Daintree National Park - Full Speed the Rest of the Day

After having done the Jindalba Boardwalk and a bit of driving we decided to head towards Cow Bay. It was not really weather for getting in the water, but judged by the amount of danger signs we were met by at the beach, that is not even something you would consider up north this time of year :-)

There were all the usual warning signs alerting you about the various dangers lurking in the water .. and a few new ones! Up north you have to be particular careful of marine stingers, like the notorious box jellyfish Chironex Fleckeri. As the sign reads, they are present during the summer months, however, if you ask one of the locals about the safety in going swimming, they will argue that the stingers do not know the calender so why take a chance.

Even if we had considered taking a chance with the stingers, we would not have been able to hit the water this rainy afternoon - a good size saltwater crocodile had been seen at the northern end of the beach where a freshwater creek was running into the ocean. Good stuff! A good firm grip on the camera and we headed north to get some pictures of the monster :-)

We never saw the monster of Cow Bay! Maybe we were to busy keeping a good distance to any potential hiding place for a good size reptile? We saw a frog belonging to a very different weight class and a few good birds. Varied Triller male and female below and our first Spectacled Monarch.


A good stroll along the beach and some of the exotic fruits we had stocked up on in Cairns and we were ready for the final part of our Daintree adventure.

As some of you readers might remember, we had invested in a never ending cruise ticket allowing us to take another go on the Daintree River, yours truly have a hard time saying no to free stuff, so we once again found ourselves on the River in a tinny. This time about 13km downstream from Daintree Village.

Crocodiles are very clever animals! They understand that there is no reason to fight the force of a fast flowing river. So instead of using huge amounts of energy swimming against the current, they will just let the river take them downstream and wait for calmer waters before making their way back to a favorite sand bank. This also meant that we had much better views of these ancient creatures during this our third cruise of the Daintree River.

A couple of salties and a green tree snake or two seems to be what people can expect on these tours. Not bad at all, I managed to get a few slightly better pictures during this trip, including the juvenile crock in the very top of this blog post.

All good - the Daintree is a absolutely fantastic spot! It would have been lovely having more time to explore, but in our attempt of covering as much of Far North Queensland as possible we were heading for the Atherton tableland where we were expecting equally great adventures.

As the sun sank in the East we had quite a few good bird sightings. In less than 5 minuets of driving from the ferry, a Blue-winged Kookaburra and a flock of Channel-billed Cuckoos made us stop for a few pictures. Whereas the usual suspects, such as Forest Kingfisher and Yellow-bellied Sunbird already at this stage seemed so very common :-D

Daintree National Park - Into the Wild ... on Boardwalks :-)

Across the river and into the wild! Daintree National Park is something very special, outside Australia it is probably not as famous as Kakadu National Park or the Great Barrier Reef, but it is one of those places that you will do yourself a great favor by visiting!

Being on a super tight schedule only having 5 days in the far north, we had to take some brutal decisions when it came to decide how we would be spending time. So crossing the river early in the morning we already knew that we would only have 1 day in the rain forest so better get on with it! :-)

For the first time the constant rain was actually helping us out. The rivers north in the park had swelled during the last days of rain and made it four wheel drive only .. Not having shelled out the donuts for a proper river-crossing-capable rent-a-car we were left with a chunk of the Daintree National Park perfectly fit for a 1-2 day visit if you gave it a good go .. so we did! :-)

You can go to all the outlooks and enjoy the vistas and you can sit in your car and in awe see the raging river blocking the road in front, but the most fantastic thing we did during our one day in the Daintree was to dive into all that greenness - the forest up there is just so incredibly full of energy! You can nearly feel how things are growing around you; warm, wet and luxuriant vegetation.

It is quite appropriate to visit a rain forest during rain, you really get that feeling of how potent the forest is around you. It might have hurt our wildlife spotting efforts slightly, for the birds it would make sense to fly somewhere dry! We picked up a few good birds though, including the Wompoo Fruit-Dove in the picture above - what a great bird! I had contemplated a bit on how to setup the camera, all that water made it near impossible to change lenses while walking in the forest. I chose to go for the macro lens; 150mm is obviously a bit shorter than the reach of the Bigma (500mm), but in the dense dark forest you do not need the excessive reach and the f/2.8 of the macro comes in very very handy when under the foliage cover.

Great stuff - really great stuff - so great indeed that I have included a link here to the far north Queensland real estate :-) You definitely get more space for your $ than in Sydney .. it would not be the worst place to retire to one day when I get old .. in a few years - 3 in fact :-D