Day 44 - Monday 5th July 2021 – Port Douglas
My birthday celebration concluded with bacon and eggs on the BBQ for breakfast. It was an overcast day, but the clothes were washed and hung out with optimism.
I spent considerable time on the phone booking our second COVID jab and caravan parks for the 10 days after we leave Port Douglas. Morning gone..............
However the schedule was updated...........
After lunch we had a restful afternoon, catching up on reading and Sudoku.
Around 5pm we met up in Camp Kitchen 2 ready for a 'gold coin' sausage sizzle and a female entertainer. The snags were great and the singer was Ok. However it was a pleasant evening.
Day 45 - Tuesday 6th July 2021 – Daintree
Shirley, Fay and I headed off to the Daintree river to do two river cruises - around 50 km away. The first cruise was east of the Daintree ferry and was in salt water. Its big focus was crocodiles and mangroves.
We saw plenty of crabs.
Some trivia for you:
- The Daintree has the second highest density of mangrove in Australia, with over 37 species competing. Victoria has one of the species.
- The Daintree river is the only area of Australia where the local Indigenous people did not eat the crocodile - as a way of numbers management - because the numbers have always been low. However they ate the eggs.
- Around 1% of crocodile hatchlings live to adulthood.
- Crocodile body scales have multiple functions in being solar panels to attract heat, toughness to deter attack, a shape that minimises drag in the water and minimises sound as the crocodile moves through the water (thus allowing it to catch fish).
On our way to our second cruise we saw a "Little Kingfisher" who was happy to pose for us.
We found a cafe in Daintree Village and all had a superb "Barra Burger" for lunch.
Both cruises were excellent.
We were weary by the time we got back to camp. However Darryl and Kay had organised dinner in the form of home made pizza, and ice-creams in cones (Drumstick style).
Being Tuesday the pizzas were cooked in the pizza oven by the park staff. It was an excellent dinner - complete with table cloth, which was a mess by the time we finished.
It was not a late night.
Day 46 - Wednesday 7th July 2021 – Port Douglas
The day started with light rain.............
It was also "Ladies Shopping Day", so the four of them headed off around 10am - leaving the guys at home.
The first job was to replace the mud flaps on Darryl's caravan, then a coffee, then a chat. Darryl's resident Curlew did not like me working on the caravan.
After a time I wandered back to our caravan and cooked a batch of choc chip cookies. David arrived just in time to be the chief tester. I got the thumbs up.
The shoppers returned about 2pm.
Happy hour was followed by dinner and (interestingly) all of us opted for a pasta dish. It was not a late night.
Day 47 - Thursday 8th July 2021 – Port Douglas
The day started wet, but many people chose to do their washing. They must have known something as the sun came out and it became a beautiful day. It was a slow morning and we headed in to town for lunch around 11:15 am. On the way we stopped and bought some cheap shorts at the Marina.
Lunch was at Paddy's Irish pub with a range of dishes between the seven of us, including Spanish Mackerel, calamari, Mackerel burger and chicken parma. Darryl and I had a pint of Guinness and the others chose something softer.
After lunch five of us had a walk along four-mile beach and watched a couple of kite-surfers do their bit. The sapping exercise justified an ice-cream after our walk.
We arrived home as the rain started and the optimistic washer-people rushed to get clothes of the line. Those out having fun would have got home to wet clothes. The rain gradually got heavier and continued into the evening.
Day 48 - Friday 9th July 2021 – Port Douglas
Another day in Paradise started like most of the others - slowly. After a night of light rain the sun was trying hard to dominate the clouds.
We did some shopping and relaxed. Fay explained to me how to use the "eTag/Linkt" App to get an extra 4 cents off each litre of diesel. So I headed off to the local Coles-Express with my 'shopper docket' and my 'Linkt' barcode and purchased 140 litres of diesel. The above discounts saved me over $11.
After lunch we went for a swim - or rather I should say, a soak in the pool. A coffee and a home-made choc chop cookie followed.
Moral for the day - if you are staying in a caravan where the temperature varies between 20 and 30 with very high humidity, it would be a better idea to cook date cookies rather than choc chip cookies (or use a lot less chocolate).
It was a communal BBQ in the camp kitchen for dinner - our last with Bev and David for a while.
Day 49 - Saturday 10th July 2021 – Mareeba
We gave Bev and David a hug before they moved to Cairns for the start of their Cape York trip.
Then Shirley, Fay and I headed up the winding road north and west from Port Douglas to Mareeba. We stopped to take a couple of photos of the view.
The road had constant (smaller, as in 36 metres) road trains. The trains coming down were full of sugar cane (around 30 tonnes of the stuff), and the trains going up were empty. The sugar cane was coming from the Atherton Tablelands and was heading to the Mossman sugar mill. At the bottom of the winding road the sugar cane was transferred from the road train to a train that runs on tracks.
One of my two navigators working out that Mareeba has a market on the second Saturday of the month - and this was it. So the Mareeba market was asked of the navigation system - and there we headed.
It was quite a good market although we were frustrated by the many magnificent plants - many of them orchids - that we could not take home.
We all decided which stalls we were going to visit for lunch. However by the time we had finished our leisurely coffee in the historical centre both the 'bratwurst' and the 'pie' stall were closed. I guess a 8am to 12 market means that it closes around noon.
We found an excellent pie shop in town and were the last customers before they closed for the day. So we were given some free cakes that would have been discarded after the doors had closed.
Fay had a desire to visit 'Emerald Creek Falls', a place that none of us had ever visited. The road there took us passed lots of banana plants.
The falls were nearly two km round trip on foot, with the walk, rests and photos taking just under one hour. It was worth the effort of clambering over and around granite obstacles.
Above - Looking up
Below - Looking down
We decided that it was time for coffee so we headed to Jaques Coffee Plantation, where they grow the beans and make an excellent coffee.
Then it was time for the drive home. After a short break it was time for (a late) Happy Hour.
Day 50 - Sunday 11th July 2021 – Port Douglas
The start of our eighth week away was greeted with brilliant sunshine, a fresh breeze and the news that Ash Barty had (again) done Australia and herself proud by winning the Ladies Singles at Wimbledon.
Again, it was a slow start. I took Shirley and Fay to the Sunday market around 10:45 and went and did some shopping. I also had a walk around the other caravan parks in Port Douglas - for future reference.
Lunch, book reading, sudoku and swim filled the afternoon, followed by some research as to where to get a new filter for the A/C and a new LED light for the caravan ceiling.
Last night we decided that we wanted a change of menu for dinner and baked spuds was the agreed choice. I was elected the buyer of the ingredients while the women attacked the market. I was told to buy big spuds, cole slaw and bacon bits. A comment was made that the spuds were too big. Everyone ate ALL of their spud – and the bacon. Cole slaw was left - surprising.
We were back in the caravan by 7pm to watch the ABC news about Ash Barty and her great win.
This had been our mildest day (of 17) in Port Douglas, basically because of the lower humidity. An ideal tropical day.
Day 51 - Monday 12th July 2021 – Cape Tribulation
The day started cloudy and stayed that way all day, sometimes with a light sprinkle of rain.
Around 9:30 Shirley, Fay, Kay, Darryl and I headed north to the famous Daintree and Cape Tribulation. Our first photo was of a cane train, with the loco being of more interest than the cane.
Other fruit that they use include pineapple, mulberry, coffee, chocolate (Shirley wanted to buy a plant), vanilla, passionfruit, dragon fruit, breadfruit, jackfruit and mango.
Again we waited for the ferry to take us across the Daintree river, then we pressed on towards Port Douglas.
It had been a long day and I was pleased to pull into the caravan park and relax. Happy hour was short and sweet and dinner was minimal.
Day 52 - Tuesday 13th July 2021 – Port Douglas
Shirley and Kay headed to the hair-dresser, Fay went window shopping, Darryl and I chilled out.
After lunch I took Shirley and Fay for a drive to check out some of the land within cooee of the caravan park. The following is what we saw.
Dinner was to be pizza, with Darryl using pre-made bases to provide the main course, and me doing a home made base for an entrée of garlic pizza. This was an experiment to make sure that we knew how to use the pizza oven correctly.
I made the pizza base in parallel with banana bread, which happened so that I could use the three remaining bananas that had reached their use-by date. The heat of the oven cooking the banana bread provided the heat to make the dough rise.
I would have provided a photo of the banana bread, but it did not last long enough for a photo - with five enthusiastic tasters. However I did get photos of one of Darryl's pizzas and my garlic pizza (with bacon).
Both were excellent. Darryl is a wiz at making tasty pizzas. My pizza base was also pretty good.
The camp kitchen was buzzing with people as those not eating pizza seemed to be sharing a huge hunk of roast pork that was cooked in the pizza oven - plus the appropriate roast vegies. It was chaotic as there was plenty of pork left over for pizza lovers to have after their triangular (pizza) dinner.
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