Tropical Queensland

A wall of humidity hit us when we stepped out of the airport in Cairns. The winter hats and fleece jackets that we wore in Tasmania were shoved to the bottom of the backpacks and quickly forgotten. What we had to take out though was our rain jackets. Right now it is rainy season in the tropical northern Queensland and boy did it rain.

With two days to spare in Cairns before our dive trip to the great barrier reef we decided to fight the rain. We picked up our camper a bit earlier than planned and headed for Cape Tribulation and the Atherton Tablelands. After some crocodile spotting and a couple of rain forest hikes we were back in Cairns ready to go diving (see separate post).

After our diving trip our next destination was Townsville and Magnetic Island. On Magnetic Island we managed to find a wonderful bed and breakfast with safari tents. It was situated perfectly with the beach out the front, waterfalls with swimming holes around the corner and plenty of hiking trails close by.

Northern Queensland has amazing nature with rain forests, mangrove, high lands and of course lots of beautiful beaches. It does however also have stringers during rainy season. Stingers are different types of jelly fish that are strong enough to kill humans. So despite stopping at all these wonderful beaches along the way the cold only swim in the fresh water swimming holes. Luckily we did not encounter any crocodiles in them.