Category: Far-North Queensland

Snorkeling take two. This time we decided to go on all-day (9-hour, with buffet lunch) tour with  ☞ Seastar Cruises  to Michaelmas Cay and Hastings Reefs (recommended) located 50 km NE of Cairns. Very good professional organization. Because of the distance to the outer reef, we travelled on a larger/faster boat. Seastar provided snorkeling equipment (we brought our own RX masks and snorkels) and offered introductory dives, which we decided not to take, as for first-time divers like us, it would be too much distraction on first visit to the Great Barrier Reef. The weather was good and sunny. The coral reefs were very alive and colorful, with more fish, larger and in larger schools, comparing to Mackay Reef (day 5). Each reef was visually different. At Michaelmas we landed on sand bar and snorkeled from there. Movement on the beach is very restricted as most of it is reserved for protected seabird sanctuary. At Hastings we jumped off the main boat and navigated through channels between sometimes quite shallow reef. We had close to 90 mins of snorkeling at each location – Joanna was always one of the last people getting back on board. Her persistence paid off as she was the only one to spot epaulette shark, a rare sighting on the reef. Overall very exciting and relaxing experience. Seastar crew took pictures, now  downloadable for free from their fb page (we are re-posting some here with acknowledgement).

We arrived back at Cairns marina shortly after 4 pm, walked along waterfront esplanade and checked on Cairns City Library Bats, spectacled flying foxes or fruit bats, hanging at this time of day on large trees (along Alpin St between Lake and Abbott). After short stop at our hostel (shower and laundry) we headed back for dinner at Prawn Star Restaurant (recommended) on three boats docked at the marina: large platter of deliciously fresh bugs, tigers and mixed prawns. We visited the bats again on the way to the restaurant, now at dusk buzzing around like crazy. Slow stroll back to the hostel completed our visit to Queensland.

Cairns City Library Bats – flying foxes

Day 7  

We first stopped in Mareeba for grocery shopping at Coles and cup of coffee at ☞ Coffee Works. The cafe has small museum devoted to coffee which looked worth visiting, but we did not have enough time to do so. We started driving towards Yungaburra, paid visit to giant Curtain Fig tree in Curtain Fig NP and spent couple of hours looking for platypus in Peterson Creek along Wildlife & Botanical Walking Track (recommended).  We could not see any for a while, but then several appeared in different parts of the stream. It was great fun to spot and watch them between dives.

Platypus watching at Peterson Creek

We stopped only briefly in Yungaburra town and continued to Crater Lakes NP, to walk around Lake Echam with refreshing swim at the end, and to  visit  Lake Barrine and check out giant Kauri Pines standing by the lake. We arrived at ☞ Genazzano Campground at dusk.

Day 8

We had half a day to find tree kangaroos. Malanda Falls were disappointing, but we went for nice short walk in Malanda Falls Conservation Park. Tree kangaroos live there, but they are dispersed and hard to find (no reports of recent sighting). We were advised to go to ☞ Nerada Tea Plantation where restoration area is very small and kangaroos have only small number of trees to hang on to. In short time we were drinking local tea and going in and out of the tea room to check on two tree kangaroos on one of the big trees. Nobody could tell us how many kangaroos live in the area (a dozen?), but another visitor apparently spotted one or two more jumping earlier between trees. We brought black with Australian lemon myrtle tee to Chicago. We quickly aborted visit to Millaa Millaa Falls, as we had to return our campervan before 4 pm – return process at Apollo Cairns was fast and efficient. We already dropped off our stuff at our hostel (☞ Dreamtime Travellers Rest). We spent the rest of the afternoon at quite impressive Cairns Botanic Gardens, located across Captain Cook Hwy from Apollo rental near the airport (we just walked over). Bus 131 connects the gardens with Cairns Central, with our hostel just a short walk away.

Driving our Mercedes-Benz Vito-based campervan was easier than anticipated, despite larger size. We made 506 km. Driving on the left side of the road was also not a problem, Australian open roads are wide and with flat hardened shoulders most of the time (not like Scotland). Drivers are quite careful.

We started the day with short walk on Noah Beach (100 m from our campsite) and good breakfast. We then drove towards Lower Daintree stopping for Madja Botanical Walk, ice cream at  ☞ Daintree Ice Cream Company (recommended), Jindalba Boardwalk and panoramic view of Daintree River mouth from Mount Alexandra Lookout. The ice cream was very good, they use tropical fruit grown in their own orchard. We crossed Daintree River and spent some time in Mossman Gorge walking Rainforest Circuit and to Wurrmbu Creek. Mossman was a bit of disappointment, nice well organized water park everybody was enjoying, but not necessarily what we associate with National Parks. The circuit trail was nice, easy and relaxing, part further away from the river not too crowded. We parked for the night at ☞ Tableland Van Park in Julatten, not touristy, laid-back with local flavor. 

Day 4

It was eerily quiet at 6:30 am Wednesday morning at the Mercantile Hotel pub (claiming to be the oldest Irish pub in Sydney), quite different from festive celebration of Ireland’s win with Scotland in Rugby World Cup match Sunday night. In no time, we were at Circular Quay, train T8, bus 420 and at SYD for 3-hour Qantas flight to Cairns. We took Uber to ☞ Apollo Motorhome Holidays   rental center on the edge of the airport to pick-up pre-booked campervan (Vivid) and drove to Coles in Smithfield to buy food for 5 camping days. It all took us longer than expected, so the rest of the day was just driving to Port Douglas and settling for the night at ☞ Pandamus Tourist Park. We walked along Four Mile Beach for a while chased out of the sand by really high tide and returned after dark via town center (bought Australian beer at Davidson Street Port Douglas Bottle Shop near Pandamus)  to cook dinner (kangaroo steaks and veggie stew with gnocchi)  at the campsite’s well equipped and quite busy kitchen/dining facility.

Day 5

Snorkeling on Great Barrier Reef was one of the reasons we decided to visit Queensland. To hedge our bets against bad weather and rough seas, we decided to take two trips: different day and different reef. First trip was with  ☞ Ocean Safari  in Cape Tribulation. We drove there in the morning from Port Douglas, crossing Daintree River by ferry and stopping for an hour-long Dubuji Boardwalk with brief visit to Myall Beach (just on the outskirts of Cape Tribulation). It was very interesting introduction to Queensland’s tropical rainforest. At Noon, we checked in at Ocean Safari/Tourtle Rock Café for half-day snorkeling trip to Mackay Reef (some 25 km out to Coral Sea, straight East of town). It was well organized. We boarded the boat from Myall Beach geared-up to jump in the water as soon as we arrived at the reef. The sea was quite rough, but at low tide we were protected from waves and wind by the reef’s band of sand. We explored two nearby sites (over an hour for each site), rather than visiting second reef (Undine) which would take too much time riding against the waves. We landed on the beach and  started second snorkeling from there. We had good partially sunny weather, but the boat ride back was even more bumpy. We were back around 5 pm, enough time to change, take shower and drive to Noah Beach Campground (recommended), operated by Daintree NP ☞ Noah Beach camping, for the night.

Our reserved site was occupied by squatters, who not only took our spot but tried to chase us away behaving quite unpleasantly. Did not work. This was the only negative experience during our entire trip. Apparently it is quite common among Australian travelers trying to save money, our neighbor had the same problem day earlier.

Snorkeling with Ocean Safari (recommended) was really great, different from our previous experience on Galapagos and Caye Caulker, not affected much by the bleaching and poor condition of the reef in general. What the reef looked like when it was in perfect condition?