Cape Tribulation is all rainforest. You have to get a car ferry over to the national park where you carry on the only road in and out.

It was raining, which didn't really surprise us considering the season and we were in a rainforest, it was getting heavier and heavier and the thoughts of having to put a tent up in the rain wasn't the most appealing so we decided to put it off a while in the hope that we'd get a spare 20 minutes rain free later. We went on a rainforest walk in the meantime and were pretty well sheltered under the canopies, the path lead us out to the beach which was naturally unspoilt.

It's such a shame in North Queensland as the sea looks so welcoming and the beaches are beautiful, but you can't swim in the sea for fear of stingers, sharks or crocodiles and on the beach there's massive warnings about crocs being present and some that state crocs have been spotted recently, makes standing alone on the beach not quite so comfortable anymore!

With that previous thought we and the weather being pretty damaging in doing anything else we made the decision to get the ferry back over the river and find somewhere to stay a few 100km down the road where there may be less rain. As mentioned there is only one road in and out of Cape Tribulation and we found out how awkward this could be when the road floods.

We'd only driven down this road a few hours earlier and now it was nothing but a torrent of water flowing over the road which had caused a massive traffic jam as no cars would pass for either fear of being swept away or water being so high that it would flood into the car, so there was loads of people just standing there looking at it (great opportunity for those crocs had one been in the area!) We waited about an hour and the flood hadn't subsided, there was a few 4x4's that ploughed straight through, annoying. The ranger came and told everyone to drive through it and just make sure that the water didn't come over the bonnet, so like lemmings that's what we all did and sure enough it was fine but by this time it was getting dark and we had nowhere to stay, luckily we saw a campsite and hoped they had some space.

They did have plenty of space but most of it was water logged they said if we found a dry spot we could pitch the tent there, lady luck shined on us again and the rain stopped long enough for the tent to go up and for us to sort ourselves out. Another really lucky experience, we had on this campsite was that they were currently visited by a family of Cassowaries which are few of and very rarely seen, large flightless birds, looking like half emu half ostrich, they are however, very vicious and will go for you if you're too close or just if they feel like it, excellent! And these are freely roaming around the campsite! Needless to say we observed from a distance as the dad and 2 chicks wandered off.

We made a huge chilli which would last us a few days and went to bed, in a dry tent, thank God! We're looking forward to heading South again and hopefully towards the sun wherever it hiding at the moment.