Australia – North Queensland

We headed north from Cairns along the Cook Highway to Port Douglas (Capt. James Cook really got around).  The real highlight of Port Douglas is the view of the coast as you drive up.

We also took some time to visit the Mossman Gorge and hike along the river.

After Port Douglas, we headed back south past Cairns to the Babinda Boulders park which is mainly known as a swimming hole but also has the really interesting “boulders” in the river itself.

From there we went to the Josephine Falls park for more walking and picture taking.

We actually didn’t swim at either of these swimming areas as we’d had a problem with leaches at Babinda on a prior trip and Josephine Falls also mentioned they might be an issue there are well.

We then travelled to Townsville, a relatively larger city a bit further down the coast.  As mentioned before, we aren’t much into cities but we did want to take the ferry out to Magnetic Island and do some hiking. While on the trail, we found ourselves being watched by a rather sleepy koala in the tree beside the trail.

Definitely a highlight of the first portion of the trip as we hadn’t seen a wild koala on our prior trips.  On a side note: our bus driver on the island grew up in Oak Bay.

We took today to rest and get some chores done while staying at a resort in Bowen.

On a final note, I get the occasional question about where we actually are. The blog lags by as much as a week but there is a map on the home page of the blog if you scroll down. I tend to keep that fairly up to day. I have noticed that I have to hit refresh in the browser to get the most up-to-date version.