Day 8
Scratch what I said about a lovely spot: I woke up early this morning to the blaring of truck horns. Note to self: don’t camp by highways.
We drove towards mission beach, stopping along the way to see the sights. We were told that Cape Tribulation was this amazing place where “Rainforest meets the Reef!”, but honestly I got more of that feeling around Mission beach area. We stopped to go for a beautiful rainforest walk, and then headed to a lovely information center right on the beach. There is one important detail I should add: the weather was horrible. If you feel like I have said that a lot lately, that’s probably because the past couple weeks have been awful. I mean great for Australia and the drought and all that, but comeon! We wanted sunny beaches!
We spent a good chunk of the day simply hanging with backpackers from Denmark in the Information center (drinking free coffee!) and waiting for the rain to clear up. Finally, we simply accepted the bad weather, drove to a couple more beaches, and then climbed a mountain. I should mention: we didn’t know we were going to be climbing a mountain. I was actually wearing thongs (flip-flops) and had a mug of tea in my hand for what we thought was short, 500 meter trek up a small hill. It ended up being 4 kilometers of pain. I am so out of shape…
That evening we drove up to Tully Gorge to camp out in the wilderness. While we drove, countless frogs sat on the road watching as we ran over them with Old Bessie. Some even inte tionally jumped into our path. Moral of the story: Australian frogs are tragically suicidal. It was actually kinda depressing. Also morbidly satisfying; Squish.
Day 9
Waking up to the pounding of rain on the roof of the car, I decided to head down to the river for a quick look about. Tully gorge is famous for it’s amazing rafting and kayaking, and it truly does look like it would be stunning. Unfortunately, however, neither of those two sports were in our budget, so we had to simply look at the beautiful river.
Adjacent to the campsite there was a short walk dubbed “the butterfly walk”. We decided to walk the walk, and ended up reading about all the butterflies in this region. As cool as it was to read about them, however, we didn’t actually end up seeing very many of them, so that was kind of depressing. I guess it was just too rainy for the tiny things to fly around.
From there we drive into the town of tully hoping to find a spot to charge our dying phones and cameras. It may have just been a bad day, but Tully seemed horribly… horrible. The people were unfriendly, the roads cramped and nonsensical. We decided to give up on our search for wifi and continued down the road, stopping in Cardwell.
Cardwell was an incredibly quaint town, filled with cute bakeries and rumors of dugongs in the channel. Not being able to afford the bakery, we thought that dugong spotting might have been a pleasant afternoon’s activity. However, after 10 minutes of waiting for a sea cow to appear, we were soaked to the bones from the torrential rain, and headed back to the car in despair. I wish we had more time to spend, but unfortunately we had no margin to spend chasing those lovely fat mermaids, so we kept heading down.
We arrived that evening in Ingham, home of the famous Tyto Wetlands. The wetlands were a giant bird sanctuary with free entry. It was getting dark at that stage, so we decided to leave the wetlands for tomorrow, and instead spend the evening with some local wallabies and mozzies.
Day 10
This morning I woke up next to a frog. Now I should make this clear: I did not invite the frog into my bed. This was not consensual. However, after the initial shock wore off, I began to appreciate the amount of effort the frog must have gone through to get inside of the van and hop his way over to my bed. Kudos, Mr Frogger.
We woke up incredibly early in the morning to visit the Tyto Wetlands, assuming that if we got up early enough we would see more birds, which ended up being a brilliant decision. Within the first ten minutes of the walk I was fortunate to see a Masked Owl, which is definitely super special. While none of the other birds were quite as epic, the rest of the walk was beautiful and Tyto was definitely very worth it!
From Tyto we decided to visit Wallamans Falls, Australias tallest waterfall coming in at nearly 300 metres (or for the americans reading: 300 metres. Learn the metric system.). Unfortunately, to get to this waterfall we had to drive up one of the steepest roads I have ever seen. In Old Bessie: our $300 beauty. I have to admit, I was fairly nervous. I wasn’t sure the old cow could make it all the way up there, however with only a little struggle (and the smell of burning, we should get this thing checked out…) we managed to climb that mountain and emerged victorious at the summit. And what a view it was: 268 meters of plunging water framed by the stark cliff-face of the deep gorge. This waterfall is so tall that the water barely touches the bottom so much of it simply evaporates on the way down. This waterfall is huge.
Naturally, after a slow and laborious drive up to the waterfall, we decided to walk all the way down to the bottom despite our current state of fitness (or lack thereof). Let me explain something:
For those of you that are hiking novices, there are really only two types of hikes: mountain (uphill) hikes and gorge hikes. Well technically there is a third type, the pancake (flat ) hike. Except if it is flat, it’s a walk not a hike. Anyways, two types of hikes.
Numero Uno: the mountain hike. This any form of hike that has you walking uphill to your destination. Your goal is at the top, so all of your focus and adrenalin is directed at scaling that peak. This means that you can climb with determination to reach the top with relative ease. Once you are at the top, your goal has been reached and your adrenalin fades away. You take in the beautiful sights, and then begin your descent. At this stage, without the adrenalin and determination you previously had, you have lost a significant level of “freshness”. That’s okay, because the rest is downhill and you can simply skip down the mountain singing pleasant tunes. Beautiful.
Numero Douce: the gorge hike a.k.a. Hell. This is the hike you don’t want, the one where you walk downhill to your final goal. This isn’t good, because your drive is wasted on the relative ase of descent. You get to the bottom, your adrenalin goes away, then you have to climb. With no energy or enthusiasm, this climb is brutal. Moral of the story, always choose mountain hikes.
Anyways, we walked down the hill, saw the waterfall, and laboured slowly back up. It ws brutal. Pretty though.
Back at the top, we headed back down the hill (please don’t die Bessie!!) and drove back into town. After much deliberation, we decided to drive straight to our campsite by Townsville. Saunders beach provided an incredibly beautiful free campsite right on the beach, so we braved the mozzies and ended up staying for four nights in a row. But more on that later.
Day 11
We had a lazy morning on the beach before heading into Townsville. Townsville has a local market on Sundays, so we headed to that before stopping at a cafe to charge devices and complete some work.
A couple notes on Australian customer service: it’s terrible. I have seen a lot of people complaining about the tipping culture of Canada and the States, and I agree that mandatory tipping is ridiculous. However, staff at a lot of establishments down under (not all, but a lot) just do not care about the service aspect of dining and drinking. At this particular cafe, we watched in horror as employees didn’t offer water, sat at the tables for their breaks, and took extensive conversation breaks in the middle of the cafe. Say what you will about the tipping culture, but the mindset of customer service is something I definitely miss about back home.
Anyways, after a solid day browsing markets and working in a cafe, we headed back to Saunders for another beach evening under the stars.
Day 12
Today was the day we dedicated to exploring Townsville. So we piled into the van and headed into town. First stop as the Strand, a lovely road running adjacent to the coastline. Similar to the Cairns Esplenade, the Strand was full of walks, free barbies (bbqs) , and unlike Cairns: beaches. This was one of our first times swimming in the ocean since our time spent up north with all of the stingers. Finally, a lovely stinger net to keep us safe as we floated in the warm sea water.
From the Strand, we walked down the main shopping street, visited several boutique shops, and then drove up Castle Hill. After Old Bessie survived her encounter with Wallaman Falls, we weren’t too worried about driving up Castle Hill. However, what we weren’t expecting was the shame that came with driving. Our excuse was our lack of time, however as we drove past the legions of walkers and running taking advantage of a beautiful day to get a spot of exercise, it became harder to justify our drive. Finally we arrived at the top, and we embraced by the beautiful views of Townsville and Magnetic Island. Amazing.
We ended the evening with a movie (The Jungle Book, phenomonal.) and headed back to Saunders beach for a 3rd night in a row.
Day 13
After a couple weeks of hard travelling (lolz) we decided it was time to chillax, so we headed to magnetic island for a couple nights. After talking our way into discounted ferry rides (thank goodness im beautiful), and repacking our van, we were on the open ocean headed to the island. Magnetic Island is a populate island just off the coast from Townsville, with a couple hostels and camping sites for us to stay at cheaply. After the ferry over, we caught a bus to our hostel and chilled at the hostel for a bit. We then decided to walk to a nearby bay.
Balding bay was the destination of choice, and it was supposedly a short walk from the hostel. What wasn’t mentioned was that this short walk was entirely up a mountain. We are terrible at estimating hikes apparently, because we really struggled on this one. Finally, after a sweaty, painful while we ended up on the beach!.. alongside a bunch of naked old men. Without realizing it we had walked into a nude beach. Oops.
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