Thursday 8th November

I was way to excited to work! By the time the clock hit 4pm I literally ran out the door and got home. We had plenty of time to get everything done seeing as we were being picked up at 8pm. We packed out rucksacks, and had dinner and waited for Dave to pick us up. We drove the the domestic airport and did our 'online' check in and headed to the lounge. It was a pretty tiny airport but busy full of workers FIFO (fly in fly out) to and from the mines.

Our 'red eyed' flight left at 9:50pm and took 5 hours (seems ridicoulous, flying 5 hours and landing in the SAME country) and landed in Carins 4:30am their time as they are three hours ahead too!

We tried to get as much sleep as possible, which was impossible! We flew on JetStar, and I felt like a cattle squashed up in there!

Friday 9th November

We finally landed and awaiting in the airport was a very sleepy looking Mark and Chelsea!! It was amazing to see them again, must be two years since we had seen them! Chelsea drove us to her house where we chatted for a while, had some food! I also spotted a (tiny) huntsman within 5 minutes of walking into Chelseas house! We had a couple of hours kip seeing as the rest of the house was asleep. We woke up and I proceeded to have coffee after coffee, which did the trick actually!! I had an explore round Chelseas yard, seeing as it was day time and I could now see and they was huge mountains everywhere, all covered in green trees! It was beautiful! Which it had been lighter when we landed!

We got washed, dressed, fed and packed the car and we were ready to go! Marks parents were also here so we had two cars for the 8 of us! Me and Stu headed into Alex's pick up ute.

We drove to the garage, got some fuel, ice for the esky, snacks and waited for Dave to return from Dan Murphys (beer!). We filled the esky with the beer and ice and headed out on the road.

We started following the coast, which was beautiful, the ocean scenery never got boring. It was also very green and jungley up here, compared to WA which was dry! So made a nice change!

We stopped of at Mossman Gorge, located in the southern part of the World Heritage Listed, Daintree National Park, Mossman Gorge is one of the few places in the country that visitors can gain an insight into the lives, culture and beliefs of Australia's Indigenous population and their connection to the natural environment.

A short walk and we arrived at the gorge, it was beautiful, the water was a nice deep green and clear. We all had a swim, I kinda wish it was sunnier at that point as the water was FREEZING!! We spent about 30 minutes before leaving, I got dried and out of my wet swim wear ASAP!

We continued along the road before we had to get the short ferry crossing to the Daintree National Park. It was very exciting, we had entered crocodile land!!! I kept a beady eye out to see if I can see one of these scary creatures!

The roads were still good, tarmac so they was a lot of backpacker campervans around (I was hoping this trip would convience Stu that we want a 4x4 not a campervan!!). We stopped off at a view point and took a few pictures. Chelsea's mum, Jeanie, took about a zillion pictures of Stu and I, and this continued throughout the whole trip. Which was good as we usually did those pictures ourself!!

We continued along the winding road through the jungle, we passed a few backpackers who thought it was a brilliant idea to sit ontop of the car roof. What idiots! We all hoped a cop car was heading our way to stop them!

We passed a few cassaway road signs warning us of all the dangerous wildlife that inhibits the local area!!

We reached the end of the (tarmaced) road at Kulki - Cape Tribulation beach, we stopped and had a picnic lunch and a few beers. We went onto the beach, where another signed warned us of stingers (jelly fish) and also had some vingear in a bottle for first aid!!

I tried to find a salty (salt water crocodile, there everwhere up here!!) but no luck! I wasn't prepared to go near the water either!!

We got back on the road and it became more of a dirt track!!! The driving got more exciting, Stu also had a go in the hire car! Most of the campervans couldn't get passed the first ford and were forced to turn around! We did however come across one guy who made it pass the crossing and half way up the steepest hill ever. He had a camper, with a boat trailer! He got stuck in the wrong gear and couldn't go up any further! Whoops! We had to leave him, his mate had already gone for help!

We made it to the holiday park in Cooktown after a couple of hours driving through the jungle! It was pretty awesome, steep hills, rocky roads, fords, jungle! It was so much fun! The hire car was white (wrong colour) so it showed the dirt off A LOT!!

We had a little bungalow type of thing, like what we had in New Zealand mum! We had a little swim in the pool, before we got washed and dressed and had some food! Alex had brought his BBQ (the Aussies go full out when having a BBQ!!) it was so tasty! I don't know how I managed it, but stayed up quite late before going to bed! We also found our friend the Quakka here! Trying to steal our food!

Saturday 10th November

Its properly a good job I stayed up late last night as my body clock had readjusted to the small time zone change!

Breakfast was already ready when we woke up! BBQ eggs, sausages and bacon. YUMMY!

We drove into Cooktown town...! We did the usual touristy sights!

It was a really werid sight, as most of the town looked like it was out of a wildwest movie! The best building was the welfare and pensions office with gun turrent on top!! Random! They also call slot machines pokies here, which it just hilarous!

We went to the James Cook museum, where we learnt about James Cook and Cooktown itself; the first European to visit Cooktown was in 1770 when Captain Cook holed his ship on a reef just south of Cooktown and had to beach his ship at the mouth of the Endeavour River to undertake repairs. He spent 48 days here. Over 100 years later, Cooktown became one of the main gateways into Australia with the gold rush to the Palmer River. Grand permanent buildings were established, and the population boomed. A railway was even constructed from Cooktown to the goldfields. With the passing of the goldrush days, and a decline in shipping, Cooktown went into decline. The town was frequently cut off by flooding in the wet, and the gravel road to Cooktown was washed out frequently. Cooktown became a victim of its isolation. The visit of the Queen Elizabeth II to Cooktown in 1970 still rates highly in the history of the town. The sealed road made it to Cooktown in the 1990s, bringing with it a small resurgence in the fortunes of the town, with the arrival of tourism. The town's population has never recovered to the level of the goldrush days, but today is slowly increasing.

We stopped off the the local watering hole for a drink, a round cost $26! I nearly had a hert attack about how cheap it was compared to Perth!

We had a drive up to the light house, where it offered great views over the ocean and cooktown. You could just about see the start of the barrier reef! We hopped back in the car and went for another drive, we stopped off at a roadhouse for some food. We had a quick walk down to the creek dodge the sprinkler system which had turned on! We tried to find a croc, we saw plenty of subspicous bubbles coming from the water but no crocs surfaced. We headed back to the cars where we went to see some neighbouring bulls (in a fenced off field) one of the bulls didn't like the attention and it look like it was about to charge. We ran away screaming! I don't think the fence would of held the bulls back!

On the way out of the roadhouse, we drove past a sign warning us of bulls charging cars. It was a pretty funny sign, on here would you find a sign like this!

I had a go at driving now! It was pretty strange, seeing it was an automatic, I kept hitting the floor with my foot looking for the clutch! I only had a short drive but I did go through a ford!!! We all jumped out and had a wander round, then the boys (being boys) drove backwards and forwards through the ford at some speed!!

We then drove through an abroginal town, more like shanty town! It felt really dodgey, we didn't stop just literally drove round and back out!

We headed back to the holiday resort, went for a quick dip and washed and showered before taking the short walk to the pub. There was a lot of coppers out tonight trying to catch people drink driving due to some horse races on this weekend in Cooktown!

We had a lovely pub meal, lots of beers and good chat! We headed home when the pub was about to close and we sat around talking some more before going to bed!

Sunday 11th November

We woke up, packed up our stuff into the car and headed home, this time we took the highways, and not the unsealed roads!

It was pretty long, flat roads with not a lot to see, but I still found it interesting still! We went to another roadhouse which had a lot of business due to a camp nearby for the solar ecilpse. They were selling tickets for $500!!!! For a 5 minute event!!!

I had another go at driving, it was pretty hard going the speed limit on an open, quiet, straight road. We stopped at another lookout, James Earl and had a few more pictures taken!!

Soon we were coming into view with the hill of Cairns and we were back at Chelseas. A quick car change and we were back out into Cairns town, Chelsea was a good tour guide pointing out everything of interest!

We parked up the cars and had a walk, we walked past the outdoor community pool, which looked AWESOME! Loads of fun, we have requested when we come back if we could go here for a few hours! We stopped off at the pub and had some food! We had a few hours left so we had a walk around the boardwalk before we had to drive to the airport.

We said our goodbye, much to our dismay as we didn't want to leave and waited for our flight. Our flight left at 6pm and landed in Perth at 9pm, we arrived home by 10pm and got into bed, ready for work tomorrow!

We had a pretty awesome weekend, and loved every moment we were in Cairns and we can't wait to come back for Australia Day in January!!!