Week Four (4)

18th January - 24th January 2009

We start another week in a good mood, Steve has not hit his head for at least two days and Julie gave all her fellow campers another good morning alarm call. We hear on the news that Dengi fever has broken out in Cairns due to all the water up there at the moment, so we re-assess our plans, to wait and see, \just a pity if we don’t get to play on the Great barrier Reef. Off we go along Waterfall Way in search of 3 different waterfalls. Now it’s hard to explain but everywhere is bright green, where the summer rains have been falling as we are now on the edge of the cyclone belt. We get to the first waterfall, one of the highest and most spectacular, but, yep you’ve guessed it’s bone dry, not a drop of water to be seen…. Who cares, there are others and our next port of call is ‘Look out point’ which is 5000 feet high and the books describe as possibly one of the best views to be had in all of Australia. Now bearing in mind the last place had no water whatsoever, we drive 11kms along a dirt track climbing up and up, when we are suddenly in the clouds, we keep going and going until we get to the vantage point and it’s FOGGY. We cannot see a bloody thing,

see photo, it’s the white looking one, it‘s taken after driving at least half hour being shaken to bits to get to see trees that are covered in moss…….I love this place it’s so unpredictable… Julie feels it was all worth it as we saw a yellow tailed black cockatoo and lots of Crimson Rosella. 
Next stop is Ebor falls, after Ebor Cake Shoppe and wow it has loads of water and looks pretty stunning, especially as you look down the valley and see the Rainforest disappearing into the mountains.

Ebor Falls

We camp in a 2 star camp site, where we wake the owner up at 4 in the afternoon and are soon feeding Cashew nuts to the local rainbow lorikeets that surround us. We have nothing to eat so are chancing our luck and going out for dinner to the local hotel. We enter the restaurant and it looks just like a café, which is closing in half hour, it’s only half seven….. Dinner is a simple affair but we get talking to the locals who after being interrogated by you know who, explain the different Australian cultures between, Country, City and Coast inhabitants, it’s beginning to make sense but does nothing to make either of us want to swap Spain for Australia. Meanwhile back at the campsite our neighbours invite us to sit outside their van with them and exchange camping/travel stories. It gets dark, cold because we are up in the mountains but Steve carries on talking, then they run out of beer, so Steve say’s ‘Bed Time’…..

Next mourning and we continue along Waterfall Way, stopping at Dangar Falls before arriving at Dorrigo Rain Forest where we walk through it and also along a skywalk. 

Dangar Falls

Dorrigo Rainforest

We are told not to touch anything as we could easily pick up leeches, spiders, stag beetles and snakes who are asleep in the trees above us. We are making our way back to the car park when we see a 5ft carpet python, Steve immediately takes a defensive stance by pushing Julie in front before he realises it’s dead…..

Sleeping Snake Trees

We survive and make it to Coffs Harbour before booking into a campsite, called Lorikeet Tourist Park. It soon becomes obvious why it is named so as we walk out of the office and see 4 Lorikeets in front of us. We settle down for a beer in the evening sun and suddenly see a mob of Kangaroos grazing not more than 50 feet away. Forty one pictures later, some lovely little children arrive on bikes with dingaling bells. We discover that Kangaroos and Steve have something in common, they both dislike little dingaling ringers…..

My Dingaling

Steve wakes up in a cold sweat, he has had a nightmare where he is surrounded by Vortex petrol pumps…. He realises he is suffering from Diesel fill up withdrawal symptoms as yesterday was the first day he had not had to fill up the van at least once. Julie immediately makes him feel better by hitting her head in the van, not once but twice, how stupid is that…. We travel along the coast and stop at Lennox Head, it has a soft golden sand beach called 7 mile beach of which today, you can safely bath in a 100 yard stretch of it, due to a shark being seen earlier and an invasion of Irukandji jelly fish. 

Half of  7 mile Beach

These jellyfish are 2cm long and can kill if treatment is not received, the beach is littered with them but there are at least 20-30 people in the sea between the 2 blue flags, most wearing lycra stinger suits to prevent being stung. We settle for the lets get out of here option after seeing a sign on the beach stating “Brown Snakes Watch your step”. 

Returning to the campsite we settle down to sitting outside in the sun, half hour later our caravan neighbour has arrived and wants to park on the empty part of our site, a few words are exchanged re the site boundaries before we settle down again. Suddenly the sun appears to be setting extra quick, we look up and find our new neighbour has one of those pop up top caravans and his top has just put us in the shade………

Up early and Steve takes 101 sunrise over the pacific ocean pictures, he also works out why Australians go to bed early, its because 50% of them are up early walking, running, swimming, surfing or working by 6am and getting in his way….. 

Next stop Byron Bay and to the most Easterly point of mainland, Cape Byron, it is now unofficially twinned with the most easterly point of Spain, Javea. We walk up to the lighthouse and Julie is quiet, remembering her last lighthouse excursion, until that is she notices the dolphin dorsal fin breaking the surface, suddenly it’s fins as a large pod swim by, then it’s several more before we see three Turtles swimming easily whilst under the water but looking more like our Spanish Teacher on his bicycle in 50 feet of rough sea, when on the surface….. 

And then there is a dark torpedo shape swimming alone, a shark has arrived on scene, no one can tell what type as it heads off in the direction of a small turtle, Steve is distraught at what might occur fearing our hard shelled friend may not make it to the Queensland coast to lay her eggs. A small girl next to Steve comforts him and dries his tears, whilst Julie tells him not to make a scene, at which point the shark swims pass the Turtle and off into the distant surf where, grown men in lycra suits are surfing. Another shark appears and again shows no interest in the Turtles, these are obviously not the Great White variety…… 

Next stop Minyon Falls where we have lunch, with a rainbow being produced in the waterfall before an hour and half uphill drive to a cave under another waterfall. Only this time you can walk through it and see glow worms and tiny bats on the cave ceiling, photographing them proves rather difficult as you are not allowed to use flash or direct torch light as they will stop glowing, which in turn stops insects being attracted to them.

Time is getting on and we have one last stop to make “Best of all lookout” we carry on uphill and into the clouds, déjà vu. We arrive, park up and walk 300metres through a beautiful rain forest, where we see several wallaby type critters and a 2000yr old Antarctica Beech Tree. We step out onto the lookout and instead of the 20-25mile view to the coast, we can see nothing except a wall of cloud…… Lets camp near here and come back tomorrow, the campsite is for serious campers, it’s no more than a field with a car park and a warning about red belly venomous snakes inhabiting the area. Steve is not put off by this and thinking of Julie, he says, “It will be colder up here in the mountains, probably best to go down near the coast and be warmer” God it was hot that night…

After a cold shower we go to set off before we realise yesterday we crossed the state border, that means we have missed an hour in bed as the clocks are 1 hour behind NSW time. Julie is not best pleased and after breakfast, an hours driving, coffee at a Spanish tapas bar, a walk along Surfers Paradise beach and a quick trip around Woolworths, she forgets about it…. We have no plans so just head off for a drive to Tamborine Mountain as we do so we find a Polish Restaurant/Café in the middle of nowhere but razor eye notices it has a bit of a view with no cloud in the way, so after doing a U turn on a mountain road where 6 inches means a hell of a lot, we pull in. What a result, there are Rainbow Lorikeets, Kookaburras and Huge Orange Butterflies, flying all over the place. We order drinks and Cold Beetroot Soup, as soon as it arrives we have an extra guest for lunch, a Lorikeet starts to drink Steve’s Cappuccino before Steve, not content with that he starts on Julie’s milk before returning for the chocolate powder on the top of the cappuccino.

We then play with them for ages before they all panic and fly off screeching, we look up and see an eagle circling above us, he then glides away and our lunch companions, which reminded Steve of ‘Ladies doing Lunch’ return. Just before we are off,

Julie sees something crawling around on all fours and Steve was sober so it could only be a goanna. It was about four foot long and did have a slight resemblance to Steve in that it had a blue tongue…….

We then head back to Brisbane and book into a camp for 3 nights so as to explore the city and surrounds prior to Australia Day, this coming Monday when we hope to be on the Sunshine Coast and possibly swim with the dolphins.

After a day shopping in Brisbane where we catch a catamaran just to have a coffee, we return to camp and watch the sunset which was dramatic not only because of the cloud formation but due to the thousands of fruit bats flying over us.

Next stop Coffee

Today we head to Mt Coot -tha, where there is a look out over Brisbane, a Nature Park and a Botanical Gardens, what we like about Australia is the fact that they don’t charge you for entry to all these natural places of interest. We walk around the Gardens after not trying to share our lunch with several white ibis and are amazed at the amount of different spiders we see. By now we are so used to seeing the Eastern Water Dragon that we now just walk on by.

In the forest there are more spiders, thousands of froglets, Water Dragons but NO water, therefore the 1 hour walk to JC Slaughter falls, was more or less a waste of time, especially as we forgot to take some water, which on the climb back up in 75% humidity, was seriously missed….