Wet Tropics

Wednesday, 10 July 2013

Tuesday morning, having accepted their invitation with pleasure, we joined Jenny and Brian for an excursion to Julatten. We had never heard of the place, but did realise after some memory exercises, that we had passed through the place years ago on our way to Cooktown. It wasn’t long before the rain started – again! – and the usually very beautiful coastline between Palm Cove and Port Douglas was very dreary and grey, with a wild, churned up sea. We detoured into Port Douglas for a drag down the main street and headed for the car park at the Marina, as Brian’s vehicle needs a little more space than our Pajero. We sat in a coffee shop overlooking the yachts and river, spending quite some time debating as to whether the heavy clouds were “lifting.” Back in the Silverado and we continued towards Mossman and the turn off to Mt Molloy – there was no debate now, the clouds had definitely not lifted! The climb upwards through the rain forest was quite lovely and we eventually levelled out at assumed we must be at Julatten. After driving through farmland for some time, seeing the odd house or two and a pub, we eventually came to a school and concluded that Julatten must be a district, rather than an actual town. By this time, we had reached the turnoff to either Mt Molloy or Cooktown, so chose Mt Molloy for a quick look. That was really all that was needed, so we headed back down the mountain towards Daintree Village. Despite the weather, there were still a number of tourists about, utilising the tour boats in their search for crocodiles! We headed for the nearest café and a barramundi lunch. Just as we were ordering, we discovered why the Daintree area is known as WET tropics and RAIN forest!!!

We enjoyed a very pleasant barbecue and evening with Jenny and Brian after we returned to Cairns.

Today, there was still not much improvement in the weather and the morning was spent trying to get washing dry between showers. After lunch, we spent a couple of hours looking for a mat or piece of carpet to temporarily cover the bare boards at the base of our bed. We eventually found an offcut of a nice piece of carpet – the shop man was very helpful when we explained why we wanted it and where we were from. We probably spent 15 minutes talking to him about Tasmania! Himself is now busy with mathematical calculations and measurements before laying the piece of carpet on the floor. Although there have been many mutters about the humidity, he doesn’t feel the need to think about washing the car or think about washing the caravan in this weather.