Tour Australia

This week for us would see us spend another 2 nights in Cairns and then heading west. We started week 3 by taking Libby and Cam to Cairns Airport and saying goodbye.

The following day we headed north from Cairns up into the Daintree Rainforest. Somewhere north of Cairns we stopped briefly at Rex’s Lookout which overlooks the amazing coastline you have just drive, it is well marked and is good for a stop. We crossed the Daintree river at the ferry and stopped at the Waluwurrigga Alexandra Range Lookout. This is well worth a look and has great views of the coast, the mouth of the Daintree River and back towards Port Douglas.

We continued on and went to the Daintree Discovery Centre. There’s an entry fee of around $30 per person. It has a nice tree top walk, boardwalk and viewing tower. They also have some picnic facilities which we used for lunch.

After lunch we headed further north and stopped in at the two icecream shops. Both of them were nice and different in their own way. We’d recommend stopping in and having a taste in at least one of them. From there we went up to Thornton Beach and had a walk and a go at opening a coconut we found laying on the sand. We used a large knife (Gerber camping style knife) to open it up and try some coconut and coconut milk.

As we made our way further north we stopped in at the Marrdja Boardwalk and the Dubuji Boardwalk. Unfortunately the Dubuji boardwalk was closed halfway however we had a good walk at the Marrdja Boardwalk. It makes its way through the rainforest and into the mangroves.

Our next stop was up at Cape Tribulation. We did a short walk up to the lookout and then walked back down to the far end of the beach. Cape Tribulation is one of the closest points from mainland to the Great Barrier Reef and is covered in amazing rainforest.

It was getting late in the afternoon but we wanted to make it to a “beautiful swimming hole” we’d read about. We made our way north about 5km to the first river crossing of the Bloomfield Track. The swimming hole is on Emmagen Creek on the western side of the road at the creek crossing. The track is not marked but is fairly worn and easy to spot the trail head. We made our way up to the 2 swimming spots. They were nice and had crystal clear water. After a quick jump in and swim around we made our way back to the Jeep and drove into the evening back to Cairns.