Wonga ... The Daintree and CapeTribulation - 5th July

For those of you following our blog, we told you all via e-mail that we would have to slow down our online up dates as we want to surprise Chris' sister for her wedding. Well change of plans .. long story short it was getting to hard to keep covered up, so we told Toni today. She is so excited and so are we, so the count down is now officially on for the 5th August.

Now to our update .... I guess you are wondering why the kids are in so many photos... well it's not just Mum encouraging them, the boys are always asking ..."mum take a photo of .." they love it, especially when they get to see themselves as stars in the slides show at all the things they're doing from day to day.

See photo - Introduction to sugar cane.

From Palm Beach we headed to Wonga Beach...... funny name!, we stopped on the way for some supplies for our next camp, and headed thru the cane fields along the coastline towards Port Douglas then on to Wonga just outside Daintree Village. The coastline in this region is considered to be equal to the Great Ocean Road and we were not disappointed, we managed to accumulate quite a lot of traffic as we took in the sights (shame that the speed limit is 80km along this incredible stretch of coastline) bumbling along at 60kph.....you get that! Did we mention the boys love trains? Well they saw all the sugarcane transport trains and followed the rail line along the way until we arrived at the Pinnacle Caravan park. We were impressed with the view, located right on the beach, and to our surprise only 1/2 full!. We unpacked and setup for our 5 day stay then headed for the pool (which had a slide that Riley was keen to test).

Settling into a famous plastic Ozzie outdoor chair in the sun with an icy cold beer reminded us of a poem we recently heard and it goes something like this.............. 'Entrapment'



See photo - Creb track start point.

Next morning (Tuesday) we decided to head for the Daintree Village which is located on the south side of the Daintree River, this area is located just a couple of K's from our camp and we spent a few hours looking around followed by a BBQ lunch in the park, we then headed for the CREB TRACK one of the most challenging tracks in Australia, we got to the beginning of the track and it was closed to the dismay of 2 groups of 4x4's parked up at the gate. We heard a day later that a vehicle had gone thru the CLOSED gate ( bad move ) and headed up the track, apparently they were involved in an incident and the vehicle was damaged, 48hrs later they were found and finally rescued via Helicopter.....(bet they got the bill for that!).

See photo - Our Daintree, Cape Trib, Bloomfield
track trip (red= track).

Wednesday we headed across the Daintree River around 8am (before the rush) and made our way up the coast towards Cape Tribulation and the Bloomfield Track which makes its way up to Cooktown and the Peninsula. The Bloomfield track is 30+ km long and includes 8 water crossings and 2 major hill climbs( 1in5 and 1in3 inclines ) where it finally finishes at the Wajul Wajul Falls in Bloomfield, the boys managed to also see a 3mtr salt water crocodile sunning itself on a rock in the river! The track took us around 1 1/2 hrs each way to complete and we managed to keep it on the track and not break anything, there were quite a few vehicles on the track especially on the return leg which meant we needed to be careful on many of the climbs as some vehicles don't hang around!



See photo - Bloomfield Falls - family photo.

Once we got back to Cape Tribulation we stopped along the way to take in some walks thru the national park and then on to Thornton Beach, (3rd highest mountain at 1300m) with a view of Struck Island, for a Beer and an Ice cream on the beach, We headed for the Ferry Crossing........ along with everyone else where we waited for around 45 minutes to cross the river.

Thursday we decided to have a "quite day" and Bell did some extra schoolwork with the boys - not in the mood (we now know why some animals eat their young! ) I decided finally to give the Prado a wash (first proper one since Broome! ) and after lunch we let the boys go for a ride around the park, several minutes later a man returned with Aiden........ he'd had a huge stack and took bark off his elbow (Riley did the same the day before going to fast over a speed hump on a bike he had swapped with a friend ), shin and a huge chunk out of his knee! the man said it was a pretty good one and Aiden for a minute didn't know who he was or where he lived!. We patched him up gave him an icy pole and then headed for the Beach where the boys played for a couple of hours and then we went to the pool for a swim........day done!



See photo - Port Douglas old sugar cane
steam train 'Bundy'.

Our last day in the tropical paradise of Wonga saw us up at the crack of dawn to enjoy the sunrise, we then headed down to Port Douglas for a day on the beach, we sent the boys off into the water, ordered a couple of coffees and enjoyed the sun for a couple of hours. We managed to get up to the lookout for some photos and then back to the Historic Court House Pub for lunch and a few beers. We grabbed the scooters out of the car and then headed for the Mirage marina for a look around, here we found a trawler selling Tiger prawns so we grabbed a kilo, got some shopping then headed back to Wonga for a swim, dinner and bed.

Sunday we packed up after a broken nights sleep (our lovely neighbours from Townsville had a rough night with their one year old daughter), oh boy did that bring back memories) and headed for Cairns via Port Douglas, here we had arranged for a ride on a historic railway, it is one of the only existing Cane Steam Trains still running on the lines in north Queensland. We all love it, there is just nothing like the sound of a steam train whistle and the 'chug chug' as you go along the line. The boys got a full tour and met the driver, with so many questions they are keen to go on another ride......... will just have to wait and see.

Here is our next clip.