Despite a minor cold I decided to do a really long walk on the island. This was bit of a necessity anyway, many of the interesting areas and walking tracks are quite far apart and reaching them by foot takes a while. Still, I figured a good 35 km day hike would take me from one end of the island to another, about half of the walk was on roads anyway so that sounded feasible. I actually ended up covering slightly over 40 km during the day, but I still got to Point Lookout and all the interesting stuff there just as sunset was getting close. It would have been even more spectacular during sunrise, but Point Lookout and the Gorge walk was still an awesome way to finish up the walk before catching a bus back to the other side of the island and the ferry terminal.

I visited couple of freshwater lakes along the way, both Brown and Blue Lake are nice swimming spots and I did a short snorkel in Blue Lake. After that things got little tricky, I was following a 4WD track which was pretty much covered in water in many parts. Most of the time I was able to go around them, but a few times I was forced to get my feet wet. Still, it was worth the effort. This road lead to the area called Keyholes, a series of pretty small lakes.

After that I got to the other coast and walked quite a while along the beach towards Point Lookout. Point Lookout is popular whale watching spot. No whales were in sight, but the North Gorge was still an awesome sight with the water rushing in and out. It did remind me of a certain accident earlier this year, however.

2012-10-08 North Stradbroke Island

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Apart from all the city life I also did three day trips to surrounding areas. First of all, I visited Mt Coot-tha Botanical Gardens and the Mt Coot-tha itself. The Botanical Gardens were quite nice and frankly pretty large to walk around. After the Gardens I headed into the bush and started hiking towards the lookout on top of Mt Coot-tha. Sadly the more interesting track was closed so the way up was somewhat boring. Still, the view to city from Mt Coot-tha is nice enough and worth the effort.

As a second day trip I visited Ipswich, an inland city near Brisbane. Ipswich is big city with a long history in mining. It’s not really an obvious tourist destination, but it still made a nice day trip. Particularly on a really warm day, temperatures to got around 35 degrees which was highest for the entire trip! I several walks in the parks around the city. Queens Park in particular is very nice, there’s a beautiful Japanese garden and a nice small animal park too.

And finally as my time in Queensland was coming to a close I did one final hiking trip to North Stradbroke Island. That was a great way to finish the trip and deserves its own post.

2012-10-01 Brisbane

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2012-10-02 Mount Coot-tha

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2012-10-07 Iipswich

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I felt I had already covered Cairns pretty thoroughly, so I only spent a few hours there and then caught an evening bus heading back South. My ultimate destination was Brisbane, I felt I hadn’t spent nearly enough time exploring the Queensland’s capital yet and besides it would be easy to get back to Melbourne from there. I also wanted to do few stops along the way, as the trip North had been quite rushed. While there were some interesting spots along the way, this first leg of the trip took me all the way to Townsville.

I got there just as the sun was rising and snapped some nice shots while walking along the coastline. After the bus ride from Cairns I was definitely feeling little sleep-depraved, but decided to some exploring anyway. Townsville itself doesn’t really have that many interesting attractions anyway. I started out walking around the city a bit and then headed up to top of the Castle Hill, a large hill (292 meters high) in the middle of the city with great views of the city itself and the nearby Magnetic Island. It was bit of a hike along the walking tracks, especially since I wasn’t wearing proper walking shoes!

There were couple more things I could have done in the city itself on the next day, but I decided I’d rather do some bushwalking instead. Magnetic Island is a great day trip destination right next to the city and easily reachable by ferry. There are also some interesting snorkeling sites along the bays on the island, so I packed my mask and snorkel as well. I had planned a pretty extensive walking trip covering most of the Eastern side of the island. This obviously meant an early morning, I was already on “Maggie” at 7 am.

While it’s slightly easier to explore the island with the help of a rental vehicle or using the buses connecting the various towns, my walk plan actually worked out really well. I started

I got back to Townsville on the last ferry which also matched the sunset quite nicely. There were some pretty nice photo opportunities on that ferry.

After one more night in Townsville I continued my trip South. I decided to pay Joey another visit in Alva Beach so that was my first stop after Townsville. Unfortunately, Joey was even busier this time around. With the long weekend they were running double shifts which meant pretty much no free time for her. Alva Beach doesn’t really have much to do if you aren’t diving, so after one night there I decided to move on. I caught a ride to Mackay with one of the guys who had just dived the Yongala and then hopped on a bus after a few hours. Mackay on a long weekend must be one of the quietest city anywhere, streets were almost completely empty and everyone seemed to be somewhere else!

Again, there are some fairly interesting places between Mackay and Brisbane (Mackay definitely isn’t one of them though!). However, in the end I decided to just take the bus all the way to Brisbane. It can be fairly tricky travelling on public transport with all my dive gear, particularly since I still couldn’t really carry anything on my back yet! It was a long bus ride, but at least it was a  night bus so we missed all the roadworks and big trucks blocking traffic.

2012-09-27 Townsville

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2012-09-28 Magnetic Island

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After the Kuranda trip I spent one more fairly uneventful day in Cairns and then moved on to Port Douglas on Saturday. Port Douglas is pretty much the furthest North you can easily get along the Queensland coast without relying on private transport or guided tours. The drive up there is pretty interesting too, after exiting the suburbs of Cairns the road follows the coastline quite closely. The views over the tropical coast are quite spectacular, it was just a shame our mini-bus transport didn’t do any stops along the way.

With some time to burn on Sunday I was hoping to rent a bike and do a bit of exploring of my own, at least Mossmann Gorge is easily reachable on a day trip. Unfortunately the hostel I was staying had all their bikes rented out and on Sunday the few rental shops in town were also closed. So I had to abandon that plan and come up with something different. With little else to do in Port Douglas I decided to go for a long swim along the Four Mile Beach. This proved to be a big mistake!

It was a great day for swimming, weather was sunny and sea was pretty flat too. Unfortunately I got way too ambitious and decided to swim from one end of the beach to the other! The beach is not quite four miles long, but it’s close enough so this was a really long swim. I put a thick layer of sunscreen on and started the swim from the North end of the beach. I haven’t done that many long swims in ocean so I stuck close to the shore. Progress was little slow but steady, I was in no rush anyway. Eventually I started to feel somewhat exhausted as it was a hot day, particularly as I was doing the swim in the middle of the day. I pushed on a little further and got out at the first clear landmark, a bulge on the coastline around three fourths of the way.

In hindsight, three mile swim (which obviously took several hours) in direct tropical sunlight is not the brightest idea, particularly for someone with my complexion. Even with sunscreen on I figured I’d get some sunburns. However, in the evening my back was feeling only slightly burned and I thought I had gotten off easy. Next morning was a different story, unfortunately. I woke up with my back giving me agonizing pain whenever I moved even little bit on the bed. Additionally, whenever I got up I started feeling really nauseous after only a minute or two and had to lay down again on the bed.

I quickly had to abandon the plan of doing the bike trip on that day either, I could barely walk more than a few minutes so riding a bike was totally out of question! I ended up spending the day totally miserable in my bed. To make matters worse I had booked my dives for the next day and I was getting quite worried I wouldn’t be in any shape to go out on a boat by then. Luckily my condition started slowly to improve and by the late afternoon I was already able to walk to the town center to grab some quick dinner. To be fair, I had to lay down for a while in the park to feel well enough for the return walk, but at least things were improving!

2012-09-22 Port Douglas

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While there are a few shorter walks in Kuranda itself, getting to the longer walks from the town takes a while on foot. I started out on ? track, a nice enough covered track near next to the city. There was a lone wallaby along the way and a nice creek crossing. After that I started making my way towards the Barron Falls, a popular lookout in the area. There were no real walking tracks so I had to walk along the roads, luckily even these are quite interesting as they pass through the rainforest with huge trees and other plants all along the way.

Bit further down the road is the Wrights lookout with some nice views down the Barron Gorge. This is also the start of the longer walking tracks, from here on I followed the McDonalds track which is a starting point for many longer walking tracks. The track itself is reasonably easy but it passes through some really hilly terrain, by that point it was getting closer to noon and it was getting quite hot too. The first part of the track is fairly boring but things get more interesting once the track crosses over Surprise Creek. The Creek itself is nice enough and the crossing is a nice little spot. There was one turtle swimming in the water.

After the creek the walk climbs up a bit and finally gets back to the edge of the Barron Gorge. The views from up there are very nice, you can often see all the way to the coast along the Barron Gorge as long as trees are not blocking the way. I continued along the track for a few more kilometers until I reached the first major intersection. A short walk from there along the Douglas track took me to the Glacier Rock, a lookout with a great view of both the coast and the hills themselves.

After a short break I decided to turn back and started heading back towards Kuranda. The walk back was nice enough despite the fact that I was following the exact same route. In the town itself I took one final detour and followed the walking track along the river. Originally I had planned to do some more exploring in Kuranda itself too, there’s a really nice bird aviary and butterfly sanctuary there along with few other attractions. Unfortunately I was feeling quite exhausted after spending the whole day hiking up and down the hills in the heat. Besides, the next bus for Cairns was just about to depart so I hopped on and decided to call it a day. Total walking distance was around 25 km, plenty enough for a day trip considering the heat and the terrain!

2012-09-20 Kuranda

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Cairns is on the coast but there’s no actual beach in the city itself. At least there is a pretty nice swimming lagoon for cooling off during the hot days. It’s no substitute for a real beach of course, and pretty crowded during the day. The walk along the coast on the promenade is nice (if at times crowded) and a popular exercise spot too. I did little bit of running there too, but strictly outside the daylight hours. With 30 degree day temperatures anything too physical was off the books for me.

I still did a fair a bit of walking in the area, mainly in the Botanic Gardens and its surronds. The Botanic Gardens in Cairns are very nice and obviously the focus is on the tropical species. Near the Gardens there are two popular walking tracks, Blue and Red Arrow. The combined track makes for a nice walk through some wilderness near the city with some excellent views to the Cairns airport. The early part of the track is known as the Red Arrow, a fairly easy (if somewhat steep) walk up the hill in the rainforest. The second part known as Blue Arrow is a proper bushwalk and slightly more demanding. Apart from the nice views and the rainforest itself there were also quite a few lizards and birds along the tracks.

2012-09-14 Cairns

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2012-09-15 Cairns Botanic Gardens

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