Steaming in Queensland

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Lately the name of the game is Stay Close to Water. The tropical rainforest features a minimum of 500% humidity, and we’re sweating like we have little faucets all over our skin. Smartly, we realize there’s usually a breeze on the coast, whereas inland the air is always holding its breath.

Cooling off in waterholes is ever-welcome, but it’s important to be sure crocodiles aren’t doing the same. The worrisome ones are the huge, ill-tempered ‘salties’ (estuarine crocs), but as far as we’re concerned even this smiling ‘freshie’ has awfully pointy teeth.

Since we’re so far north, we might as well push on past Cooktown, up the pointy peninsula of Cape York. The roads are known to be, shall we say, increasingly challenging. We’ll see how far we drive before our teeth loosen. Corrrugation (washboard to us Yanks) is the main pain, but fine ‘bull dust’ thrown up by approaching vehicles blinds us as well. We leave the rainforest for a while as we pass through vast dry plains of termite mounds. There’s very little traffic up here. Hmmmm….

As we take a slow stroll (the maximum pace in this heat) on a wetlands boardwalk, we nearly lean against this fellow curled up against the corner post. Surprise! We can move fast after all. He’s about six feet long, and we don’t know whether he’s venomous or not. He’s watching us, but what is he thinking?

About halfway up Cape York peninsula a tiny bit of sense rattles to the forefront of our minds, and we rotate our compass to point south. Back to the east coast, mates!

At Palm Cove we discover a rough-edged gem named Doug running the shire campground. Through Peter and Rosemary who are also staying here, we are invited to one of Doug’s frequent ‘feeds’ on the fishing jetty. It’s simply what he does most evenings. He has a cooler, a bar, and a kitchen disguised as a funky cart covered in license plates and off-color signs. After a few cold beers he catches a small shark from the dark waters of the Coral Sea. Before we know it, it’s on his barbie grill, and soon it’s in our mouths. There’s also kangaroo meat, so now we can say we’ve tried it. Whew, there’s a job we can cross off our list.

After a few days we leave Doug and his shenanigans. We’re off to Cairns to snorkel for a day on the Great Barrier Reef. Awesome coral and fish and even a stingray! And luckily, given all our vast experience traveling on the freighter Matisse last December, I am able to assist with a little navigating of our sailing vessel. In the background the captain is so confident of my skills that he’s taking a brief nap.

Having returned to the lush, tropical rainforest of this World Heritage area, we are constantly agape at the scenery. Even Dr. Seuss couldn’t make some of these shapes up. But a big disappointment: not only have we not seen Tarzan, we have also missed sighting the elusive cassowary. We would include a photo of this huge flightless bird (related to the emu but more colorful and with a Larsonesque helmet-like structure on its head), but how can we?



At a place called The Boulders (on account of lots of you-know-whats), we find a fantastically refreshing river with waterholes and no crocs. It enables us to survive since there’s not a whisper of a breeze. Did we mention it’s hot and humid here?







Here are some friends who also appreciate a pleasant swim.



Traveling south we pass through Tully, a sugar-mill town and self-proclaimed ‘pretty wet place.’ The height of the boot demonstrates the Australian record for rainfall: 7.9 metres (about 26 feet) of rain fell in Tully in 1950. Climbing up the boot is a white lipped green tree frog. There is a real one in the restroom sink of our camp area this morning. Wanting to borrow my toothbrush probably.