Update 2 from Road Trip #1 East Coast

G'Day Canada. Here is a snipet of our first week on the road. We are now at Mission Beach which is roughly a hour south of Cairns. As it is the wettest area in Australia, it seems only fitting that we have gotten poured on pretty good in the last 48 hours. Fortunately it has been really the only rain we have encountered.

Since our last posting we reached Queensland we visited the rainforest city Kuranda. To get there you take a Skyrail overtop the rainforest and then a scenic train ride back down the mountain.

Beautiful views atop the Skyrail and from the train. We bought a beautifully sculpted and painted Didgeridoo from a Aboriginal named Boonger.

We then headed towards Cape Tribulation. Which is almost two hours north of Cairns. We camped there for two days, enjoyed the beautiful beaches, warm weather and experienced first hand the oldest rainforest in the world. That's right Cape Tribulation is actually older than the Congo and Amazon.

Next up was a visit to the one of the world's seven natural wonders. So off to Port Douglas to visit the Great Barrier Reef. We lucked out for a pretty decent day weather wise as it had been windy and rainy for the past two weeks. Natalie took the introductory scuba dive and viewed the coral from 10 metres underwater! Greg on the other hand couldn't take the pressure and decided that it was best to view the reef and Natalie's dive from above. (Tyler you would be very proud of Natalie. She'd even do it again when you visit.)

All in all the Great Barrier Reef lived up to it's name.

We also visted Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park, where we learned to throw a boomerang, spear, play the Didgeridoo and experience Aboriginal culture first hand.

After camping at two National Parks we stopped at Mission Beach. So here we are.

Pics from Kuranda, The Great Barrier Reef and other stops on the trip will be posted later. We expect to be back in Victoria in the next two weeks.


Above is a photo of the beautiful highways we took inland. (Victoria)

Photo of Wellington Caves. More photos of the caves in a later post.

Here we are at The Western Plains Zoo. For an additional $25 each, we took a behind the scenes tour to feed a Black Rhinos named Quansi, meaning first fruit or "first born." We also visited the Giraffes and the cheetahs.

Natalie feeding Quansi.


Here is something we thought was cool. This is the Maned Wolf. Unique to Australia.

Well that's it for now. We are at a Internet Cafe here in Mission Beach. For five dollars you get one hour of Internet time.

Hope all is well in Canada. Hopefully more updates in the near future.

Hi everyone,

Because of the flooding in Victoria and New South Wales we decided to start our first trip inland.

After nine days we are currently in Emerald, which is roughly 2 days from Cairns. Cairns is located in north eastern Australia. Once we get there we will head down the coast back towards Victoria. Victoria is still getting a fair amount of rain but the floods have supsided.

We have viewed some beautiful caves, National Parks, gorges and the Dubbo Zoo along the way. Paul both of us were thinking of you on all of the bush hikes in the National Parks.

We have seen copious amounts of Kangaroos and Wallabies, an even a cute little Echidna, which is close to our Porcupine minus the ablity to shoot their quills.

We even ran into a black snake on one of our hikes. Greg's famous words were "Oh .... @%F%!" No he did not scream like a little girl, but by all accounts he ran like one.

We later found out that it was dangerous and poisonous. Good times!

The weather steadily got warmer driving north as we expected. As the days reach the high 20s to 30s the nights dip down to the single digits. Should be even higher in Cairns.

We have put roughly 2,300 km's on the car so far and spent easily $700 in fuel.

As we have to hit Internet cafes and libraries we will have to update photos at a later date.

Hope all is well in Canada. Keep Enjoying your summer.

Carpe Diem

Natalie and Greg