Since leaving Cairns and coming South, we seem to have very much the feeling you get returning from your holidays. Not sure why, but we do. Seems like as soon as we got to where we wanted to be, we turned around. We've certainly discovered how big Australia is - 2000 miles is a long time at 4-5 mph!

Anyway this is a photo of Hinchinbrook taken from Brampton Island where we overnighted close to the resort. I wonder if the Brampton holiday makers realise that within 1 mile of the resort there is a sign warning of Crocodiles. I'm sure just one croc can seriously ruin a high priced Island Adventure.

We sailed from Gloucester Island down towards Airlie Beach, but decided that the water was too rough so we skipped into Woodward Bay - which contains a very small resort. Apparently it was built for a TV series - it's supposed to be in Tahiti. After the series was finished rather than demolish it (as they were probably supposed to) they apparently turned it into a VERY high class resort (ie Multimillionaires row). While we were there we saw nobody going into or out of it - that's how exclusive it is - possibly one family/celebrity  at a time. What you see is all of it with maybe 5 miles of woodland all around. Good to see how the other half live. Anyway we stayed there for a few days until the wind decreased and then set off for the 5 miles into Airlie. The wind might have dropped, but as soon as we rounded the bay and reached the open ocean again we were hit by high seas - eventually limped into Airlie very thankful to have survived another day!

The following day we left Airlie for the WhitSundays with the wind expected to be about 5 knots - well as soon as we were away from the mainland it shot up to 30 knots and very rought water - scared the shit out of us, but the boat handled it with no problem. We chickened out and anchored in a place called Cid Island and didn't move for a couple of days. Saw plenty of other boats out and about - but we wern't game. Probably if I'd asked Salty - he'd have told me that he could handle it no problem.

After leaving Cid Island we sailed to South Molle Island which is only 5 mile or so and stayed outside the resort there. The resort is lovely, but all of the facilities have been pruned back and it just seems to handle a boat full of backpackers that arrive nightly. We decided to have a drink in the bar and see if these backpackers were as rowdy as the manager told me they would be - ball shit - they probably only had a drink each and then off to bed! We on the other hand......

After South Molle we went to a resort at a place called Happy Bay. Gill had been on about it since she'd see it on the map and was really dissapointed when we missed it on the way up. Certainly the resort was pretty good and there were interesting walks around the island.

While we were there we saw this guy who is the image of Gill's brother Clive (who died 10 years or so ago). Always thought he'd go to a better place - but never thought it'd be Happy Bay Queensland.

This is the sunset from the boat at Happy Bay. Gill was extremely happy because we'd finally got to Happy Bay and she'd had a swim in their pool, seen her long lost brother not to mention a sundowner or two at the bar!

Lindeman Island is one of the more famous WhitSunday resorts. However like many of the others, it's closed down. This appears to be the main entertainment area - with dead leaves blowing through it. Seems really odd everything is still where was and it just looks like the owners, upped and walked away. I just don't think that is reasonable - if they can't make a go of it - sell it - or demolish it and return the island to it's original state. They shouldn't be allowed to just walk away without cleaning up after them.

Lindeman Island from the sea - everything still looks wonderful. Strangely enough all of the resort has been left open (ie without staff) and you can freely walk through the resort buildings and offices. I walked past 20 or so computers, stacked up which I could easily have removed - I'm sure before long somebody else will steal then, but it wasn't me!

Everything is there and available to pick up and remove/steal even to the room keys

Lindeman Pool - Centrespot of the resort. Now the pool is half full of rainfall and any other windblown crap.

Kepple Island Coconut palms. On the way North we'd walked along this beach which was littered with coconuts. Didn't have a knive with me, but I decided that when we came south I'd try one or two of them.

When we came back, took the knife and bashed my way into one - it was rotten. Suppose like anything else there is a season and the autumn was the right time to eat the Coconuts - next time!

This is Gill showing that even though she's over 55 she still hasn't grown up. Found this at Great Keppel Resort - that's closed as well - and within seconds, Gill had noticed that it was pink - quick as a flash she was on it. Lucky for me the keys weren't still in the ignition.

This is the ferry that still joins Keppel to the mainland. The funny little structure on the front is actually a walkway with allows the passengers to disembark. The ferry just comes up to the beach and  lowers the walkway and there you are - works well and is such a great experience compared with arriving at a 'normal' wharf - Priceless! The island still has day trippers and the budget resort with it's tents and cabin accomodation that we've stayed at with our kids and other family members in the past.

We climbed the mountain at Great Keppel and were rewarded with this view of the boat. There is a family (the Svensons) that live on the North side of Keppel away from the resort and they run a very low key resort, small and unobtrusive probably more like bread and breakfast with probably less than 10 paying guests. Anyway they seem to have become the unofficial Keppel Angels. They have put markings around the island to highlight the paths. This highlighting of the paths is really handy and it was much easier following their directions than blundering through ourselves. Being English we went for our walk around 11 o'clock and it took maybe three hours to the top of the mountain and back (in the mid day sun) without seeing another soul. Gill was struggling with the sun and the heat and I couldn't help but think about the young guy whose car had broken down a few days earlier in Queensland and he had died walking the 16 kms back to his farm. So we were struggling back down from the mountain (still 5 km or so to walk) and we found one of the Svenson's signs to a short cut back to the boat - without the hundreds of stones that they had painted to show the way we would never have found the short cut and who knows what would have happened. Gill (of course) had drunk all of her water before she got to the top - while I was of course was too tough/lazy or organise any water for myself. We've got to remember that Australia isn't like the UK with an ice-cream shop around every corner - which is of course one of the attractions. You can definitely die out here in less than a day from dehydration!

Water pounding over the rocks at Great Keppel

View The Trip South in a larger map

Well we finally got to Cairns. Actually we were going to stop at Hinchinbrook, but we decided to go on to Cairns so that we could visit the rainforest at Kurunda. The trip from Cairns to Kurunda is a tourist trail and is by olde worlde train up to the village and by cable car back. It’s pretty good. 

The railway goes up some very steep mountains and is pretty interesting. 

Anyway this is the happy couple in the train – Rob obviously letting anybody who cares that England won the 2003 rugby world cup (and almost as importantly - Australia didn’t).

A view from the train showing one of the many bridges. Gill was really worried about these bridges and how deep the associated ravines were, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that for much of the way up I could see almost vertically down the side of a cliff on the side of the track.

The train stops at three stations Cairns and then another to let people on, then up the mountain to a place called Barron Falls, which really is only a viewing point and nobody lives there.
The river that flows through Kuranda is called the Barron, and it was dammed in the forties or so to generate hydroelectric power. It is pretty neat. The river is pretty small, although it is supposed to be much larger in the rainy season. It has a really small dam on the top of a cliff – not much more than a weir really. The water actually flows through pipes inside the mountain and comes out at the power station at the bottom of the cliff. The height of the cliff generates the pressure to turn the turbines and there is no real lake at the top. If they had been just a little more careful at tidying up the scar in the mountain, nobody would have known anything about it, as the water rejoins the river at the bottom of the cliff, only missing the waterfall – which must be pretty spectacular in the rainy season. 

At the Barron Falls station there is a pretty spectacular view. In the middle of this picture you can just see the sky-train, which is a 7 mile long cable car ride. Also in this picture is the Barron Falls cable station, which is absolutely invisible from this side (The cable car trip is split into two sections – I suppose otherwise the cable will get pretty heavy. (I think of 100 metres of anchor chain being heavy – and it is – but what would 14 miles of 1 inch thick cable weigh?)

This is the Barron River, just a few hundred metres from the village of Kuranda and a few hundred metres before the dam. The river is 100 metres wide or so and only foot or two deep, so as you can see there is no lake and no dam to be seen.

This is one of the resident (freshwater) crocs  that we saw from our river boat cruise seemed weird a riverboat cruise at the top of a mountain. God they are evil looking bastards!. However this photo makes him look pretty big, but in fact he’s only about three feet long, and most of that is tail – really they’re not much bigger than the large lizards that live here, and to be honest, not that frightening. Apparently the aborigines will go swimming with them, but that just proves it – they are crazy!

This is the view from the cable car looking down to the final station. The trip is pretty spectacular, with the cable going at great height over many gorges. At other times it brushes the virgin rainforest and this is about the first time that you see any signs of human intervention – apart from the cables obviously!

This is the headlines in the Cairns Post, whilst we were there! 

Actually the beach is really non-existent and all muddy, but either way there is no doubt that there are saltwater crocs about and they are seriously nasty and can get up to 7 metres long. Where we were anchored in the river we had about a half mile dingy ride to the marina (where we get off). It focuses your attention that in those muddy waters live creatures that are twice as long as the dingy, maybe 10 times as heavy including the passenges,  faster and definitely man eating creatures. I was always glad when we reached the shore or the boat. That said, we never once saw a salty!

So as soon as we get to Cairns, we have to turn around and head South. It doesn’t really seem right, but it will take us three months to get back to Brisbane and out of cyclone territory. Cyclone season up here coincides with the rainy season and stretches from January to March. Can’t really see the attraction of being in a cyclone. It’s just one more thing tht is queueing up to kill us! 

So first step on the way back is Fitzroy Island. It’s so good we couldn’t miss it! Sat down to feed the fish and almost immediately this beauty appeared. It’s amazing really how soon these fish appear from nowhere. He was about a foot round and whilst I couldn’t get him to eat out of my hand, he certainly wasn’t frightened of us.

Fitzroy Island

View The Good Ship Saltwater 1 ( or Salty to his friends) in a larger map

The pool on the resort on Fitzroy Island. Gill was genuinely licking her lips when she saw it. Somehow though she never managed to see the sign that said "residents only" (I've saved you from the photo of her swimming in it!).

The island is an absolute beauty with rainforest and coral within 50 metres of each other. It is 18 miles from Cairns and regular ferrys run - it is an absolute gem!

View from Fitzroy Island to the mainland (& Cairns) - 5miles away

Found this sign at the top of the mountain on Fitzroy Island. First of all I expected to tell me about a minefield, but no it didn't - just went into some stupid shit about falling of cliffs being dangerous(?). Jeez, It's so steep to get there only adults can make it - and if they don't know about cliffs being dangerous well they deserve to die.

Interestingly enough the explanation of the 'danger' was only printed in German, Japanese and possibly Chinese. Couldn't help wondering if it was a left over from the war - but apparently the Germans & the Japanese are not as stupid as the Australians, because they didn't need the dangers explained to them.

Close by there is another sign that explains that the path up is shared by people and vehicles. The path is so steep & windy that 4 wheel drives can only get up there with difficulty at 5 kms or so. Presumably they won't deliberately drive their cars at people, and if walkers see a car coming at them and they don't get out of the way - they deserve to die!

What a waste of money - I see so many of these stupid signs!

Hinchinbrook

Here Rob at Nellie Bay (magnetic Island) as we're waiting for the ferry - as you can see he's still wearing his 'Where's Wally' tee shirt.
The tree behind him is pretty common around here and strangely enough it appears to have many trunks, which grow down from the tree branches as the tree gets older. They drop (very very slowly) from the branches down to the ground and then burrow in. Then they get bigger - it allows the tree to become very wide as eventually these new trunks hold up the branches - wierd.

One morning we got up early to walk to a place known as the forts. They're actually WWII gun emplacents. It a fair walk there and the main attraction was to see Koalas in the wild - largest colony in N. Queensland (brochure said to go early or late because thats when koalas as 'active'). Second reason was that the 'fort' enjoys panoramic views over all of the surrounding land - they were built to defend Townsville.
This is the view of Horshoe bay where we were anchored.
As for the Koalas, never saw a one! However at the car park before starting the walk there is a sign warning of Death Adders. So on we went up the track that led to the top. About 3/4 the way up we came upon a hand painted sign (i'm prepared to trust those out in the bush, because they are not the standand insurance job protection) was a sign which pointed of to the right showing the way to 'death Adder Valley'. That was the end for Gill - she was terrified for the rest of the trip. As for death adders - never saw a one.
Got back to the village of Horseshoe bay and met a shopkeepers who'd seen us on the way out, who asked us about the walk. When we said that we'd seen no koalas, she said "you've got to go in the afternoon, they're not about in the morning" - thanks brochure for a wasted 3 hour walk.

But we did get this phototo prove that we did get to the top of the hill.

Views of Hinchinbrook Island as we sailed up the channel. The mountains are pretty impressive and you genuinely do not see a sign of life for the full 20-30 mile length of the island.

Another view of Hinchinbrook Island. The mainland is not as untouched as the Island but it's not far off. The Australians rave about how beautiful the whole area is, but to be honest - I though Snowdonia was much more dramatic - if not so unpopulated.Snowdonia has the added attraction that not every living creature is trying to eat or poison you!

This little spot is at the top of Hinchinbrook, it is the only obvious place that you can get off the boat along the 20 miles or so of the West Coast of the island. However we didn't particularly fancy stretching our legs bearing in mind that this is undoubtedly croc territory and there didn't seem to be anywhere to run.

So in the morning we wished goodby to Hinchinbrook on onwards towards Mourilyan. As we left the anchorage (picture above) I took these 3 photos over about a 5 minute timespan - the colours are unbelievable - but genuine. Somehow the light must have changed gradually, because neither of us noticed the changes - but they were there and how magnificent!

6:50 am

6:53am

6:56 am

and Kieron - if you're reading this - I can get up before dawn!