Botanic Gardens/Tanks/Arrow Walk

On Saturday we were supposed to be doing the Blue Arrow walk with Dave, but rain the night before meant the track was too wet. So we put it off for Sunday. Me and Tara then went down to the Botanic Gardens to check out all the tropical vegetation. It's beautiful. Lots of neat plants and trees. We didn't end up spending too much time in there. It's pretty close quarters with the plants and the little buggers that live in the plants...

Nasty. That's probably 5 inches from front to back, including the legs. At that point Tara began to lose interest in the botanic gardens, but we ventured on and saw a bunch more cool plants. After the gardens we went and walked around a little bit on the Red Arrow walk. This is a short 1.3km track right close to the botanic gardens where locals go to work out. They all jog along the relatively mellow track through the forest. We saw a pile of wild scrub turkeys and a few more nasty spiders. We didn't do the walk, we just checked it out.

Then we went to the Tanks right next to that. The Tanks are a series of large oil tanks that were used during the second world war by the Americans. Apparently Cairns was a substantial base for their battle with Japan. The inlet (Trinity Inlet) was used to keep the boats safe and out of sight. These Tanks were hidden on the side of a little mountain to keep them hidden as well. Now one tank has been converted into a hall, one into an art gallery, one into a theatre and two have been torn down. Pretty neat.

Sunday I went on the Blue Arrow with Julian and Dave. It was fairly laid back compared to the other walks we've done so far. It took about 2.5 hours to get up and down. The terrain was still rough but nothing compared to the Pyramid. It was great. The view from the top is up close to the airport and you can see a lot of the beautiful water around the town. The Blue Arrow starts as the Red Arrow, but it breaks off half way along and turns into a real walk, not like the running track of the Red Arrow.

Sadly the picture doesn't do this any justice. But it's the best I've got. Later.

Nick

Walsh's Pyramid Walk

Today I went for another bush walk with Julian. This time we went up to the top Walsh's Pyramid. You may have seen it in another photo album from awhile ago. It's a mountain in the area that looks incredibly like a man made pyramid. It was a shorter walk than the Lamb's Head walk, but way more difficult. The rise is about 930m, and the distance you walk is 3300m. That's pretty steep if you are wondering what I'm getting at. The walk up was exhausting and the walk down was painful in the knees. It was another beautiful view again.

That's me at the top. You might think that these mountains aren't that high from the pictures. This one was about 930m, the Lamb's Head was about 1250m and there is another one behind me in this picture and off to the right that is around 1500m. That's the highest mountain in Queensland. I will be climbing that one soon. For reference, Mt. Everest is just under 9000m. So these are high enough to feel pretty good when you reach the top.

If anybody wants to give them a go I will take you when you come visit. :D

Nick

Hartley's Crocodile Farm

No post last weekend. It was a relaxation weekend with no events. But this weekend we went to Hartley's Crocodile Farm. It was pretty cool. It's pretty much a zoo, but they focus heavily on crocs. Aside from walking around like most zoos, you also get to go out in their boats to check out crocs in the lagoon. It's neat cause they're just swimming around. Then he feeds them a bit with his food on a stick. They jump way out of the water trying to get his chicken heads.

This is a little girl croc. They get much bigger. In this zoo there is also a small crocodile farm. Here they bread and raise crocs for their skin and for meat. He said they use all the skin for leather, the meat gets served around Cairns and Port Douglas and the hands get sold for back scratchers. There was a ton of crocs in pens being raised for this. It was a little sad cause they're so cute when they're small, but I'm still going to buy myself a crocodile leather belt one day ($200!!). That's all for today, I might go hiking tomorrow again depending on the weather.

Nick

Tully River Rafting

Wow, that was fun. Today we went white water rafting in the Tully River. I've been rafting once in Jasper when we were young, but this was something else. First off we had to meet the bus in town at 6:40am. The bus took us on a 2 hour journey to the town of Tully. It was a sleepy ride at this hour and it was raining the whole time. Luckily we were going white water rafting.

Once we made it to the river it didn't take long to get in. A little safety and rafting lesson started it all off. Normally the rafting groups can be as big as 20 boats. If you pay an extra 30 bucks you get to go on the extreme package, which guarantees you are part of a small group of no more than 4 boats. Not a lot of people were up for rafting today so we were part of a group of only 4 boats anyways. Bonus!

This was our crew. Two from Italy, two from around Sydney, the guide and his brother. This picture was taken about 3/4 of the way through. After dropping off about a 2m drop we all jumped in the water and swam to this little beach where they were taking pictures. When we started at the top of the river we went through a little rapid what we all thought was kinda fun. Then in the pool on the other side he told us that was a 2. The scale of rapids go from 0-6. Where 0 is a ripple and 6 is death (as he put it). So a two was pretty mild. Then he pointed ahead and said, "That's a four". It was way more fun.

Most of the river was made up of 3's and 4's. There was one closer to the end that I think he said was a five. After 2 hours of rowing we pulled over to the bank and walked up for a barbeque. We were all craving something to eat. In this first half of rowing he made us go down a mild rapid just in our life jackets. That was almost as much fun as the boat. This first half was about 4km.

The second half was about 12km, and he said we have a lot more fun on the second half because they let loose a bit more. I thought this meant it was going to be milder rapids, not the case. There were a few really wild rides and a few places that our guide purposely dumped us. Then we got to a stop where there was a little cliff and everybody climbed up an jumped down into a pool. I'm not a big cliff jumper so it felt like it was a mile, it wasn't.

Then we got to a few sets of rapids that rocked our socks off. We went through one place where it was a couple of really intense rapids in a row. We hit a hole pretty quick and lost 3 people from our boat. It seemed pretty intense when our guide told us to rescue people. One guy got pulled back in quickly, and another woman got rolled around in a wave for a little bit before hitting the boat and getting pulled back in. The third guy got pulled away from the boat and was held under water for a few seconds, but it seemed like minute. Then he some how ended up back by the boat and we got him in. The guide was asking us to act quickly because we were heading right into another intense section.

This was a pretty fun picture. At the end of the trip we were told not to jump into the water because it has crocs. There were being serious also, but we didn't see any. We recommend this trip to everybody, it was pricy but well worth it.

Nick