Farewell to Australia

Craig:

We left Noosa Heads ready to explore the rest of Queensland's great beaches.  We quickly found out however that most of the beaches were still cleaning up from Cyclone Ului which had passed through a week earlier so our beach time was limited in Queensland.  We still made the drive to Airlie Beach and Mission Beach just to check them out.  Airlie Beach is a popular jump off spot for visiting the very tropical Whitsunday Islands.  It was more a ghost town when we drove through.  Ului had made its landfall right in the area and there were still parts of the town without electricity.  The marina suffered a lot of damage and many boats had been thrown onto the rocks from the wind and high seas:

It was the same story in Mission Beach.  Its famous palm lined beach was still cleaning up and restoring electricity to the area.  We decided to skip the rest of our intended beach destinations and head for Cairns to try to make a trip out to the Great Barrier Reef.

On the way, we managed to stop a some pretty cool places.  We made the hour drive inland to see Australia's tallest waterfall.  Wallaman Falls is in Girringun National Park, which is home to the oldest continually living rain forest in the world.

The drive out to falls winded and curved through very lush and dense tropical forest.  We continually saw signs telling us to drive slow to avoid cassowaries but we did not get to see any.  It was on the drive back down to the coast that it started raining.

And continued to rain...

We pulled into Paronella Park, our camping destination for the night.  We came to Paronella Park based on the recommendation for some friends in New Zealand.  We really did not know what it was but we were greeted with umbrellas at our car door upon arrival which was great.  The park turned out to be a historical homestead that used to be a theme park type location back in the 1930's.  We were treated to two tours of the park, one day tour and one at night.

At night, they would light up the old buildings and waterfalls to create a very cool scene.  They even hooked us up with a covered place to put the tent to stay dry for the night.  We got up the next morning and finished the drive to Cairns (it was still raining).

Our last two days in Australia were spent trying to stay dry.  We did not know when we decided to go to Cairns but we came right in the middle of their wet season.  We tried to book a trip out to the reef but the weather did not cooperate.  We spent the days getting ready for Tokyo, getting a haircut, sending some post cards, and relaxing a little bit in our room.  We were pretty disappointed that we did not get to go out to the reef but that just means we will have to come back.  I think we will plan a little more the next time we come. 

We had fun in Australia.  We got to cross off most of the things on our original "to-do" list and then some.  So farewell to Australia for now... we will be back!

Next stop: Tokyo, Japan