I'm glad to report that the rainforest around the Daintree River has not only been given National Park status, but that when somebody proposed that a major coastal road should be ploughed through the area, World Heritage put their foot down and slapped a conservation order on it. Red tape being what it is, however, the foot didn't fall quite quick enough to prevent the coastal road going ahead, at least in part. Today, it is possible to stay at places such as the...

Routing through the options at the tourism desk of the hotel this morning, my eyes fell on an advert for a company based out in the Daintree National Park who specialise in taking people for horseback rides in the rainforest. I really should have learned not to take anything at face value after nearly killing myself yesterday, but this did sound like an opportunity to start the New Year by relaxing and taking in the beautiful scenery of Northern Queensland - afte...

Thumbing through the brochures in the hotel after arriving in Cairns this morning, I decided against all the laws of probability that a fantastic way to end the year (and possibly my life) would be to go White Water Rafting. I'm slightly impetuous like this - Show me a brochure or guide book full of things to do next week and my brain has time to reel in horror and say "Are you Mad?", but present me with the same crazy opportunity and explain that it absolutely m...

Ingham, a small town some 100km north of Townsville and well on the way to Cairns, is perhaps most famous for being the inspiration for the Australian folk song "A pub with no beer". In 1943, an Irishman by the name of Dan Sheahan rode 20 miles into town for a well earned drink and was just a little put out to discover that the town's only pub, the Day Dawn Hotel, had been emptied of its entire beer supply by a regiment of American soldiers who had been there the...

In an uncharacteristic display of generosity, our tour guides Brent and Lisa allowed us all to have a lie in on our final morning on Daydream Island, before crossing back to the mainland and being taken for breakfast at the local botanical gardens - or at least, that's what they clearly wanted us to think. Personally, I reckon there simply wasn't an earlier boat, and they just wanted it to appear as though they were feeling bad about all the early starts we had b...