After yesterdays water based activities, it was time for some more terrestrial activities today. Although we did need to go on a ferry across the Daintree River but at least it was calm.
Just north of Port Douglas is the World Heritage listed Daintree Rain Forest and we spent the day exploring it. In order to access the forest you must get across the Daintree River, the Douglas Council runs a ferry service and unlike South Australia (where ferries are free) you have to pay the ferryman to get across. It is a large ferry that takes 27 cars so the wait is not that long.
As soon as you drive off the ferry you are encompassed by the rain forest but it is all an illusion as it is only road side remnant vegetation as there is farmland 100 metres in. The real rain forest is around 5 kilometres from the ferry and it is thick and lush and on cue, there was fog and misty rain. All that you expect from a rainforest.
Our first stop was the Daintree Discovery Centre which provides a huge amount of information on the rainforest, its species of plant and animals, the history of dinosaurs and even bush tucker. It is almost knowledge overload and takes a couple of hours with its aerial walkways through the mid forest height and the tower lookout at canopy height.
Time for some thing to eat and since we didn’t see any cassowaries, the next best thing is icecream from the Daintree Ice Cream Co. They do things a little differently with a tasting cup of 4 different flavours which are constantly changing on demand. Our flavours were Soursop, Jackfruit, Rasberry and Wattleseed. The icecream is made from fruits that are grown on the property. It was very tasty and worth making the stop.
Continuing north through the forest, we came upon Mason’s Cafe which offered a unique cuisine of road kill and local wildlife. Rachael went for the Roo Burger while Jenny and I went for the croc hot dogs. This was complemented with breadfruit wedges. Out the back of the cafe, there is a waterhole that you can swim in. Apparently it is crocodile free as they say all the crocs are in the burgers. We declined a swim but it was a picturesque spot.
Not much further on was Cape Tribulation, which was named by Captain Cook back in 1770 when he ran aground nearby. It was some nice beaches with the obligatory crocodile signs but none were spotted. There were enough tourists on the beach so you only needed to be able to outrun a couple of them. Not sure how I would go as the gout is still playing up but at least Jenny and Rachael would be safe.
That was the end of the bitumen but we continued up another 5 kilometres on the dirt as there was a geocache at a remote location I wanted to get. It involved a 500 metre walk through the rain forest then a 300 metre walk along the beach and then some rock scrambling. This should be great for the gout.
Jenny and Rachael accompanied me but were ready to turn back when the crocodile signs appeared. I convinced them to continue and they picked up some sticks for protection. They just needed to outrun me which is not too hard at the moment. After finding the cache and not finding any crocodiles, it was back to the car and the hour journey to the ferry.
Once again there wasn’t much of a queue for the ferry and we were soon back at the caravan park for the night. We even had some heavy rain before heading to bed but the temperatures were still warm.
