Meet Sydney

It was the coldest October day in 30 years, according to the pilot on arrival to Sydney airport.  We staying at Eva’s Backpackers in King’s Cross, a neighborhood with a…

The Descent

Open Water

Diving the Great Barrier Reef was near the top of our not-to-be-missed list.   The amount of information available to tourists in Cairns is absolutely overwhelming, and we did quite a…

Departing the Daintree

On the way out in the morning we did the last boarwalk: Dubuji, which looked different than the others had on previous days, due to the heavy rain the night…

Exotic Fruits

On Sunday, we drove up to Emmagen Creek and followed the path back from a huge strangler fig to the swimming hole.  We had read at the Bat House that…

Where the Rainforest Meets the Reef

In the morning, our hosts had laid out a gorgeous fruit plate: papaya, grapes, kiwi, apples, oranges, mandarin and the sweetest pineapple ever.  A lot of fruit is grown in…

Epiphyte

Next in our series of weekend wanders was a trip up the coast to Cape Tribulation.  After a few days on foot it was nice to have our own wheels…

QLD for short

Luckily, Cairns City Backpackers was amazingly accommodating when we arrived before 10 am.  Our room was vacated, but not yet cleaned, but they let us store our luggage inside until…

They call it a “red-eye”

Darwin was named for Charles Darwin, who explored the harbor on his ship the Beagle.  Established in 1864, and having survived bombing by the Japanese in WWII, Darwin faced the…

Lord of the Flies

We awoke early again for an 8 am guided walk with a ranger in the Yellow Water billabong.  Helen had given the talk at the Anbangbang shelter the previous day…

Hotter than…

  We couldn’t wait to get out of the van in the morning, so we head back up to Ubirr in the morning for another talk, this one about one…