2010/10 Australia trip - Cape Tribulation |
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South of Wujal we were into the Cape Tribulation part of Daintree national park. The road became challenging, narrow and greasy, lined with dark rainforest, climbing very steeply up to mountain ridges and then plummeting down to water crossings, and back up again. There were lots of gasps from Sandie, particularly when we met other vehicles.
We splashed across the final deep creek and suddenly we were in traffic again. This is as far as conventional vehicles can get when driving north from the Daintree. Our isolation was over and we were into an eco-slum, with the road festooned with eco-experiences, rainforest lodges and rental motorhomes.
The scenery was still beautiful though and we took a walk on the beach there below Cape Tribulation, named by Cook after running aground, but it was a short walk as it was a very dark and stormy day and rain squalls were spinning in off the sea.
More people means more rules and we weren’t able to self-register for a campsite at Noah’s Head. We had to contact Queensland’s camping booking office to make a reservation. This is done on their web pages, but if you don’t happen to be next to a tree with an Internet connection, then you have to drive to a pay phone, call them, and have some bored clerk fill in the web pages for you. The clerk is obliged to tell you all the details and warnings about the campground, take a credit card payment, and then give you a reservation number that has to be displayed at your site, so that it can be checked by a ranger. This is a long and tedious process and seems to be administrative overkill for a $10 camping fee.
The campground was heavily fenced to stop campers from trampling the rainforest, but there were corridors for getting to the beach. We’d picked the only campsite that had a clear view of the sky; the others were dark and gloomy under the trees. We tried another walk but yet again the rain clouds rolled in off the sea and we retreated. The beach stone curlew in the picture didn’t care; he was pursuing his lady friend.
Thursday October 21st
Even on our open sky campsite things were dark in the morning. We saw the ranger making his way around the campground checking our booking numbers. The only ones he was likely to catch and fine were confused tourists; the experienced Australians who hadn’t bothered to pay had already gone an hour previously.
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