My Trip To Australia, New Zealand and Asia

Back to Brisbane, Lennox and Byron Bay

Location: Sydney
Weather: Warm

Leaving Port Douglas I headed back to Cairns, where I ran into my friend Gregor at the Parkview again. Went out for a few beers with him at the Woolshed pub, famous for being known as a 'meat-market' (wasn't impressed with the meat at this market to be honest) and spent a day wandering around Cairns - there isn't much to do in Cairns itself, everything decent is outside the town, although I did go for a run along the boardwalk and went for a swim in the new man-made lagoon which wasn't bad. I also jumped on a bus and went to Kuranda - a small village 30mins away where I saw an excellent butterly sanctuary - that was quite amazing, hundreds of very colourful butterflys in a large greenhouse. Then took the scenic railway back to Cairns which was quite spectacular and most enjoyable.

Flew bargin airline Jetstar to Brisbane and got the bus to Byron Bay. At the bus stop I saw this hostel bus to the "All Bad Backpackers" in Lennox head and Gregor had told me I should stay at this place. So I stayed a night. Most excellent, more like a hippy commune than a hostel (no man, the rooms have no keys and you can pay me after you leave). Went back to Byron for 2 more nights and took a trip to Nimbin on Jim's Alternative Tour. Old women selling "lovely, fresh" green cookies. Almost every adult (and child) in town trying to sell marijuana. The weirdest museum (Nimbin Museum) I've ever seen. Shops ONLY selling materials made from hemp. More weirdos and hippies than at Woodstock. Jim's friend's house in the country where he grows hundreds of different kinds of exotic fruits and has koala's in the trees! totally spaced out music on the bus and all back by 6pm. It was pretty good!

Finally caught an overnight train and I slept most of the way. Waking up in Sydney at 7am feeling great.

By JamesReed on 03.11.04 @ 12:38 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]

Cape Tribulation, Port Douglas and back to Cairns

Location: Sydney
Weather: Warm

After the Mt Cook episode, I got the 4WD bus down the Coastal Road to Cape Tribulation. The Coastal Road is the other access road to Cooktown. The other one - the Inland Road which I took to Cooktown is tarmac'd (well except for the last 30mins of it) and most of the country is flat. The Coastal Road, in contrast, is very hilly, bumpy and totally unsealed. You have to have a 4WD vehicle to use it. It looks like it has just been cut through the forest randomly and I think this is actually what happened. The steepness of some of the hills it covers is also incredible, I was amazed the bus made it to be honest.
Anyways after getting to Cape Tribribulation, I stayed 1 night at PK's Jungle Village - a very nice, laid back place, where I happened to run into my Israeli friends Ace & Dave yet again! I tried to get to Cape Tribulation - the actual cape on the coast where the "rainforest meets the reef" ie. a lot of trees dip into the ocean, that first day, but it was high tide and there is a creek running into the sea and despite being quite small it looked very deep and dangerous. Also it leads into a crocodile infested lake and I didn't fancy risking that one either. But the next morning it was low tide and I managed to wade across the creek and see the mangroves and Cape Tribulation lookout and beach. I also found a coconut and after spending ages removing the husk and breaking it open, it turned out to be rotten.

I then got the bus and decided to stay a night in the Parrotfish Lodge Backpackers at Port Douglas. This is probably the nicest backpackers I've ever stayed in. It was only 3 months old and it was more like a hotel than a hostel. The rooms were great, it was spotlessly clean, had a swimming pool, a very central location and a restaurant/bar. Port Douglas is the first place I ever went to in Australia and I got a very good first impression. It has changed a bit since last year, resorts/hotels/developments springing up everywhere, a lot more people on 4 Mile Beach and you could even swim in the sea this time! maybe I'm biased, but after visiting twice I reckon Port Douglas is one of the best places in Australia.
By JamesReed on 03.11.04 @ 12:36 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]

Cairns, Cooktown

Location: Sydney
Weather: Warm

Stayed a couple of nights in Cairns in the cheapest backpackers in town known as The Parkview (despite the $14pn price it wasn't a bad place and you got a free meal at the Woolshed pub, hmmm, maybe my standards are lower than they used to be, I dunno).

Then got a bus 5 hours north up the Inland Road to Cooktown. Cooktown was the first inhabited town in Australia. It's claimed as this because Captain Cook's ship the Endeavour got stuck on a reef back in 1770 and he had to stay in Cooktown for 3 months. The bus journey was pretty good, we stopped at a couple of places such as the strange volcanically formed Black Mountain and when we got to Cooktown the driver took us to the top of Grassy Hill - which Captain Cook actually climbed and mentions in his diary when he was surveying the area and looking for a way out of the reef.
Cooktown is a very quiet small town and there isn't much there except for the excellent James Cook Museum, the Bank museum, a heritage trail and several nice bays/beaches.
I stayed at Pam's Place which was fun, went to the local pub one night and climbed Mt Cook, the tallest mountain around. To be honest the way up Mt Cook is the worst mountain trail I've ever known, I'm guessing this was due to the low number of tourists that bother to do it. The trail, or at least what they call a trail, was only marked by ribbons on trees and what with all the overgrown plants and bushes you had to constantly keep checking for them, else you'd get totally lost and never find your way out, doomed forever on Mt Cook. The humidity and temperature in Cooktown also meant I probably sweated more climbing that mountain than I've ever done before in my whole life. Even better, when I did finally get to the top, which is very useful because there isn't a top view, just a hut which you can grafetti your name on, you have to go further down to a large boulder to see any view, a wild pig was there in the bushes and he looked and made such a noise and sound, that he pretty much frightened the life out of me. After backing off and desperately searching for a stick to defend myself, I ended up deciding that I'd give him a good booting if he happened to charge me again, but luckily he ran away squealing instead.
The trail down was much better and clearly marked and defined, I pity anybody who goes up the nice way and tries to go back down the way I walked up. I can only imagine hundreds of people have done this and got totally lost, never to be seen again.

By JamesReed on 03.11.04 @ 12:34 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]

Mission Beach

Location: Sydney
Weather: Warm

Stayed 2 nights in Mission Beach at the Mission Beach Backpackers Lodge. This place was reknowned as having a beach and nothing much else and that is a good description! Everything was closed at 7pm when I decided to have a look around. I went on a rainforest walk with this German dude called Gregor, sadly we didn't see any cassowary birds, the reason for going on the walk and the only other thing Mission Beach is famous for, but all we saw was a large brown rat.

On the last day I took a ferry to Dunk Island (yet another resort island), had a quick look around and luckily took the early ferry back. The waves were very choppy even then and the next ferry was at 4pm and just around that time, whilst I was waiting for the bus, I noticed some large black clouds approaching from over the mountains. Suddenly a tropical storm hit the place! thunder, lightning and torrential rain covered the area. A tree outside the hostel actually got struck by lightning and fell over! But the bus had no problem with this and just rolled on out to Cairns.

A Cassowary is supposed to look like this:

By JamesReed on 03.11.04 @ 12:31 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]

Magnetic Island and Working on a Sugar Plantation

Location: Sydney
Weather: Warm

Spent a night in Townsville and then caught the ferry over the Magnetic Island. Stayed at THE BASE backpackers, which had it's own beach. Turned out to be probably the best beach on the island, this place wasn't bad, but not particularly impressive, I didn't even find the snorkling particularly good. The rest of the island was pretty empty as well.

After this I was supposed to get the bus to Mission Beach, but got off half an hour before at Cardwell because there was a job offer I couldn't refuse. oh yes, I ended up working on farmer John's sugar plantation! First day had to get up at 5am and eventually got to the field around 7:30am. Then worked right through till 5pm, except for an hour for lunch, sitting/standing on the back of a trailor putting sugar canes into a machine on the back of a tractor. The canes were packed into the trailor and had tons of weeds/leaves on so it could be an effort to pull the canes off and put them into the machine in time...it wasn't the easiest job. Also a lot of dust & dirt was kicked up by the tractor and combining that with having sun tan lotion on my face, I ended up being mistaken for an Aborigine when I returned to the hostel that night! My totally-black-from-the-dirt jeans and once green t-shirt weren't too appealing either, but at least I had a very good sleep that night. Farmer John, Rod (my co-worker and a real top bloke) and I took three days to plant the whole field and it was quite good to look back and see what we had done. It would be good to go back in a year and see it all fully grown and ready for harvesting, I reckon.
oh yeah, a tip for anybody who's new to doing farm work is that it isn't a good idea to go to bed later than 9pm, the reason everybody else in these working hostels goes to bed by this time, is because if you're a rebel and stay up watching a film till 10:30pm before collapsing in bed, you can end up feeling rather tired for most of the next day and planting sugar isn't like office work whereby you can just sit there and do nothing. Luckily I only did this on the last day and managed to struggle through ok!

Anyways, after this Rod and me went chilli picking...and whereas the sugar cane planting was not too bad...this was a total nightmare. It took us hours and I mean 7 hours non-stop of back-breaking, hands and knees aching work. We picked thousands of the things and still didn't finish the entire paddock - 10 rows out of 14. But at this point we both agreed enough was enough. They say banana picking is the worst, but I reckon chillis must be up there too!

Spent the weekend in Cardwell, met Rod and his family and he showed me to some of the sights such as the Cardwell waterfall.

By JamesReed on 03.11.04 @ 12:29 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]