Northern Queensland

We are kind of in limbo at the moment here in Cairns. We are waiting for some bank issues to straighten out and then, hopefully, we can buy a car and get out of here. The plan is to drive south, stopping at all the farms on the way and hoping one of them has work for us. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Last Thursday we spent the night in a rainforest, which was really cool. We drove up to Daintree Rainforest, which you can only get to by crossing a croc infested river on a ferry. I was pretty nervous about parking in a small space with my monster truck on the ferry but it all went well and the drive afterwards, on winding roads, was really fun after all the long straight stretches of highway we've been on so far.

A view of the Daintree River from the ferry. Spot the crocs!

Here is a list of the fruits that we tried and a picture of the fruit. How many can you identify?

I tried all 10 fruits - I'm quite proud of myself! Let's face it, I rarely eat any fruit and when I do it is only green apples, cherries or the occasional orange, so this was really out of my comfort zone. I can't say I liked many of them! The pommelo was really nice, it tastes a lot like orange. The orange was actually created when the pommelo crossed with another fruit. The Davidson plum (not a plum) was very sour but I liked that too. It's an endangered species of tree but the owner of the farm found a seed in the wild and planted it and now he gets a lot of nice fruit from it.

Here is the Sapodilla. It tastes just like brown sugar.

Here is Mathias trying the Davidson Plum (I made him try everything first!)

And here is the Black Sapote. Its other name is the "chocolate pudding fruit". Let me tell you, that is a LIE. I was so excited about a chocolate tasting fruit :(

Here is the man that runs the farm. He and his wife started it 25 years ago when they got bored of teaching. When they turned up there was no electricity, no phone lines, no anything! He had quite an amazing story to tell.

On the walk back from the farm Mathias found a way to amuse himself...

We had a lovely little cabin all to ourselves at Cape Tribulation. It was perfect, except for one "little" thing...

There was a beautiful beach there. There were signs everywhere about not going in the water because of crocodiles but there were still people in there! I was not tempted.

After that we headed back to Cairns to give back the hire car and we've been here ever since. It's a nice city. Yesterday we went to the botanical gardens where I was bitten by some tiny tiny black creatures and I now have red spots on my legs, arms and hands (typically, Mathias didn't get a single bite)! We are now waiting excitedly to see if they turn gangrenous.

There is a year round colony of flying fox bats here in Cairns. We watch them head out for dinner every night, which is pretty cool. They hang from these particular trees next to the library and they screech all day long. They also poo a lot, so walking on the path under the trees is a little nerve wracking. Here you can see them chilling in the daytime heat: