Road Trip from Cairns to Cape Tribulation

Back in Magnetic Island, I bumped into a girl called Tanja; it turned out we both wanted to travel up to the Daintree and Cape Tribulation. I left Magnetic Island shortly after, then she caught up with me in Cairns. We rented ourselves a Wicked Van.

We picked up our van from somewhere in North Cairns. We hadn't pre-booked one, but they found a van for us* and we drove happily (if tentatively) back into Cairns city centre to pick up our bags from the hostel. We stocked up the van with food and water from Bi-Lo, then drove off northwards. First stop, petrol. Could we find the petrol cap? Eventually. Once we had, could we find the release lever? We had to ask a couple in a HippyCamper(tm) van. :)

Once filled up, we drove north along the Cook Highway to Port Douglas, stopping half way at a lookout over the Pacific ocean. A guy was flying his R/C glider as a couple of other people watched the waves crash onto the shore.

Tanja drove from the lookout up to Port Douglas; She's a very good driver, but could well be more used to Autobahns than windy roads :D We arrived in Port Douglas at around 4pm, just as the Tourist Information bureau was shutting up shop. We were directed to "Dougies" Campsite and Hostel, which turned out to be a great place to stay. It even had a huge picture of a monkey sitting on a deckchair with a cocktail and a hat... Amazing!

It turned out that Tanja is a teacher of sports and technology (including cooking). I hadn't eaten so well from a hostel kitchen for a long time! Yum!

I was a bit apprehensive about the van; the floor was hard and the matrices were thin, but it turned out to be quite comfortable. Plus, with the window open, you could fall asleep to the sounds of the birds and animals outside.

From Dougies, we drove north again to Mosman Gorge (see photos). As we drove up there, we saw an aboriginal walking with no shoes along the lonely stretch of road we had been driving down for some time. We suspected he was paid to walk up and down it, to give a sense of authenticity to the tourists :P.

Mosman Gorge was a wonderful sight; a circular walk through the rainforest with swimming holes and a swing bridge. We took photos of each other sitting on rocks in a river; I found a good one to sit on, but couldn't get back - the rock was slippery and the water very fast flowing. After a good ten minutes of scrambling around from rock to rock, I eventually made it back to dry land and we walked back to the van for lunch. We sat on deckchairs behind our van eating sandwiches and watching the tourists drive past.

Continuing northwards, we drove along a dirt road to "Koalas" campsite, located by a river and on the sea. (Crocs?) We found a metal spike in the ground and wondered what it was for... it turns out it's used to open the coconuts that fall throughout the campsite. This was the first night we could see the stars as they were meant to be seen. Hundreds of thousands of them; the milky way; it was breathtaking. In addition to stars, we saw many cain toads too. No, we didn't play the national sport of Toad Hockey; we'll leave that to the locals.

There were some professional Aussie campers in Koalas. They had BBQs, Awnings, and seemed to be living in a hastily constructed Tentopolis! That night, I panicked as to whether we could drive the van so far north, but after checking the agreement it turned out to be fine.

The next day, we drove do the Daintree River ferry. Before crossing, we bought tickets to a Daintree river cruise and the Daintree Discovery Centre (a skywalk & tower tour). Crossing the river, we saw "Danger Crocodiles" signs (as we were to see for almost every river we crossed on our way up).

We stopped at the Daintree Discovery Centre and spent the rest of the morning exploring the different levels of the forest. We had hoped to see a cassowary, but they must have been hiding that day! The "Interactive Interpretive Exhibition" consisted of some forest fruit, a plastic cassowary and some hilariously bad 1980s stop-motion animated videos of the evolution of Australian wildlife. After a coffee in the cafe, we drove a short way to the Janga(?) boardwalk to have a picnic.

After lunch, we drove further northwards and stopped at the Daintree Ice Cream Company, nestled in an orchard containing all the fruits they use for their ice creams. I had a frozen mango juice and Tanja had the ice cream, which she confirmed was good.

Continuing our journey, we arrived in Cape Tribulation. Being a bit nervous of driving on dirt roads (by this point, we had seen that our rental agreement prohibited driving on unsealed roads), we tried a campsite on the sealed road into Cape Tribulation. This turned out to be deserted, so we took our chances and drove down the dirt road (er, I mean "long driveway") to "Cape Tribulation Campsite", which also a couple of metres from the beach. The guy at reception said that his campsite had the best rainwater in Australia; the prevailing wind blew from the ocean and the nearest landmass was South America. This was handy, as the rainwater from the roof of the kitchen was also the drinking water (goodness knows where the water from the non-drinking water taps came from!).

We spent two nights in Cape Tribulation, mostly lazing around and enjoying the fresh air, beach, boardwalks and bottleshop. :D We walked around a large circular boardwalk and also tried to walk along a forest path. Alas it was rather othergrown; to the point that we walked past the entrance twice. The first time we walked up the road to find it, it felt as if we'd walked half way to Cooktown!

After our two nights, we drove back down, crossed the Daintree River on the cable ferry and took the river cruse from Daintree Village. We could barely understand the chap giving the tour, but he had eagle-like eyes for spotting crocodiles and tree snakes.

We then drove back down to Dougies, spending the night relaxing and drinking; We had a bit of drink to finish off, as we had hoped to take part in the free sailing at the Port Douglas Yacht Club, but arrived too late and were too far down the list. We didn't mind, as it was a good place to sit and watch the sunset. As way of thank you to the yachtsman, we had bought beer, which we had to take back to the campsite and drink ourselves... what a shame! :D :D :D

The next day, we drove back to Cairns, said goodbye to our van and returned to the YHA Hostel, our adventure at an end.

This has definitely been the best five days of my trip so far. Wonderful stuff!



* The Beetles, see photos in the usual place.