Need a shower? - Tablelands Queensland

After a few days in the rain forest, we were really looking forward to have a shower. Fotunately should our next target be, the waterfall drive, at the tablelands. Looking forward to that cool and cleaning refreshment we startet our drive to the Tablelands early, after we had a nice breakfast right in front of the sea. :-)

It's interesting to see how the landscape changes in that short drive of only 2 hours. From green green and more green to quite dry and earthy. Scenic drive! The waterfall drive is literally a drive along a few waterfalls. A nice thing to do, since you can swim in the fresh water and cool down a little without the fear of meeting a dangerous animal. ;-) Aaaand the best thing... We could finally "shower" again. Sweet! Watch for some very sweet turtles if you go to Milaa Milaa waterfall one day. You will also find small fish which tenderly eat dead skin of your body. :-) After our spa treatment we headed further south to look for a nice place to camp, which we actually found. A nice camp site called  "Platypus" right next to Lake Tinaroo. Really recommendable. We had a nice dinner with a marvellous sunset and a few cute but naughty ducks as guests.

Road trip from Cairns to Sydney! We are good to go - first stop Daintree Rainforest

After 1.5 hours drive in our new rented van we reached the Daintree Rainforest. The oldest rainforest in the world. Around 150 million years old. Before we crossed the ferry to the rainforest we stopped by the solarwhisper crocodile boat tour. For 25 dollars you can join the boat as many times as you want, always hoping to see some crocodiles. We did two one hour boat cruises in a row and got very lucky, we saw about 4-5 small crocodiles (1 or 2 years old) and one adult crocodile with about 3.5 meters length. Amazing!!! Two days later when we left the rainforest we joined the boat again and spotted another adult crocodile in the middle of the river. But back to the rainforest. Probably the main reason to go there is cape tribulation. The only point in the world where two UNESCO world heritage sites come together. The oldest rainforest in the world the Daintree Rainforest - and a good old friend... The Great Barrier Reef.  Indeed a stunning view. In addition Daintree has many interesting boardwalks to offer, if you are lucky enough like we were you can even see a cassowary! Such majestic birds. If you like nature it is a nice place to camp but be aware of a bit scary neighbours - see picture below! Since we like to be a little bit off the beaten tracks we accidentaly met a guy who is living in the middle of the rainforest in an old closed hotel next to the beach. He is living there totally isolated and is growing his own food and is collecting rainwater. He invited us to a cup of tea (made with rainwater of course) and told us his story. Very interesting encounter. Fortunately, he allowed us to sleep on "his ground" so we were able to camp beachfront. The only thing we should have been alert of was the crocodile, which is living in this area for the moment. Gladly, we didn't meet that croc!

Our not so welcome room mate... :-)

Is it hot in here or is it just me? - Cairns

While staying in Melbourne we were often discussing where to go next and what to do in BIG Australia. Cairns was our final decision. Going to the tropical north sounded just great after a few cooler days in Melbourne. Luckily, we found a cheap flight to Cairns and started the next morning. For the first days we stayed in a small, very charming little house in a leisure park. Again we really enjoyed cooking by ourselves and exploring the city. It was lovely being surrounded by houndreds of bats and other interesting wildlife. But the best part was the heat! Everybody who knows us, knows that we love hot weather, but what's going on in Cairns is also for us a little bit sweaty. Not uncommon to see the thermometer rising up to 40 degrees. But the best thing is because of the nasty humidity it feels like 45 degrees! We thought we were used to the heat since Indonesia, where it was incredibly hot, but that's another level of hotness! However, we do definitively not complain.

Cairns is a very lovely town with lots of nice places to grab a meal or go out for some drinks. There is a cool area next to the ocean with a huge swimming pool (for free) and a nice promenade along the sea. For us the town was too packed with backpackers and travel agencies, but we started to realize the people in the north are much more easy going than in the south. So we felt quite comfortable. Since the famous Great Barrier Reef is very close to Cairns we went for a one day suba diving trip with three dives. After our diving course these were the first professional dives for us. We really enjoyed this day and were very happy about our under water discoveries. We saw a stingray and the even more important a whitetip reef SHARK!! Our first shark so far...

After a few relaxing days we started to organise our upcoming weeks in Australia. We decided to go for a camper and travel from Cairns to Sydney in 19 days. 19 days is probably a bit short, but we want to be in Adelaide by the end of February to visit a vineyard and get into wine stuff!!! Yeah!!!! :-)

Nananananananana BATMAN... BATMAN... BATMAN!!!

Nadia got bitten in the ass by a small shark. :-)

Australian Open 2016

Our main reason for travelling to Melbourne was definitively the Australian Open. In advance we booked tickets for all the quarter finals in the Rod Laver arena. The chances were good to see 4 Swiss players in these quarter finals. As we all know now it should have been only Roger Federer. A liddle unlucky we were, but we still enjoyed Roger playing in a Grand Slam as well as the admosphere in the arena. Bucket list: see Federer playing in a Grand Slam tournament - check! :-)