Don't go Troppo

It's bad for your health. And don't go to the wet tropics. It's wet and there's no surf. Only joking, Cairns is alright. Been here less than 24 hours and already organising moving on. The drive up here was cool. IT took five days. You could do it one if you booted it but there were many things to see on the way. Not least the Burdekin Dam which is at the top of the Burdekin river, in the county.... BURDEKIN SHIRE !!!!!!!!!

OH my, it's amazing to see such a massive concrete structure built in your name. Class it was. On the way back it was dark and the devil cows kept bloking the road.

Devil Cows? What be they?????

Honestly, no messing, these cows were satan in bovine form. Evil buggers. We got past them eventually though. And on into Ravenswood, a tiny goldmining town. Nice place though. Very rural.

After Ravenswood we went to Townsville in order to get across to Magnetic Island. Magnetic Island boasts a dry climate all year round. We hired an open top car and it rained. It rained all day. It only rains three days a year at most. The locals were ecstatic. We had an open top car. We were not ecstatic. Good laugh driving it though. It was like a souped up golf cart, about 1bph and yet 5 gears. Weird.

After the Magnetic Island adventure we moved on as travellers must. We aqua planed all the way to Ingham, which has nothing going for it really. IT was Anzac day the following day so the usually bustling hive of activity that is Ingham was deader than the cricket stuck to the car radiator. Not to worry, 'there's water in them there hills,' was the cry. And indeed, water there was. A walk through the rainforest (ahhhhhh, memories of Thailand) and we were at the foot of the highest single drop waterfalls in Oz, The Wallaman falls. Spectacular. Due to the conditions the air was full of mist with hints of sunlight finding their way through the dense, golden green vegetation. Makes you glad to be alive. The Jurassic(esque) plants also added to the meeting of a Cassowary. Click here.

Post Cassowary we stopped in Innisfail. Innisfail is famous because Andy banana picked there for a few weeks. Honestly, I think that's the only reason it could even think about fame. Finally we'd found a DVD player at the hostel so we could watch the last surfaris video that Tao has with him. Only one week until we return to that old favourtie... wooooooooo! The next day was more waterfalls and mad fid trees. Fig tree seed are deposited in the branches of rainforest trees by insects. They then start to grom way up in the canopy and drop roots down to the ground. As they get older more vertical branches grow toward the ground making a curtained effect, a bit like this.

So now I'm in Cairns. Someone please mail me to give me something to do whilst I'm here.