Queensland, Australia: The Great Barrier Reef, waterfalls and the world's oldest rainforest
- Esther
- Jul 25, 2019
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 2, 2020
It’s been a week since I arrived in Queensland but I've been so busy that I haven’t had much time to write any of it down! Things have been quite hectic for the last few days but it’s been so much fun.
My East Coast travels started when we flew into Cairns from Sydney on Monday morning. We spent our first day just chilling in Cairns by its famous Esplanade (a very cool lagoon that they’ve built because swimming in the sea is too dangerous there) and at the hostel before heading to Port Douglas the next day.
I liked Cairns more than I’d expected to because it felt really young and fun. Compared to Sydney, both Cairns and Port Douglas have felt like holiday towns, with Cairns being full of backpackers wanting to party and Port Douglas having more of a family holiday vibe. I’ve had to keep reminding myself to keep within my budget because I think it would be really easy not to here!
When we got to Port Douglas, one of the first things we did was head to the beautiful Four Mile Beach, but pretty much the second we put our towels down the lifeguard called everyone out of the water because there was a four-metre long crocodile bobbing along in the water! Apparently it was the first crocodile sighting on that beach in two years (!) and we spent most of our afternoon there walking along the sand with everyone else, watching it make its way down the beach!
The Great Barrier Reef
The main reason we went to Port Douglas was to take a trip to the Great Barrier Reef, which was a big bucket list thing for me. We did it with a company called Calypso (who I would really recommend to anyone because the boat was amazing and the staff were lovely) and snorkelled at three different points on the reef, where we saw all kinds of different fish and sea creatures.
This day was one of my highlights of the whole trip so far (which is saying something for me because I was terrible at snorkelling in the Philippines) because the reef was absolutely beautiful from both above and below.
The sea was full of life everywhere you looked and the guides who were snorkelling with us were really fun and helpful. One guy ran a snorkel tour where he picked up giant sea cucumbers, pointed out clownfish in their anemones and dived pretty much right to the bottom to show us the giant clams (without even wearing any diving gear).
One thing I noticed was that while I'd expected to see really bright, vivid colours on the reef, in reality all the colours were quite muted with little pops of pink and blue. It was all still beautiful, but I assumed the lack of bright colour everywhere was because of global warming and how it's been damaging the reef so much.
It turned out I was wrong, though, because the marine expert on the boat gave everyone a talk on the reef while we were drying off and explained that a healthy reef actually looks more beige than bright, but often cameramen filming for documentaries will use artificial lighting on their cameras to bring out the colours that look faded underwater.
She also said that when the reef turns really brightly coloured it's actually a sign that the coral is under stress. In the hottest couple of summer months, the reef does look pretty vibrant, but that actually just means it's getting a bit overheated!
Overall, I couldn’t really have asked for a better time exploring the reef (except for maybe taking one of the helicopter tours over it as well – but being on a budget I can’t justify doing everything!)
The Daintree Rainforest
Two of the other best days we’ve had in Northern Queensland so far have been the two tours we’ve done from Cairns and Port Douglas. We booked both through a company called Uncle Brian's after it was recommended to us by quite a few people in Sydney and back home and I can definitely see what the hype was about.
The tours are a really fun way to meet people because they’re very backpacker-oriented and all of the guides who run them are hilarious (and a bit mad). They somehow manage to keep their energy levels at 100% for the whole of each ten hour trip, even while driving, and they’re basically what make Uncle Brian’s so highly rated.
The first tour we did was to the Daintree Rainforest, which I learned this week is the oldest tropical rainforest in the world.
In the rainforest, we stopped at an amazing lookout, walked around the forest for a while with our guide, Loz, and then got to swim in one of the croc-free waters in the middle of the rainforest. There was even a turtle swimming along with us there!
We also stopped at a few beaches on this tour. We started at Four Mile Beach in Port Douglas, and also stopped off at Cape Tribulation and Coconut Beach. All of them were beautiful but I won’t say too much about them because the beaches along the East Coast are all pretty similar a lot of the time!
We finished the day with a crocodile spotting tour at a family-run place called Bruce Belcher's Daintree River Cruises. Bruce took us out for an hour on his boat around the Daintree River and we couldn't really have got much luckier with how much we saw. We saw the biggest male crocodile in that river (called Scarface), a less dominant male chilling with his crocodile girlfriend and even a baby crocodile fending for itself on the banks!
Bruce also gave us free wine and beer on the river cruise, which was really nice. The only scary part was when our boat got stuck in the sand in the shallow part of the lake, so two of our group got out and pushed the boat until it moved again (not far from where the crocs were!)
Another reason the tour was super fun was because even during the bus journeys Loz told us some funny stories from his years as a tour guide and we played some games as a bus as well.
The Atherton Tablelands and the Waterfall Circuit
Booking both of the Uncle Brian’s tours turned out to be a good idea because the second tour we did in Northern Queensland was just as incredible – if not better - than the first.
Our second tour guide, ‘Cuzzie Eli’, was as nice and funny as Loz, and the first stop he took us to was the Babinda Boulders, which were beautiful. We had morning tea there and swam in the lake (even though the water was icy cold!) before driving to Josephine falls, which was a stunning waterfall where our whole group spent a couple of hours swimming, climbing and sliding down the rocks. I grazed my legs and feet up a bit doing all the sliding but it was definitely worth it!
The next waterfall we stopped at was Millaa Millaa Falls (where part of Peter Andre’s ‘Mysterious Girl’ video was filmed). The water here was pretty freezing too but we got in anyway and the whole area was beautiful to look at.
Next, we went to the Crater Lakes where you could actually swim with a freshwater crocodile (it’s only the saltwater ones that eat people) and watch a nice sunset over the lake.
The last stop of this tour was a small creek where the plan was to try and spot a platypus. They’re really shy, timid animals and Cuzzie Eli didn’t think we’d be able to spot them because our group as a whole (including him) were being pretty loud, but amazingly we managed to see four of them bobbing up and swimming around!
Mission Beach
Another one of our Greyhound bus stops which we decided to take advantage of on our way down from Cairns was Mission Beach. It’s a pretty cute, laidback beach town that feels a bit middle-of-nowhereish but kind of like a tropical holiday. It’s most famous for its skydiving, which would probably be amazing to do over the reef, but I think we’re planning on saving that for our trip to New Zealand so we just relaxed on the beach the whole time we were there.
Our hostel there - The Jackaroo Treehouse - was also really great. It was right in the middle of the jungle (so its pool had an amazing view) and we met some really nice people there at the bar that evening. We’d actually met some of them before on one of the Uncle Brian’s tours but apparently that’s a thing that happens on the East Coast – you keep bumping into the same people along the way!
All in all, it’s been an extremely busy but unbeatable first week of travelling. I can’t believe I’m a quarter of the way through this trip already but I’m looking forward to the next stop – Magnetic Island!
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