Cairns to Darwin

As we travelled North from Cairns we left civilisation behind and were advised not to swim as it was too dangerous. If the sharks don’t get you the crocks will and if you escape both the sea is full of jellyfish and snakes as well. The local’s recon there is more danger of being injured by running into one of these signs, (this one at the ferry over the Daintree River) than being attacked by wild animals but we didn’t test the theory

As we went up through the Barrier Reef we had very strong winds but being ‘inside’ the reef the sea was fairly flat and we had some fantastic fast sailing. We were travelling by day only but were regularly doing eighty-mile days. The down side was that the anchorages were not very sheltered and we were seldom able to get off the boat. One exception was Lizard (we re-named it Blizzard because of the wind) Island where we climbed to the point where Captain Cook spied his way out of the reef once he had repaired the Endeavour after she had been grounded and severely damaged in the coral.

Here are the intrepid explorers at “Cook’s Look” Second and third from the right are Sebastian and Chantal, who joined us on board for this leg. It was lovely to have them and Stephen and I were treated to some gourmet French cuisine for the duration!!

Once we had arrived in Darwin we were able to take a tour to the Adelaide River to get up close to some real wild crocodiles..

You really wouldn’t want to be any closer than this and we were quite glad the tour boat was made of Aluminium with bars round.

Crocodiles have enormous power in their tails and can power themselves out of the water to catch passing prey, in this case a piece of meat held by the boat operator on a piece of string hanging from a pole…

There was lots of other wild life on the river with whistling kites and white herons

But the stars of the show for me were the sea eagles that swooped down to take pieces of buffalo meat off this floating tray.

So it is farewell to Australia and on westwards to our next continent, Asia.

next