On the road

Hi- I wrote this as we went along... not too much internet around here. We are in Airlie Beach still and went sailing and diving today... way too many pictures to go through right now, I will post them later! This post starts on like Wednesday and goes through yesterday (Friday).


Well, we hit the road today (after having our apartment inspected) and drove from Cairns to Townsville, with some stops on the way. Our first stop was Mission Beach, which required a bit of a detour through the rainforest. As we drove, we saw some amazing signs like this one:



If you haven’t read my entry on the cassowary (you should, it’s a good one), you might not recognize this amazing creature. To recap: enormous, bizarre-looking, and potentially dangerous. We have a bit of a cassowary obsession, which is why we stopped and photographed this sign. Unfortunately, signs like these tend to fall in the category of the alligator signs in Florida-- you keep an eye out, but never actually have to stop for gator crossing.
As we drove, we saw a sign for a rainforest walk, and decided we might as well check out the rainforest, since we were there. We walked down a little path about 50 feet before I froze, hit Jon, and pointed. About 15 feet ahead of us, a real live wild cassowary had just emerged from the rainforest.



We gaped for a while, then the cassowary saw us and started heading slowly in our direction. We walked backwards for a while, then took some pictures.


The cassowary never took it’s eyes off of us, but didn’t really seem to mind us. That didn’t stop us from backing up every time it walked towards us. These things are huge, scary, and can kill you with their claws. It was such a highlight.

I have to give you a close-up of this one, because seriously, this bird is ready to attack me. Giant claws.

After we left the rainforest walk, we actually passed another cassowary right by the side of the road, and could easily have hit it—I guess this sign wasn’t lying.


Cassowaries are endangered, and there are approximately 2,800 of them these days. Since we have now seen four of them (two today, and two at the bird sanctuary), we have actually seen 1/700 of the extant population. Crazy! Anyway, they are amazing, and seeing them in the wild was so cool.

Mission Beach is beautiful, and the rainforest comes all the way down to the beach, which is pretty cool looking.

The beach itself is covered in little balls of sand. Super-smart Jon remembered that we saw a video on this (the Blue Planet BBC series is amazing). The balls of sand are actually formed by thousands of crabs looking for infauna (microorganisms that live in the sand). It’s a pretty cool sight.

After that, we continued our drive and took a detour to Wallaman Falls, the highest waterfall in Australia.

The drive to the falls felt like something out of Jurassic Park, and I know the little Yaris has never seen so much excitement. It made it though, though, and the falls were very pretty. Part of the drive was also very rural, and these cows decided we should not get through.

We arrived in Townsville later than anticipated, and apparently the hostel that we thought we had booked over the internet hasn’t had internet for a couple weeks, therefore can’t get any of their internet bookings, and hasn’t told the booking company this. Which was great. Luckily, they did have a private room available (two single beds, but at least it’s a place to sleep). So, aside from that part, an amazing first day on the road.

So far Airlie Beach has been pretty relaxing. Some fun bars, and a cute (but very small) town.

This is Airlie, the pointy building blocked by the trees is actually our hostel- very well located. We spent today laying on the beach and planning our trip to Asia. Jon made friends with this snake, especially when it crawled across his legs.

So, that's all for now. Tomorrow we leave for Rockhampton. The driving hasn't been bad (Jon has done all of it, so I guess I should say the time in the car hasn't been bad). We are having fun, and look forward to the rest of our trip!