Up in the treetops

The fruit on this farm is very alien to our apples and pears. The jack fruit is huge green and knobbly and grows straight out of the trunk!

These look like gooseberries

These are more familiar – papaya & lychee

And lovely flowers- can you spot the butterfly in this one?

We walked along the beautiful empty beaches by Cape Tribulation.

No one swims because of the crocodiles. There have been 2 deaths here : one in 2016 when someone went swimming at 10.30 at night (dark) and once in 1985. Despite the fact that it’s much more dangerous to ride a horse, no one even paddles in the middle of the day. Crocs are nocturnal and are also active in early mornings & the evening.

The tiny crabs here are very artistic

It’s called Cape Tribulation because this is where Captain Cook hit the Great Barrier Reef and made a hole in his boat, The Endeavour, he managed to wedge a sail in the hole and land on a beach up at current Cooktown. He was ashore for 42 days, mending his beached boat with the plentiful supplies around: timber, food, water etc.

We also walked along the very informative boardwalk through the mangroves which are dry at this time of year & we saw more amazing trees and crabs.

On our way back to the farm we saw a tall tree full of big black fruit bats! They were hanging upside down looking at us and flapping one wing like a fan.

We decided against going up to Cooktown on the very rugged 4×4 road as we feel we’ve done a lot of that already & decided instead to visit the discovery centre near Cow Bay. First we sampled the delicious Daintree ice-cream made from the exotic fruits here.

At the discovery centre there’s an aerial walkway and a 30m tower to get you right up into the tree tops at bird level.

This is the king fern: the biggest on the planet & it is endangered

Even at the top of the tower most trees were even taller. We had a wonderful view of the canopy and saw 5 new species of bird including the beautiful double eyed parrot (what a dreadful name)

Can you see him?

He was lovely

We said goodbye to the rainforest and headed back to Port Douglas so we will have an easy run to the airport tomorrow. The girls at By the Sea were pleased to have us back and gave us a bottle of bubbly!

They have an amazing inflatables collection!