Cairns, Lake Tinaroo and the Bloomfield River

After catching up with Uncle Greg and Dell I headed for Cairns, which I liked straight away, it is a touristy place but full of energy and there's a lot going on. The first night I camped in town, the second I drove out to Kuranda where the reggae festival was on. Saw a Sydney band, The Beautiful Girls- great band and I caught up with the guys from the other festival. The next night I spent at Palm Cove, a beautiful spot just a bit north of Cairns. Here is a photo of the sunrise:




My friend Tom was due to arrive in Cairns from Melbourne the next day so I hunted around for a place to stay, and settled on a converted 'Queenslander' near the Cairns foreshore. I spent the arvo wandering around Cairns getting 'supplies' (basically bar snacks and a couple of bottles of Bundy) and a few essentials for a 'Mexican's (Qld term for southerners) visit to the far north. the first couple of days were spent relaxing- we had a couple of good steak dinners in the hotel courtyard by the pool, and did a bit of fishing around Cairns. We went fishing off the pier at Palm Cove, floating live baits hoping for a nice Barra or Mackerel. I caught a 10kg catfish, easily the largest fish I have ever landed- we were excited about it until a local turned his nose up and told us it was 'just' a catfish, you can't eat them, they have poisonous spines and they secrete an oily slime that stinks! I also caught a small hammerhead shark, for the record. One unfortunate thing happened- my beloved Oztent got knocked off one night, they just cut the ropes on the roofrack and away they went, bastards. May Allah remove more than simply their hands from their anatomies. It sent the pair of us on a strange journey into the Cairns 'Underbelly'- where bicycles are stolen at an amazing rate. Of course I reported it to the Police, who were concerned enough to fill out a small incident card and send me on my way with feeble assurances they would call me if anything turned up. Wasn't holding my breath for that call! Next stop was a pwanbroker, actually a 'gold only' dealer who was hilarious, he and his son ranted for about half an hour and gave us the lowdown on the workings of petty crime in Cairns. It's impossible to relate but Tom and I didn't stop laughing for one second. He showed us the Police stolen list that gets mailed weekly- there were about 500 things on that list- including about 75 bicycles- and one little Oztent got listed too. Probably the last my tent will ever be heard or seen of again... From there we went to BCF to buy a new tent- a $25 dome tent. Bit of a step down form the Oztent but it does the job...

From Cairns we headed for Lake Tinaroo, with a hired canoe on the roof. Lake Tinaroo is a big lake up on the Atherton Tablelands, a pretty beautiful spot really and perfect for a canoe. I had caught a 3 inch Barramundi that attacked a 3 and 1/2 inch lure the one night I had stayed there previously so we had high hopes for the fishing. We went via Yungaburra to visit an awesome book shop I had found and discovered the town full of Police and serious looking young guys in black suits with medals on- the funeral for one of the commando's killed in Afghanistan had taken place that afternoon. Apparently everyone important had been there that day. After getting supplies (wine) we headed for the lake. Actually, we have the honour of being the first customers at the new Yungaburra bottle shop- we even had our photo taken with our prized cask of Morris Dry Red...

The Lake was great but a little drizzly. Good excuse to sit around the fire, listen to music and consume the supplies. We got the canoe going one afternoon, and having loaded up with lunch, rods and tackle we set out to conquer the mighty barramundi.


We paddled around casting lures indiscriminately until we spotted a few good looking snags on the other side of the lake. Once over there we found some nice weed beds to cast around and in no time I had a good strike and landed a Sooty Grunter. Tom also had a good strike but that was the one that got away. Here's the Grunter:


From lake Tinaroo we headed back to Cairns to drop off the canoe and were on our way to Cape Tribulation. The canoe guy had given us a tip about barra fishing in the Bloomfield River so were headed that way- not before we stopped off at a caravan park at Cape Trib, where I enjoyed my first bed since leaving Mackay. I was so impressed with the luxury of it all I took a photo.



We had an awesome steak dinner at the restaurant there as well, and then a remarkable game of Trivial pursuit in which Tom clinched victory at the last gasp by answering some obscure question about Dame Edna Everage's favourite flower- at least I have the dignity of knowing I had been consuming supplies and Tom hadn't!

The next day we saw 'Boris' the croc being fed before we left for the Bloomfield River, which we reached after about 35km's of 4wd track.


We were lucky enough to get a free camp by the river on some private land owned by the local store owners- we were pretty paranoid about crocs, and actually spotted our first one with the spotlight one night- just a pair of orangy/pink eyes floating along in the water.


The next two days we hired a boat and gave the fishing a good crack.


We had a ball cruising around on the river, spotting crocs,



and eventually a a local Aborigine called Mario kindly gave us some live bait and we had our first fishing success with it, this Trevally I caught in a little offshoot to the river.


I also pioneered a new method of fishing to help people cope with the stress of Queensland:




The second day we managed to get our own live bait with a cast net, a seminal moment for us as we'd been struggling to catch some for a while. The locals make everything look easy, but on about cast 345 up came the net full of potty mullet. That was about as exciting as the fish we later caught with it, another Trevally for me and Tom got a nice Mackerel.



From there it was back to Cairns, where Tom flew home and I am planning my next move. I'm off to Port Douglas to visit Benny Watson, an old cricket mate, and then I'm off to Cape York. Hope everyone is well!

Festival at Mt Garnut

Well, the festival was something of a blur, as any good festival should be! The photo here shows the view we were heading into as we drove up to the Atherton Tablelands, a high plateau that climbs fairly sharply from the coast. There were three cars, Shannon and Nick in their Wicked van ( a van converted into a camper- they're everywhere up here) called Ninja Turtle, on account of its paint job; Eleanor and Anna in "Log", and Notker and I in the Disco, which has adopted the title of Wesley (pretty sure we'd had a few when Eleanor thought of that one). As we drove into the sunset, we were having a good old time on the UHF radios making up jokes and generally talking nonsense. We observed radio protocol in a way that must have confused any truckies who were scanning the channels!



After a bit the sun went down and as we climbed higher we were driving through misty mountains- quite the way to get to a festival. We eventually arrived, only to find Notker and I needed more cash for the tickets so off we went, back to Mt Garnut. Here we had our first experience of a genuinely weird outback pub, complete with rather intimidating and drunk locals. No worries, we were only there to take out a heap of cash! Not only for us but we'd been loaded up with cards to get some for the others too. Back in the car out the front, Notker said "Let's get out of here- even do a burnout!" in German accent of course which probably made it funnier at the time than it now sounds.

Here's a photo of our camp at the festival- just chilling out one afternoon. A girl camped opposite us joined us that afternoon, Heidi, and was great singer and guitarist so we had our own mini concert for a bit.

Here is a photo of the whole crew, Eleanor in front, then Notkr, Anna, Shannon and Nick.

I haven't said much about the festival! It was basically a big dance party with a hippy take, my favourite section was the chill out zone, a large area with a separate stage and cafes set up. We saw a guy playing an African harp, heard some good live bands, and a few dj's were really good too. Four days of constant music and partying, sleeping at weird times and I felt about 10 years younger!



After the festival we visited the hot springs at Innot- natural springs that you can soak in- that was amazing after four days without a shower. We camped down the road, which is where this photo was taken, we were just having breakfast and Heidi was playing us a song. It was a good way to farewell the guys, they were heading to Kuranda for a reggae festival and I was off to visit Uncle Greg and Dell at Miraa Miraa just up the road. Here's a photo of us visiting the 'Cathedral Fig Tree near Yungaburra:



It was great to see them and I had some much needed R & R, they shouted me a meal at the pub too one night where I attempted to eat the largest rib-eye steak I've ever seen. We had a few nice drives around the Atherton area too.