annhig It sounds like you did not take any kind of arranged tour. Did you find that visiting Mossman on your own just as successful? Do you think you would have seen more wildlife if you had an experienced guide? We will be renting a car. I'm thinking we may be ok on our own as well. We are not really fond of traveling with a group.

cristeen, we are no fans of organised tours either. We did try to join one to go to Daintree but they were sold out so we gave up and went to Mossman instead. There are tours on offer at the mossman visitor centre but they seemed very expensive. from the centre you can either walk to the gorge or get the visitor bus for which there is a small charge. We were debating which to do but in the end paid for the bus and were very glad that we did - there is quite a long and frankly boring walk up to the gorge proper and we were glad we'd taken the bus there. We might have walked back but it was raining buckets by the time we finished our walk so we ran for the bus and dripped all the way back to the visitor centre.

once we got up to the gorge there are various options for walks that you can follow; we did one of the longer ones. you can take a cossie and towel for a swim if you like but when we got there the pool was very overcrowded so we didn't bother. I honestly couldn't see much advantage in having a guide as the paths are well marked and there are frankly too many people around for much wild-life to hang about. We did see some wild turkeys, but that was about it. I think that if you are serious about seeing some wildlife in the tropics, you need to get away from other people, which is what we decided to on our one tour in OZ and it's coming up next!

annhig thanks!It is nice to hear from others that have gone before. It helps in making those choices ourselves. It sounds like you had a great trip!

Welcome back to 'Aus'!

thanks, cristeen and aussie. it's nice to be "back".

Aha!!!

Fantastic to see you continuing.....

We have not gone back to Mossman Gorge either because of how crowded it got. However, the tours with the aboriginal tribe there are extremely interesting. I am forgetting the tribal name right now, but we went on a walk with an older gentleman, and it was more about their history and his personal experiences growing up, dreamtime etc. If you have a chance to go on one of their walks it is worth it.

http://www.aboriginalaustralia.com.a...info.cfm?id=71 It is the Kuku-yalanji although I am not sure this is their site or not.

toucan - shame that we didn't do that but we were too late for the morning tours and we were far too wet to wait around for the afternoon one. we should have planned a bit better! [but then we might have missed that marvellous meal so every cloud....literally in this case!]

Sometimes things just don't work out. We tried to go to Mojo but it was closed the day we tried.

I must confess that on our two trips to Cairns and its environs years ago we did not visit Mossman Gorge - just couldn't fit it in, and I didn't know much about it at the time. Now I'm wishing we had had the time as it sounds like the sort of place we would be really interested in. I've noted that website, thanks, Toucan2, for an overdue return.
I understand exactly how you feel about places being closed when you go there. The day before we left on our BIG trip last July I purchased tickets for us to visit Alcatraz, a bucket-list dream of mine for many, many years, and one of the main reasons for going to San Francisco on the way home in October. You guessed it - a few days before we went the Govt closed all National Parks, which included Alcatraz and a few other places we had been told to visit!! Massive disappointment, as it is very unlikely we will get back to San Fran.

annhig, forgot to add how much I have been enjoying your report. It is always good to read different people's views and ideas on a place / activities to help you develop a reasonably balanced knowledge and understanding. I also find it interesting to read what people think of places / activities I have been to / participated in.
Like you, we are not big fans of organised tours but have sometimes of necessity - time, access, local knowledge, etc - taken them.

Dot

dottyp - thanks for the encouragement. What a shame about Alcatraz - but a good excuse to go back!

Come on Ann....waiting....

You can tell annhig is having some problems recounting the next bit!!

patience, margo.

Day 9 - Paradise gained

Whilst we are not mad keen twitchers, we do like looking at nature and wildlife, so acting on a recommendation from Toucan2, who with her DH goes on a lot of birding trips we managed to book a day and a half in the Atherton Tablelands with Alan Gillanders who as well as being a sometime fodorite, is a well-known Aussie wildlife expert.

So the next morning saw us making an early departure from PD so that we could be at Mareeba bus station to pick Alan up from the bus station at 9.30. Although we got there early it was very hot already, so we went to hide from the heat in the air-conditioned “mall” [not much more than a cafe and post office but none the worse for that] until the bus drew in. We hadn’t actually arranged any sort of identity marks but as Alan was the only person to get off the bus with binoculars round his neck, that turned out not to be a problem.

After introductions and handshakes, we climbed into the rather hot car and set off for what Alan said was a first destination - a local golf-course. Really? Not quite what I’d thought of as the start of an exciting wild-life adventure, but I supposed he knew what he was doing. What, I privately wondered, were we going to find there? Well, as I’m sure any aussies who are reading will have guessed, what we were going to see were kangaroos. Lots of them, that live on this golf course, and the first wild ones we’d ever seen. There were a few nice birds too, some that we didn’t recognise, and others that we thought we recognised but it turned out we’d got wrong, and just a few that we had identified correctly. The gentle introduction enabled Alan to gauge our interests [wide] our level of knowledge [limited] and our fitness levels [moderate]. Good start.

Now, I may have got the order of our visits slightly wrong, but I think that our next stop was an area of tropical forest where we got our first introduction to one of Alan’s best friends - a bower bird. And not just any bower bird, but one of the males that he’s been making friends with for several years, so that he is able to approach and study him without spooking him unduly, and allow us to do so too. I for one had no idea that there were bower birds in Australia [I must have missed that episode of David Attenborough] and to be able to see one so close and see him building his bower was really very special.

Eventually we tore ourselves away from the forest [even paradise has its downside and the leeches were getting a bit too much, at least for me] and after a stop for coffee and sandwiches, we made for a local lake where a lot of birds congregate, and where we spent a couple of hours in a hide watching a wide range of waterfowl and other species, which sadly I’ve forgotten.

Next on the menu was a spot that I am absolutely sure I’d never be able to find again, where there is a colony of miniature kangaroos. Having been told by Alan that wallaby is simply the generic name for a number of species of small kangaroos I naturally enquired as to why these even smaller animals were called kangaroos but strangely, this was one question that even Alan couldn’t answer. However the highlight of this stop was the frogmouth DH spotted in a tree - a bird that does a very good impression of a piece of bark that we never even realised existed! So special.

Our eventual destination for the day was Yungaburra, where we were going to spend the night in a local motel, http://www.kookaburra-lodge.com/ booked for us by Alan [and included in the cost of the tour] before spending the next morning with his and then making for Cairns for our flight to Brisbane. He’d suggested a choice of accommodation in Yungaburra, of which the lodge was the cheapest, and we were very happy with it. The room was simple but clean, with a little terrace overlooking the garden which proved handy as it meant that we could sit outside and look at the plants and flowers without getting wet, as it had by now started to rain quite seriously. One of the advantages was that we were able to chat to our neighbours who turned out to be a very friendly couple from Melbourne who kindly invited us to join them for dinner at the local pub. We were amused to see that the locals gave them the same sideways looks as they gave us as we went into the pub, which was reassuring.

Although it was by no means sophisticated the food was well -cooked and reasonably priced, we enjoyed hearing about their lives from our new friends, and the meal set us up well for our night-time excursion with Alan to the famous curtain fig, which is just down the road. What an amazing tree. We saw some other similar ones later on our travels but never one as impressive as this. We also tried our hands at spotting some nocturnal wildlife with a lamp but either we were pretty bad at it, or it was all hiding that night.

After a very pleasant night’s sleep we were met early by Alan to go to meet some more of his friends, the local platypuses. [or is that platypi?] We’d tried to spot them ourselves the night before in the creek near the pub but failed miserably; under Alan’s expert guidance we saw 6 different ones in about 30 minutes. I’d never seen a platypus at all, wild or in a zoo, and suddenly I’d seen half a dozen. Wonderful. They were fascinating and I found it very hard to tear myself away when it was time to return to the lodge to have a late breakfast and check out.

Our last destination on this all-too-short wildlife tour was a final stop in a tropical forest to meet another bower bird. Unlike the last one who liked to decorate his woven tunnel with anything blue, this one liked towers and had built several of them to entice his mates, and though shy, he was familiar enough with Alan to allow us to observe him observing us from a distance.

Eventually we just had to tear ourselves away to makes tracks for the airport and our flight out of paradise. The only consolation that we could find was that we were very excited to be heading to Brisbane for the first test match, where we had high hopes of watching the previously unbeaten and unbeatable english team take its first steps on the way to retaining the Ashes.

What could possibly go wrong?

PS - for those who like us don't often take organised tours, let alone private ones, I'd urge you to take the plunge particularly if it gives you the chance to do something unique. We would never have had the chance to see these wonderful animals and birds in the wild without Alan's guidance and it was a real highlight of our trip. It probably wasn't long enough and another time I would try to find more time for something similar, but with Alan's help we were able to cram a lot in and really benefitted from his expertise.

Day 10 -11 - Paradise lost, or from heaven to hell in 24 hours

The flight from Cairns to Brisbane was lovely, taking us down the coast with gorgeous views over the land and the sea. Given that this was our 4th flight in 10 or so days we were beginning to feel like seasoned travelers able to deal with any of the idiocies imposed by airlines and airports; our newfound patience and skills went untested as everything went like clockwork, including even the car -hire return but that didn’t stop that self-satisfied feeling, even when we had to wait forever for the train into the city.

It was getting dark by the time we got off at what we hoped was the right station and tried to work out how to walk to our apartment. mmm - perhaps seasoned travelers get a cab. In fact it when we worked it out it wasn’t very far but dragging our over-large cases it felt like it. This is where we stayed: http://www.thecapitolapartments.com.au/ It is not in the most salubrious area and our apartment had a great view of the railway line, but for convenience it’s hard to beat, being a stone’s throw from the arts and museum complex, the trendy south bank, and the rather more reasonably priced restaurants of the West End. It was also very well equipped with full size washing machine and dryer, a dish-washer [little used at least by us as we only ate breakfast in] and loads of wardrobe space.

So it was after a good night’s sleep and with light hearts that we set off for the Gabba to watch our brave lads set about the aussies with their usual determination and flair.

Those of a delicate disposition who do not know the outcome of the match, or indeed the series, should look away now.





OK, that’s it. it’s off to NZ tomorrow.

Laughing loudly here!!!