Sunday 21th August – Day 29
After brekkie, we went for a walk along the beach. The beach is at least 2 kms long and when we got to the other end, had to cross a small creek which came out of the rainforest.
We followed the creek up towards it’s source and it split into two wide streams. One went parallel to the beach behind the coconut groves, and other went straight into the rainforest. It looked very much like croc country!
As we walked along it’s banks we verified that by finding croc tracks in the sand. At 2:15 we walked up to the camp office in time to be picked up to head off to do some ‘jungle surfing’. This is a 6-station, 5-flying fox run, through the canopy of the rainforest. The bus took us to a little shed up the hill where we got fitted into a harness and helmet. Each of the helmets had a name on it of a character from the movies. The guides chose which helmet suited their impression of each customer. Mark was Atom Ant, Wendy was Princess Leah, I was ‘The Fly’, Beryl was Stifler’s mother, and Marg was Tinkerbell.
From there we had to walk up to the first station. It was quite a serious climb up there, and a lot of huffing and puffing was done. The five runs were all different, in that some were single runs, some were doubles, some were fast, some slow, some we stopped in the middle to admire the view for a while and the last one was upside down! It was a lot of fun and the 3 guys who took us though it were very entertaining and made the event a lot of fun. Throughout the whole time, the guys called us by our character name, and had lots of jokes and comments about them. The photos tell quite a story with the looks on the faces. The screaming could not be captured on ‘film’ though. We had forgotten to take our little video camera which would have been handy. It was a good afternoon.
Back to camp again, we had afternoon, tea and then thought about dinner. Having the camp kitchen makes it a bit easier to prepare and eat dinner, and you can wash up after. We sat around the kitchen for a while after dinner talking to other campers, trying to work out where we will stay tomorrow night. When we went to bed we were still none the wiser.
Monday 22th August – Day 30
During breakfast discussion we decided to stay here an extra night, and do the local creek cruise for crocs. We booked the 2pm boat trip on the Cooper Creek and as a warm up, we decided to go and walk the Myall creek near us. We walked up for a while and we did end up seeing a little one on the far bank. We wandered back along the creek until we got to the ocean and walked around the point back to our beach.
Lunch was decided to be taken down near the cruise location rather than wait here then drive down in time just for the cruse. We stopped at the Lync Haven café for lunch. It was really good food and a nice location, as the place had some good exhibits of live snakes, live baby crocs, and even live birds.
After lunch we headed to the boat and headed up the river with great anticipation of seeing some big crocs. The guy on the boat looked a bit past his prime, but his commentary was good, not that you can talk too long about mangroves. We did see a few crocs, both male and female, but the biggest was a female of 4m – so the guy said. I reckon he wasn’t bigger than 2.5m. Apparently they saw a big male on the morning cruise. Oh well, too bad for us. The cruise was ok, but not brilliant. It was only $25 for hour cruise so can’t really complain.
On the way back from the cruise we did the Marrja Botanical Walk along a boardwalk through the mangroves at Noah Beach.
That was nice and we got to see some nice birds and trees. Lots of photos! That took us an hour or so, then back to camp for tea & coffee, then start to get ready for dinner.
We had quite a few good talks to other campers about our trips and their trips. We are planning to pack up tomorrow and head down though Daintree to Mossman or Port Douglas for the next night.