The girls comment from the Daintree.

Ellen @ Butterfly House

Maeve with friend @ Butterfly House

A Cairns Birdwing

Palm Cove beach with our caravan park on right.

At Cape Tribulation

Crab art.

At Cape Tribulation

Misty morning looking west from  Alan's property in the Daintree

A Forest Kingfisher

Buttress roots at Mosman Gorge

Wood fungi

The Trip So Far!

                           So far our trip has been amazing!

First off we went to Wellington Caves, Willcannia, Broken Hill, Tibooburra, Bourke, Charleville, Carnarvon Gorge, Barcaldine, Longreach, Winton, Hughenden, Porcupine Gorge, Undara Lava Tubes & Lake Tinaroo. At Undara we were allowed to swim in a flooded tube. We swam 100metres into the tubes and you stand on the railings of the boardwalk which were metres below the water. It was scary in the dark. The tubes had lava flowing through them 190,000 years ago!

The last few weeks we’ve been at Palm Cove, which of course is in so quickly changing Cairns. We hadn’t seen the beach for almost 2 months!

Each day for 2weeks we’ve been swimming. We went to Kuranda and visited the Bird sanctuary and the Butterfly House. My favourite bird was the Sun Conure, which is bright yellow and comes from South America. The Macaws were extremely cheeky and almost pecked off the buttons on my Dad’s shorts. At the Butterfly house we were shown the giant caterpillar of the Hercules Moth. The caterpillar was as big as an adults hand. The Hercules Moth is the largest moth in the world. The Cairns Birdwing is the largest butterfly in the world.

On the last few days our brother came. Now we’re at the Daintree rainforest! This is where our brother’s Dad lives. We’ve seen a lot of kingfishers! Yesterday we went to Cape Tribulation and we visited an exotic fruit farm where there was an ice creamery. The flavours we tried were Wattleseed, Yellow Sapote, Blueberry, Coconut and Macadamia. My favourite was Yellow Sapote.

By Ellen

A taste of Cairns

When we first arrived at Palm Cove (north of Cairns) I was so delighted to finally see the Ocean. After all that dust and dirt I was busting to get some nice refreshing saltwater on me.

We stayed at a nice caravan park just by the seaside . It was pretty daggy compared to most of the other caravan parks and resorts that were surrounding us but most of those were really expensive, and had no view of the crystal sea (which to me is not a resort at all).

The minimum temperature it got to was around 26 degrees but most days it was around 30 degrees.

Almost everyday we went to the beach and went for a swim though the downside is we had to go swimming in the stinger net when stinger season was over! We didn’t see any crocodiles either (phew!).

Palm cove was very posh looking and most things were quite dear.

There were many birds of an array of colours. We even saw one called a “spangled drongo”!

We stayed there over Mothers Day and went to a restaurant called “Banana Leaf” it was a Thai cuisine and the food was mouth watering.

We are staying in the Daintree right now and there are so many different types of flora and fauna, we are hoping to see a crocodile and a cassowary as well

Tomorrow we are going on a cruise called “Quicksilver” to the Great Barrier Reef and we are going snorkelling at the Ribbon Reef which is a reef on the very edge of the Barrier Reef

I can’t wait!

By Maeve