Northern Queensland finale - Daintree region

In my last Queensland post, I took us up to our crossing of the Daintree River by car ferry. Once you reach the other side, you're in the heart of the Daintree National Park and there are no shopping complexes, high-rise buildings, phone networks or even mainstream electricity. There are generators for power, one petrol station, a convenience store, and a scattering of accommodation and food options.

It is like a different world, and it is very peaceful.

Walkway to our cabin, Daintree Wilderness Lodge

I had hatched a cunning plan for our Daintree accommodation. I suggested that if we camped and used budget accommodation for the first part of the trip, we could have a more luxurious ending in the Daintree. Mr Bite didn't need too much convincing and so it was that we came to stay at the Daintree Wilderness Lodge, a small eco-friendly resort that has just 7 cabins, all set into rain forest off their private walkways. 

It has long been a dream of mine to stay in a tree house (as per my previous ramblings on the topic), and this is as close as I've come to date.

Daintree Wilderness Lodge

Tweet

Northern Queensland travels - Cairns to the Daintree, via Port Douglas and Mossman Gorge

It is difficult to grasp that 2 months have passed since we returned from our northern Australia holiday. Or rather, it is easy to grasp that 2 months have passed, but hard to understand why I haven't finished writing up my travel posts!

This is the second to last post that will relate to this trip, and it picks up where my two Cairns posts left off. After we left Cairns, we drove 1.5 hours up the coast to the Daintree region, a drive that is as scenic as it is winding.

Look out point mid-way between Cairns and Port Douglas

Tweet

Northern Queensland travels - Cairns (part 2)

In my previous Cairns post, I focused on the things we did in Cairns itself. This post is all about the trip we did from Cairns up to Kuranda, a small rainforest village inland and uphill from the coast. The journey can be done by skyrail, rail or a combination of both; we took the skyrail out and the train home.

Skyrail images

The skyrail leaves from Caravonica, just outside of Cairns, and covers 7.5km of rainforest views. It is a breathtaking experience. I had actually done the skyrail once before, when I was in the area for a conference in Port Douglas in 2006 (the perks of a conference in Port Douglas are another story), but that trip was rushed. Doing the journey on holiday and with Mr Bite instead of work colleagues was immeasurably better.

Tweet

Northern Queensland travels - Cairns (part 1)

In my last travel post, we were approaching Cairns after 5 days of driving across outback Australia. Enjoyable as the outback section was, reaching Cairns was exciting. Not only is Cairns a city of reasonable size (some 150,000 people), it was a coastal city and it was green. Buildings, water and trees are wonderful things when you haven't seen them for nearly a week!

Cairns centre

Tweet

Northern Queensland travels - Outback Queensland

Our camper van drive across the top of Australia included two overnight stops in the Northern Territory, and then two in Queensland. I have to confess that where the N.T. surprised us with its varied and green landscape, Queensland surprised me with its monotonous and barren landscape. Not only that, it has a 110km / hour speed limit (admittedly in line with the rest of the country and perfectly reasonable), whereas the N.T. allowed us to zoom along at 130km / hour.

If there were any slightly boring bits to our driving, they were in the section between the inland Queensland border and Cairns!

Tweet