leave the blog for another day.

Dunk Island

Sunday 19 November

Today was another “free day” to explore Dunk Island or take part in the many varied activities offered at this resort, such as archery, sea kayaking, snorkeling, or just plain swimming in either of the two pools. When we woke up the skies were grey and overcast, and just as we arrived at breakfast it began to rain heavily – we had left the umbrella back in our room, of course – not the sort of weather we were expecting on a paradise island. But by the time we finished eating – several courses later – the rain had stopped and the skies were beginning to clear.

We decided to take advantage of the “free washing” facilities here and I blogged whilst it was tumbling around in the machines. The sun was now shining, although the temperature was a little cooler than recently due to the influence of the sea breezes - around the top twenties. Having collected the washing it was time for some exercise, so we picked up a leaflet from the activity centre and set out for a stroll. We walked across the first tee of the golf course – not St Andrews, but coarse grass fairways leading to greens they are currently improving, with no shortage of sandy bunkers. The track continued around the airstrip - the light aircraft attached to the resort was just landing as we passed – and through the rainforest, close to the coastline, all the way to Coconut Beach (about 3 kms) - a long sandy cove, backed by palm trees, with lots of large granite boulders at either end. It was very quiet and peaceful, with the turquoise sea lapping the beach, only disturbed by the odd walker. The track was under the canopy of a large variety of tall trees, all fighting for sunlight, vines and lianas – some of which were covered with small sharp barbs that caught on your clothes, if not your skin, as you passed. Unfortunately there were also lots of fallen trees, the result of Cyclone Larry which blew through this area last year, and caused major devastation. But already there were signs of new trees growing up through the dusty soil.

We were on the lookout for the Ulysses butterfly, but although we saw many other varieties in all colours, patterns, and sizes, we did not see this famous blue. One was pale yellow and black striped across the wings, which looked like a mini zebra crossing flying through the air, another was almost transparent - when flying all you could see was the black lacy pattern of veins on the wings - and there were clusters of weeny butterflies, white, blue and yellow, and smaller than my little finger nail. We did spy a couple of huge, huge spiders – with their legs spread out they were approaching twelve inches across, and their webs were about three feet wide by two feet long – in fact other small spiders were making their own webs on the edges of the big webs. We also saw male and female turkeys scrabbling around in the undergrowth, a very inquisitive brown turtle in a small stream, and several different species of birds – especially lots of small black finch-size birds with a bright canary yellow breasts, which had a cheeky call. Although I am sure there is a lot of wildlife in these forests, it is definitely not easily visible to a visitor.

By the time we returned to the hotel, several hours later, and were suitably refreshed in the bar, the skies were clouding over again, so we returned to our room and spent some time downloading piccys and finished posting the blogs for the past couple of days. As darkness fell, we had another short shower of rain, but when we left for the bar and dinner, all was dry again. Dinner was another tasty meal, including New Zealand rack of lamb – with all the sheep in Australia, we did wonder why we were eating meat from New Zealand. We tasted another Australian cheese for our dessert – a Windloek cheddar, slightly soft texture, very creamy with a bit of a bite. All in all, the food here has been the best we have had on this tour so far, so things are looking up. On going to and from the restaurant, last night and tonight, we have seen a brown and white python draped over a rock beside a pool, and we could hear a particularly vociferous frog croaking nearby. Tonight as we went to dinner, the snake was slowly sliding over the rock toward some nearby water plants. When we came out the snake had disappeared, but the frog had also stopped croaking! We wondered if he had enjoyed his meal as much as us.

Dunk Island – as I said yesterday – is a bit like a tropical Centre Parcs – and I was disappointed not to have tried the pools – doing nothing takes a lot of time. It was too windy today for many of the watersports such as sea kayaking or taking a snorkel tour around the island’s coasts, or indeed sky-diving. Archery was taking place as we returned from our walk, but the winds were frustrating those taking part by carrying the arrows off course. We enjoyed our time here, and could happily have spent a few extra days relaxing. But we are off tomorrow to another island, Hamilton Island, further south in the Whitsunday Islands.

Riding High Above The Rain Forest

Saturday 18 November

Another early start today, as we were booked on the 09.00 Skyrail which started just outside Cairns. We retraced our route along the cliffs known as the Marlin Coast – since 1992 marlin have been a protected species of fish, and can only be caught on a two kilo breaking strain line. They are then weighed and often tagged, before being returned to the sea.

Skyrail is a series of chair lifts rising straight up the side of the mountains, which we had traveled around on the Kuranda Scenic Railway a couple of days ago. The cableway is 7.5 kms (4.7 miles) long from just outside Cairns up to Kuranda, which was completed in 1995 after just one year of construction. There are 36 towers supporting the cables, all of which were lifted into place by helicopters, so as to avoid any undue disturbance of the rain forest. The tallest tower is Tower 6, at 40.5 metres (133 feet) and 114 gondolas can take 700 people an hour up to the peak. Red Peak Station is the highest point on the track at 545 metres (or 1788 feet) about a third of the way along the route. There are two stopping points along the cableway, Red Peak Station and Barron Falls Station.

The gondolas take you up above the canopy of the rain forest, so you can look down on the diverse array of trees and plants that shield the forest floor. The first part of the forest on the lower slopes is mainly composed of eucalyptus trees (of which there are more than 150 varieties), with ferns and paper bark trees. This abruptly changes after Tower 5, to continuous vine clad rain forest interspersed with some pine trees and a huge Black Tulip Oak, whose uppermost branches nearly touch the gondolas. You have to change gondolas at Red Peak Station, and we took the opportunity to wander along the forest trail seeing lots of epiphytes – basket ferns – and some orchids, clinging on to the trunks of the tall palm and fig trees. The canopy is the natural rooftop of the rainforest and protects plants below from the excessive rain, winds and sun, while trapping the humidity. It needs 1,300 mm of rain a year to sustain a rainforest, but here the average is closer to 4,000 mm a year. We saw white cockatoos flying through the branches from our overhead vantage point and a black turkey scrabbling around amongst the roots of the trees whilst walking around – he had built a huge nest of forest debris – dead leaves and branches and ferns – which looked like the heap of garden waste you rake up in autumn. But apparently the turkey lays it eggs in the midst of this so that they cannot be seen by other predators.

The journey continued up – and down – on the Skyrail cableway, stopping briefly at Barron Falls to view the waterfalls once more – we could see the train stopped on the other side of the gorge – before crossing over the river – we didn’t see any crocodiles, but apparently they are there - and continuing to the terminal at Kuranda. The whole trip took about one and a half hours. It was very windy this morning, and Jenn thought that perhaps the Skyrail would be closed. Luckily it wasn’t, but the gondolas were traveling more slowly than normal.

We returned to the coach, and began our journey through the Atherton Tablelands to our lunchtime destination of Lake Burine. This area is rich in farming, and grows a wide variety of crops and fruit, peanuts and coffee, as well as supporting a thriving cattle and sheep farming industry. Peanuts grow on the root of the plant, and the whole plant is dug out of the ground to harvest the nuts. The rest of the plant is used as fodder for animals, so nothing is wasted. The hills are rolling green swathes similar to Devon, just more of it stretching between farms and towns. John Atherton was one of the first to settle in the area – thus giving his name to the area and a town, although he actually lived at another town nearby – Meereba.

On the way to lunch we stopped to look at the Curtain Fig Tree, which is famous for its size. The fig tree seeds are blown from the top of the tree, and settle on another branch or tree, and develop a root system that falls towards the ground, round the tree it has landed on. By the time it reaches the ground it has “strangled” its host tree which dies from the centre. This process continues, and this particular tree is thought to be between 500 and 700 years old. Its circumference is about 30 metres, with a couple of offshoots on the side. A young lad, about six feet tall, climbed down from the walkway and stood next to the tree, and he seemed insignificant against this huge root system. The tree must stand at least 100 feet tall.


We arrived at Lake Burine for lunch, placed our order and set off on a cruise to see the surrounding wildlife and vegetation. The Lake is 730metres above sea level and actually a crater of a volcano, the result of activity some 130 million years ago, where magma flowed to the surface and was instantly cooled by water, turning to steam. The water here is supplied solely by the rainfall, and a small stream at one end acts as an overflow – it actually drains into the Mulgrove river and out into the sea, and is important in the spawning of the silver eels that live in the lake – they stay in the lake for many years, before taking the trip down the stream to the coast to mate and lay their eggs. When the young hatch, they return up stream, back to the lake.

Cruising round the lake, we saw lots more fig trees, as well as red cedars (which used to be known as ‘red gold’, as these are the second largest tree in the world and in the early twentieth century fetched as much money as was paid for pure gold), pines, air plants – grandfather’s beard – and umbrella trees – larger versions of our umbrella plants at home, with long red seed pod type flowers. Many of the trees in this area are hundreds, and up to two thousand years old.

There were a couple of types of cormorants, several different species of duck and two pelicans pointed out as we sailed close by. The Australian pelican does not dive for food, but harasses the coots and ducks on the water, as they dive to catch fish, and then steal their takings. We saw lots of turtles, the small brown variety – about the size of a large terrapin – swimming around, but apparently they are quite aggressive when out of the water, and never retract their head into their shell, so are ready to strike if you should tread on one. Flocks of Eurasian coots and white eyed ducks flew across the lake which is about 1200 metres across the circle,.although it does elongate out to 1800 metres at one side. We could see the damage caused by the cyclone earlier this year, as one side had lots of fallen trees, while the more sheltered side was still in tact. Several of these fallen trees were hundreds of years old.

We returned to the café for lunch, which has been owned by the same family since the 1920’s. George Carey, a surveyor came to this spot to survey the forest for stands of red cedar, and built himself a house. Later in the 1920’s the local mayor visited the area, saw the diversity of forest, and set up the Lake Trust – but there was no funding, so the family turned their home into a guest house to helppay for the upkeep the area. In the Second World War, the house was turned into a field hospital for malaria victims from New Guinea but it returned to the family in the late 1940’s. The family still own one acre of land, the rest being designated a National Park.

Colin and I both had one of their “Devonshire” cream teas, with scones and home made jam (plum and raspberry I think) with large dollops of whipped cream. The scones were just made and crumbly and very delicious. It was then time to be on our way again, traveling further across the Tableland to Milla Milla Falls. We passed over Johnson River a three times, where it was a mere trickle at 600 metres above sea level, and a broader stream at 300 metres above sea level and finally down at sea level where it was a broad river flowing into the ocean. We passed through Milanda which is famous for once having the largest milk round in the world – stretching across Northern Territory into north Western Australia, up to Papua New Guinea, and down as far as the New South Wales border. Now a dairy has been set up in Katherine in the Northern Territory, so the area covered has been halved, but is still over 1,200 square kms.

When John Atherton first settled here he saw the potential growth in the area, and he teamed up with Christie Palmerston to encourage people from Victoria to migrate northwards. Palmerston charged them 30 GBP to lead them to the “promised land”, where they were met by John Atherton, who sold them tracts for farming. But the land was owned by the local aboriginal tribes and they attacked the new settlers and drove them from the land. Christie Palmerston then charged 50 GBP to take them back. There were also photos of Palmerston shooting aboriginals which helped to scare away the newcomers, but in fact, when investigated, this was found to be a scam set up by Palmerston, who had hired the aborigines and used dud bullets when shooting them, and nobody got hurt. Palmerston was also responsible for assisting in the selection of the route of the Kuranda Railway. He was the surveyor hired to find the best way from Herberton to the coast to transport the gold from the mines. The Mayor of Geraldston offered Palmerston 2,000 GBP to choose the route through his town to Port Douglas. Palmerston was only paid 180 GBP at the start of the survey,with the rest to follow when the report was submitted. When Palmerston returned and set out his findings, the Mayor decided not to pay the remaining bribe, as the easiest route was obviously through Geraldston to Port Douglas. So Palmerston told the authorities to use the route from Cairns to Herberton, to get his own back on the Mayor, even though this was not the best route, and so the railway was built in its present position from Cairns. Whilst surveying, Palmerston found a route from Herberton to Innisfail (formerly Geraldton) which took him twelve days to ride by horse, It takes two hours to drive today.

Milla Milla Falls was another spectacular waterfall, gushing over the top of the cliff, into a pool. There were some people swimming here, but our stop was just a ten minute toilet break., because we had to get to Clump Point Jetty in time for the last ferry to Dunk Island at 17.15. We made it with time to spare.

A small catamaran (capable of holding about 50 people) came skidding over the waves to collect us and our luggage. We had been asked to take as little belongings as possible to the island, as all the luggage had to be loaded on and off the vessel by hand. Colin and I had packed a couple of smaller bags – we now have back packs courtesy of AAT Kings and small holdalls courtesy of APT Tours – so we had enough space, although some people still took their large suitcases with them. We had sorted out sufficient clothes and bits to last us the two nights we would be on the island and left the rest in our cases, locked on the coach. The ride to Dunk Island was at least as choppy as yesterday’s ride back to harbour. We bounced up and down on the large waves, rolling from side to side, backwards and forwards – we were lucky no one in our party was ill yesterday, and we were all safe and sound by the time we arrived today.

Dunk Island is a small island off only 5 kms off the coast, but there is a large sandbar in the intervening channel, so the route there took about half an hour. Captain Cook had sailed past in the 1770’s and named the small group of islands Family Islands – with the two larger (Dunk and another) being Mum and Dad, with fourteen children. It was first settled by Edmund Banfield, who on hearing he only had six months to live, came to the island to spend his last days peacefully. He named the island after Lord Montague Dunk, the First Lord of the Admiralty at the time. Edmund Banfield was a newspaper editor, who had visited the island on many occasions, and written several books about the place. He survived another 25 years, and his wife, Bertha, a further ten years. They are both buried here – their grave a famous landmark – and because his wife put fresh flowers on her husband’s grave every day, the tradition has continued and fresh flowers are still placed there every day even now. When Bertha Banfield died, the island was sold to Lord Bassey, a former Governor of Victoria, who began to develop the island as a resort. During World War II it became a base for the RAAF, as it had a small airstrip, but following the end of the War, it reverted to a resort. It was bought by P&O in the 1980s and then sold to Qantas in 1998, before becoming a Voyages resort in 2004 – part of the same company as AAT Kings and APT Tours.

This resort resembles Centre Parcs at home, only on a tropical rainforest island. There are lots of sporting activities to take part in – not all free – and walks around the island, and two pools to keep you amused. There is even Bingo on some nights on the Activities Programme, but happily not during our stay. We had all been asked before we arrived to select a time for dinner, as not everyone could eat at once. We had chosen 19.15 and when we arrived there were plenty of tables free. The food was a choice from a set menu, and the was very good – probably the best we have eaten on this tour so far – although Colin had to send his steak back as it was cold and cooked medium when he had asked for rare. The second steak was probably ‘blue’ but it was hot and tasty, so he didn’t mind. I had chosen chicken – trying to vary my diet at last, with risotto (I don’t usually eat much rice either) but it was a delicious dish, decorated with asparagus. I also had Tasmanian Brie for dessert, which was scrumptious, as it was warm and slightly running.

Our room is a large oblong in a block of four, with a bathroom at the back in one corner, and large patio doors at the front end – which is very disconcerting as there are no net curtains, or blinds, to cover the windows during daylight, only thick curtains for night hours. But it is very comfortable with easy chairs, a spare bed, and all the expected facilities. The bed is back to being bouncy, and because the floor is tiled, it skates around as you get in and out – this may be a problem in the middle of the night.

We Find Our Sea Legs Again

Friday 17 November

Today we were moving on from Cairns. We managed to have our bags out for 07.00, but on entering the breakfast room, a couple of other tours obviously had the same time schedule as our group. Colin still managed at least five courses, if not the full ten, before we had to get on the coach for our drive to Port Douglas, to see the Great Barrier Reef.

The road between Cairns and Port Douglas is called ‘Captain Cook Highway’. At the beginning it is a flat thoroughfare as it crosses the Barron River flood plain, through sugar cane country, with the odd palm tree farm along the way – these ‘nurseries’ provide fully grown trees for new developments and gardens – not all Australian houses have gardens, but where they do, they want them landscaped and mature immediately. On the far side of the plain the landscape changed to limestone rocks, and the road climbed steeply, running alongside the sea cliff edge, with the water pounding the rocks below, flinging up thick plumes of spray. It reminded me of the road from Sorrento to Almalfi in Italy that featured the film “The Italian Job”, but not quite so hairy and definitely not so high, but quite scary as the road cornered hairpin bends.

Port Douglas was a small port, developed to transport gold from the nearby mines. It only expanded with the building of the Mirage Resort in the 1980s, with a marina for large expensive yachts, and lots of smart large houses around a golf course. Several hotels have been built along the incoming road to the sailing mecca of north east Queensland. When 9/11 occurred in 2001 Bill Clinton was staying in the Sheraton hotel here, and the whole town was closed down for two days, with no one allowed in or out, as a security measure. We collected towels from our hotel – the Radisson Treetops – before making our way to a huge catamaran moored at the end of the jetty, near the marina. There was an appealing selection of chandler-style shops selling expensive souvenirs, clothing and toys.

Our boat was a huge catamaran, the “Wavepiercer” (little did we realize how appropriate the name was to be), which carried up to 500 people. There seemed to be almost that number boarding as we made our way along the harbour walk, but once on board, we found there were ample seats for everyone, either inside on the two lower decks or outside on the second and top deck We chose seats at stern (rear) of the vessel on the middle deck, in an area shaded from the overhead sun. Amazingly, everyone was on board in time for the prompt departure at 10.00, and we were soon skimming over the waves of a turquoise blue sea, that was so clear and sparkling. There were a few white crested waves, but the water appeared quite calm. We passed Snapper Island, with Thorntons Peak, rising to 1374 metres high, the third highest mountain in this area and we saw several small cays, small sand covered coral outbreaks in the ocean, some with palm trees – real desert islands. The journey took about an hour and a half to reach a pontoon at Agincourt Reef, on the far side of the Great Barrier Reef.

The reef extends for 2,300 kms from Cape York in the north to Bundaberg in Southern Queensland, and is a network of about 2,900 individual reefs covering about the same area as the United Kingdom. The corals need three things to grow: warm water, sunlight and low nutrients, and although many countries have these conditions, there is not usually sufficient shallow water for the coral to receive the sunlight. On this coast the there is a continental shelf just 20 – 30 metres deep, which has given the coral an opportunity to form.

Agincourt Reef is a small group of reefs situated on the very outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef, and two kilometres beyond, the sea drops away to over 500 metres deep, identified by a line of breakers in the distance. The water washing in from the deep ocean helps the prolific growth of the coral.

We docked beside the pontoon, and made our way to the far end to the mini-submersible vehicle – like a small boat with a viewing chamber in the hull under the water. It was very claustrophobic inside this chamber, and as we were all shown to our seat - a flap, which snapped down across the width of the vessel and held two people - the lady who got on first, decided it was not for her, so we all had to stand up and lift our seats up to let her off! It was a bit of a s squash. When we were all settled, the propellers turned in front causing waves of bubbles to pass the windows, as we set off. We were steered close to the reefs of coral by a driver who wore infra-red goggles above the water to see where we were going, and not crash into the coral. We saw stag horn, brains, spaghetti, plate and hundreds of other corals that we couldn’t identify, mostly growing together in huge clumps, like a cottage garden. There were some brilliant reds, blues and yellows, but most were shades of brown, identifiable only by their very different shapes. Shoals of small fish were swimming in and out of the fragile stems, as well as angels, sergeant majors (black and white banded), huge black cross looking fish, speckled browns with more smiley faces, tribes of small blue and green larger than guppy type fish, and a ‘green’ turtle (which in fact was brown). There were too many to name, but we did also see a very large grouper and a white tipped shark (just as we sat down) swimming at the bottom of the ocean. The tour took about twenty minutes and it was really hot inside the capsule and some people did not like the sensation, but we had a great time looking at all the different formations and fish, with lots of ooohs and aaahs, although the fresh air was very welcome when the hatch opened at the end.

Our next visit was to the observation platform – again just a few metres under the surface of the water, from where you could watch lots of different fish swimming around. There were some quite large fish with blue and tan diamond pattern scales and red eyes who were particularly inquisitive. It was like watching a tropical fish tank with the wide variety of species and colours. We then decided to have a quick snack at the buffet before going snorkeling.

To go into the water, you were advised to put on a “stinger” suit (very becoming in peacock blue lycra, from head to toe (only your face wasn’t covered) – a precaution against the stings of the box jelly fish that could be in the waters here at this time of year. (There were hundreds of these blue amphibians wandering around – it was a bit like “aliens from outer space”.) Then we collected masks, snorkel tubes and fins, before entering the water from a special platform. The area for snorkeling was cordoned off, so you couldn’t swim too far away from the pontoon. There were lots of other people swimming in the area, and when we were there the fish were being fed, so we were amongst hundreds of fish looking for a meal. Swimming out a little further, we could see large areas of coral, with many smaller fish passing close by. It was really fascinating and we felt like real “Jacques Cousteau”. By the time we got out of the water and changed back into dry clothing, it was almost time to board the ‘Wavepiercer’ again for our return journey.

In the morning, the captain had told us that the weather may change in the afternoon, and a little way into our journey home, the winds picked up and the waves increased from small whitecaps, to larger rolling waves, which caused the catamaran the rock from side to side, quite violently at times and heave up and down, sometimes too much for people to walk around. The spray came over the side and we were all soaked, but it was great fun, with everyone wrapped in their towels to keep as dry as possible – a lot of people were not so well apparently (mostly those sitting inside). On the way we saw a couple of other smaller catamarans ploughing through the rough waves, and at times they seemed to almost submerge, only to rise again on the next wave. A sailing boat was listed right over to one side, as the waves battered the boat, but it seemed to be slowly making headway. Being a large vessel, we were traveling at about 35 knots, and fairly bounced over the smaller waves, as the name “Wavepiercer” suggests.

Once back in the harbour we slowly disembarked into the late afternoon sunshine, and our legs felt a little wobbly back on dry land. We stopped a short while to look in the souvenir shops before heading off to our hotel. We were met by a friendly member of the hotel staff, Andrew, before going to our room on the third floor. Unfortunately we were again looking out of a building site – yet another new hotel being built next door. Our bodies were covered in a fine layer of salt, and it was great to stand under the drenching shower, and feel clean again.

Dinner tonight was an ‘Option’ meal (APT like their ‘Options’) and we had chosen the seafood buffet, with a promise of oysters, crabs and large prawns as opposed to a set three course meal – which turned out to have a choice of three selections for each course. What a disappointment then, to find the buffet was an “Australian” meal, with a selection of the inevitable kangaroo, emu and crocodile, both hot and cold. Prawns were the only seafood on the menu, and there was a casseroled beef dish. The desserts were apparently quite tasty - the usual slelection of pavlovas, cheesecakes, and tortes, with some fresh fruit. The set meals had included a choice of fish at both entrée and main courses – more than we had been offered – and most people who chose this ‘Option’ were pleased with their meal.

On returning to the room, I was very tired, so gave blogging a miss and went to bed. What a change in beds again – this one was firm with proper pillows to give us a chance of a good night’s sleep. So far, this tour is far short of the standards set by the previous tour – perhaps we so lucky to have had Ruben and Paul as our leaders – but we miss the constant anecdotes and legends related by Ruben which helped illuminate the scenery and landscape we were seeing. As we travel more in the coach tomorrow, perhaps we will hear more.