Camping with the Crocs

Welcome to north Queensland! That's how Scott and Lisha and new baby Dante greeted us when we pulled in to Townsville. Australia has been a sort of cultural buffer for us between Asia and Canada, stealing my reverse culture shock thunder, which I've actually been looking forward to. Scott and I used to get into trouble together as high school and uni kids in Alberta, but have since lived worlds apart, becoming the fine young men we are. Anyway, it's been great to hang out with Scott's family and talk hockey, and share our outsider views on life in Alberta. So much for the big shock of being home.

Scott loaned us his car and camping gear and we headed up the coast from Townsville for a week. The less travelled road from Townsville to Cairns is amazing and beautiful. We saw tons of Ozzie wildlife, but fortunately or otherwise haven't seen any of the promised crocs yet.

Paluma Camp Ground.

We took the 1992 Toyota Camry "luxury offroading" (one of my guilty pleasures) up the mountain side to some natural rock waterslides. Sorry, the pics are on our other card!

Tully Gorge (aka Tully Gully to Kelsey)
Although it gets between 4 and 10 METERS of rain annually, we did have one sunny day to play in the river. This picture is at one of the free public use BBQs that we learned how to cook on. It's trickier than you'd think.

On the way down the mountain I cruised in neutral. At the bottom we turned the car off to look at the map, and the rest is history.

Palm Cove Campround near Cairns

Yup, this guy just walked out the bush to see how things were going. He's a monitor lizard.

Making the most of a rainy day. Croc sandals are definitely not made for hiking in the rain.
On the way back down to Townsville we took a detour through the Atherton Tablelands. Words can not describe how beautiful it is up there. If you look really close, you might find the cow grazing on one of the hillsides.
Millaa Millaa Falls
And last but not least, snorkeling, diving and swimming at the
GREAT BARRIER REEF!

From Cairns (camping in Palm Cove, where the Croc sign above is from) we took the "reef daytripper" a catamaran sailboat into the Pacific to the Upolu Cay. This was the very FIRST time that either of us has been snorkeling and we got to start on the barrier reef. It was beyond fantastic.
These are batfish and they like to be stroked and fed bread from the boat. They are actually a very large fish, especially for us country bumpkins.
The water is AMAZINGLY clear! It was mesmorizing to just watch the water and the reef. Here is me diving off the boat.
The water temperature was about 25 degrees so you could hang out for a long time.
This is Kelsey snorkeling for the second time this day and she is looking a lot better here. It was a bit stressful the first time as she was trying to figure things out. As a semi-competent diver, I tried to give her some tips and help out when we first jumped in the water. Well, that was the marital trial you would expect, to say the least. As you can imagine it was a bit of a scene and so an instructor stepped in to help out. But, we prevailed and pretty soon were expertly floating hand in hand over the reef. We saw like ?? different types of coral, LOTS of fish and a big sea SNAKE, which are really poisonous we found out later.
I'm so glad I took the chance for a scuba dive. It's pretty much like riding a bike, once you're down there it all comes back.

I found Nemo and a bull ray that looked about as big as a car, among other things. Unfortunately I struck out on the sharks and turtles.

During the day the boat fed and watered us and on the way home they provided wine and cheese. An elegant ending to one of the most fantastic days, truely memorable.
We plan to do a little snorkeling off an island near Townsville when we go back to visiting with Scott, Lisha and Dante.

T.