Mission Beach to Cape Tribulation

Friday 9^th September

This has been another very full day.

We rose quite early, so as to leave Mission Beach at 7.30. Our first stop was a place called Babinda Boulders. According to Aboriginal legend, a girl and a boy from different tribes fell in love and ran away together. Their tribes chased and caught them, and they were separated. In despair, the girl threw herself in the river and died. Her body is the boulders, and she tries to draw other people towards their deaths too – the water here is very dangerous and people have been killed by trying to swim near the boulders.

We walked through the rainforest to get there, and were able to admire the large number of butterflies, particularly the huge blue Ulysses butterfly. There is a lovely calm pool on another part of the river where you could swim, so I went in, but didn’t swim. The water wasn’t really deep enough, there having been no rain there for a while.

After a brief stop to look at new cameras – somebody else, as well as Paul, had a broken camera - we made a visit to Kuranda, where I went to cuddle a koala. The koalas were awake and moving gently, unlike the last time I visited 12 years ago, when they were all fast asleep.

I was able to hold one called Princess who was very sleepy and gentle.

There were lots of other animals too – I particularly liked the wallaby with the joey in her pouch.

Paul and I went in to Bird World, and there were a lot of beautiful coloured birds.

Many of them came and sat on us. Paul did not like it at all, especially when the one sitting on him decided to take off his glasses. They had quite a quarrel over them!

We spent quite a while at Kuranda, then we drove down to see the Barron Falls. The walk down to the falls was very interesting, a high level walkway on long stilts so it is near the forest canopy in places. There were several bush turkeys, one who was determined to pass us on the walkway and expected us to stand aside for him. Apparently, there is very little water going over the falls at present, so the photos are nothing special.

On the way down from Kuranda, we had a wonderful view over Cairns and down to the sea.

We made our way to Cape Tribulation, where we are staying in some little huts at a place called Crocodylus.