Australia: Cairns and the Atherton Tableland Waterfall Circuit

(Only a year late, but here's the first part of our East Coast road trip!)

Our flight from Bali landed into Cairns at about 7am which gave us the whole of the first day to explore the area near our hostel.

We walked into town and looked around the shopping mall as well as wandering along the esplanade where we saw a couple of pelicans. There was also an outdoor lagoon which was free to use and was full of children splashing around in the sun. As we'd only managed to grab a few hours of sleep between us on the plane, we went back to the hostel to 'plan our road trip' (aka 'have a nap').

Back in the land of the living again, we used a discount card the hostel receptionist had given us to have dinner and a cider for $10 each in an Irish bar in town. We learnt here that pints don't seem to be the standard size in Australia - drinks are served in half-pint-ish glasses called 'schooners'.

As it was bank holiday weekend, nothing much was open until Tuesday, so we spent Saturday planning our route down the East Coast and did a food shop for the next couple of days. Despite the good, cheap food in Asia, it was nice to be cooking our own meals again - even if it was only pasta or beans on toast! We explored Cairns town a bit more as we sorted out a few practicalities such as bank accounts and local SIM cards, and visited the legendary Gilligan's hostel and Rusty's markets.

On Sunday we managed to book onto a scuba diving trip to the Great Barrier Reef for the next day, something which had been on both of our bucket lists for a while. We had done a fair bit of snorkelling throughout Asia so we were excited to finally get to dive again. After a reasonably early start on Monday morning, the hostel bus dropped us off at the ferry port... where it was pouring with rain! We ended up waiting for about an hour for the worst of the rain to stop so that we could dive in decent conditions, as well as travel there in the first place. We had been warned by several people that the journey out to the reef was really rough, but as neither of us get seasick we hadn't taken too much notice. HOWEVER. Over two hours later, we finally reached the reef and spent the next half an hour or so trying to listen to the safety brief while waiting for our heads to stop spinning - it was definitely a test of strength for our stomachs!

Despite the boat being pretty much full, it turned out that only us and one other girl were actually diving; nearly everyone else was only snorkelling, except a handful of others who weren't going in at all.

It had been a few years since either of us had last scuba dived, so it took a little while to get used to the weight of the equipment and how to breathe again. After a few minutes of practising, a couple of the staff linked arms with us and we swam around rock formations and through schools of fish for a lightening-quick 20 minutes, then suddenly we were back at the boat and very disorientated! We grabbed a snorkel each and joined the others snorkelling a few meters away from the boat, but despite there being a gorgeous amount of fish to see, the sea was still very choppy from the storm and it was really difficult to snorkel without consuming mouthfuls of saltwater.

We knew we had another dive to go, so headed back to the boat, where we were greeted by a huge buffet lunch. We were served either the meat or vegetarian option of burgers and sausages, then could help ourselves to bread rolls, couscous and a Greek salad. We were both absolutely stuffed and almost regretting paying bit extra for the second dive, but this definitely turned out to be worth it - this time it was only us diving! The same guides took us down again, and this time we swam freely around for about 30 minutes until our oxygen levels started getting low. We were taken on another route around the reef and this time saw giant clams and held a sea cucumber. Sadly no sharks, but Will was quite relieved about that! Once we were all back on board, we were given a glass of wine each and a plate of cheese to work our way through on the way back to shore. By this time we were both exhausted and luckily slept through most of the rough journey back. This trip was absolutely fantastic, and we got some incredible photos and videos from the GoPro.

The next morning we checked out of the hostel, and finally picked up our campervan to start our road trip There was a bit of an issue picking up the van, as we had booked a manual and were presented the keys to an automatic. When we mentioned this to the woman who was serving us, she told us quite rudely that all the newer vans are automatic, and we could have a manual if we took an older van. We had a quick look at an available older van and reluctantly decided that the automatic one was a better choice as it was newer and slightly more spacious. We completed all the paperwork and were just heading across the road to grab some lunch when we noticed another couple were in the process of picking up their van, which just happened to be a the same model as ours, and manual! We realised they were European and were probably more comfortable with driving an automatic, so after a quick chat we both took our van keys back into the rental shop and got them to swap the paperwork. We decided to not mention the fact the the woman had told a slight lie to us earlier when we were told we couldn't get the van we wanted in a manual, as we were just happy to have got the van we wanted.

We did a quick shop for food, picked up our bags from the hostel and headed down to a waterfall on the way to where we were stopping for the night.

The fall itself wasn't actually too impressive due to the lack of rain recently, but Julie had her first experience of finding a scary-looking spider in the toilets in the car park...

We continued on to a free campsite near Babinda for our first night, and decided immediately that we were going to enjoy the next 6 weeks in the van, despite the mosquitoes at night.

The next day we spent about 7 hours visiting various waterfalls and swimming holes around the Atherton Tablelands. Despite all the driving, this was really enjoyable as every road was so scenic.

We returned to the same campsite for the night, and the next morning we drove down the road for a swim in the creek there before heading down the coast to Mission Beach.