This adventure episode will take you Down Under to the northeast coast of Australia’s amazing Coral Bay in Queensland. You will imagine yourself snorkeling or scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef – the largest living organism in the world (visible even from space!). Host Kit Parks will take you whitewater rafting on the thrilling Tully River, voted as one of the top five day rafting trips in the world. She will also take you hiking and exploring the most diverse ecosystem on the planet, with more rare plants found than anywhere in the beautiful Daintree rainforest. Adventure on as Kit narrates wonderful nature escapade!
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Listen to the podcast here:
004 Australia’s Magnificent Great Barrier Reef, Tully River and Daintree Rainforest
The guide tells us, “Do you want to go underwater or do you want to get tossed in the raft?†My husband, Bill, decided for the whole raft. We’re going under Down Under.
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It’s time to switch it up a little bit. For the last couple of adventures, we’ve been going hiking. Now, we’re going to do something a little bit different and we’re going to get wet. We are going to go snorkeling, whitewater rafting, but I’ll still throw in a little bit of hiking because that is my favorite thing to do. We’re not just going underwater, we’re going Down Under. We’re going to Australia. Welcome to Cairns. They throw a little ‘r’ in there that you can hardly hear. You’re going to have to get used to it. Mispronounced almost every odd name out there, so sorry about that. Anyway, we’re going to Cairns which is in northeast Australia and it’s in a tropical area. Australia is huge so it’s not a place you want to go for a week. Frankly, I would say you need to plan at least two, really three, at a minimum when you go to Australia. It’s like trying to see the United States in one visit, you just can’t do it. When you go, you need to pick certain areas to go to. I went to Cairns, Melbourne, Sydney, and Kangaroo Island. In Cairns, which was one of the highlights, you have the Great Barrier Reef. We whitewater rafted the Tully River, which was Nat Geo’s Top 5 Day Whitewater Rafting trips in the world. There’s Daintree Rainforest, which I did not go to, but I have done some research so we can add that to this adventure.
Cairns itself is a cool little town on the Coral Sea. One thing, I don’t know why I think of it so much, is one evening it’s like the whole town turned out to do Zumba on the beach. I was like, “How cool is that?†Everybody goes out there and does Zumba. It’s a very active town. There are lots of things to do both in the water and in the hiking, all that kind of thing, so it’s an adventure person’s mecca. It is in a tropical area so the wet season is around January, February, March. From what I understand, it rains really hard briefly but you will still get sunshine during those months. Generally speaking, most people tend to go on other months. One of the top things to do is either to snorkel or scuba dive, if you have a license, the Great Barrier Reef. You’re in this gear and you go down there, and then all you see is masses of color. There are corals, fishes and turtles. It’s remarkable. You feel like you’re in this underwater wonderland. You’re like, “There’s Nemo.†It’s so cool. You take a boat out to the islands and you go down and snorkel. It’s a blast.
You can do this as a day trip, you can also go to certain islands and spend overnight if you want to. It’s extraordinary. The Reef itself is the largest living organism in the world. You can actually see it from outer space. The Reef includes 900 islands and is about 2,300 square kilometers or about 1,400 square miles. It’s in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia. It has been a World Heritage Site since 1981. It has about 400 species of coral. Thirty species of whales, dolphins and porpoises go in the area, 1,500 fish species, including our little clownfish, Nemo. Six different kinds of sea turtles breed there. There are 215 kinds of bird species that either visit or nest on the area islands and almost 2,200 plant species. The outer reefs spawn in November and December. I’m not quite sure what you’d see there but I thought that was cool so I thought I’d throw that in there. While I wasn’t lucky enough to see one, the dugong, which is like the manatee, one of those big sea cows that eat the seagrass are out on the reef as well. The Aboriginal folks that are native there are still allowed to hunt them, but of course, they’re protected from everybody else. A little side note as I was doing research on the Great Barrier Reef, I saw that James Cook, the famous explorer who was a descendant of my late husband, actually ran aground on the coral reef out there which I thought was interesting. He had to dump a bunch of the stuff off the ship to lift up the boat enough to get off the reef.
Over two million people a year visit Cairns not just to see the Great Barrier Reef but also do such things as whitewater raft on the Tully River, which Nat Geo has rated in the top five-day trip whitewater rafting trips in the world. I was lucky enough to do that a couple of years ago and it’s a blast. It’s a little bit vigorous, I would say class III, sometimes class IV. There’s this one fall where right before you get to it, the guide asked us, “Do you want to go underwater or do you want to flip out of the boat?†because on this one section, it’s class IV on one side. The crazy people go over to class V, which we would have died. On class IV, we decided to go under where literally the raft goes under the water for the longest three seconds of your life. There were two other rafts in our group and they were kids. They were like, “We want to pop out.†They popped out like corks. It was fun.
You need to plan at least three weeks ahead of time if you want to explore destinations in Australia. Share on X
There’s also a place when you go down, you go under a waterfall and you all get wet. It’s another area where we stopped and rested for a little bit. There’s this big rock that you can climb up and jump off. In my memory, it was like 30 feet tall. Looking at some photos online, maybe it was twenty feet. All the young kids were doing it. I was like, “I’m going to show them an old lady can do it, too.†I did it as well. There are areas that are calm enough that you can get out and float in the water. Towards the end, all of a sudden the guide said, “Everybody keep all your hands and feet inside the raft.†We’re like, “Why?†“There’s been crocodiles sighted around here.†Anyhow, the guides know what they’re doing. They know where it’s safe and they know how to take care of you so you can have a great time. It was a thrill. I loved to whitewater raft. I’ve probably only done it half a dozen times in my life but two of the times have been in the top rivers in the world. One is the Tully, the other is the Pacuare.
I’m going to be doing in the Pacuare again next winter, in February. I’ll be highlighting that in the springtime episode. If you go to Australia and you love the water, you love to whitewater raft, you definitely want to do the Tully river. For those truly hardcore, there’s an extreme Tully River. If you go to YouTube and put in the search thing, “Extreme Tully River,†you’ll see. That’s too hardcore for me. It looks like fun but that’s probably a little bit too scary for me. This one, I would say, is fun, exciting, a couple of twitches. Going over that thing was a little bit twitchy. It was still fun. They wouldn’t let us do it if it wasn’t safe, but that extreme thing might be a little bit more hardcore than what I’d like. It is available for those that would like to do it.
I want to talk to you a little bit about the people of Cairns. At the hotel that we were staying at, the folks were so nice. Bill and I were walking to dinner one night and all of a sudden, a rainstorm came out of nowhere. The owner of the hotel sent somebody out and found us walking in the street to drive us to that restaurant, and then said to call them when we were finished dinner so they could pick us up so we wouldn’t get wet. I have never had a hotel do that before in my life. In fact, I wanted to wash some clothes because we had been traveling a couple of weeks. I said, “I need to get some change for the laundry.†She said, “Use the one that says it’s broken. That one is free,†because that was the one they used. They were just so kind.
Another one, guys are probably going to be embarrassed by this story but girls would probably think this was funny. I’m a little bit older. I thought I was fully into full menopause. On the day that I have got to snorkeling, and the next day whitewater raft, after it had been at least eight months since my friend had visited, guess who comes to visit that night? 7:00 in the morning, I’m getting picked up to go on this snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef. I have nothing, nothing’s open. I was like, “I have flown halfway across the world, I’m going in. I don’t care if the great white sharks eat me or not.†Gratefully, on the boat that took us out there, they had some supplies. When I got back to the hotel, the lady drove me to the pharmacy. You couldn’t have asked for nicer people, they treat us like family. They treated me, actually better than sometimes family does. It was really kind, good people. I just love Australian people. There’s something in their character and their nature that exudes warmth, friendliness and kindness.
Back to our adventure. We’re going to go to the Daintree Rainforest, which is the world’s most diverse ecosystem. It has the greatest biodiversity of rare species on the planet. You can make Daintree a day trip or there’s an eco luxury resort that you can stay in as well. They’ve got the tropical jungle, they’ve got beaches, they’ve got trails. You can swim, paddle, take boat rides, explore the rivers. They’ve got volcanic lakes, waterfalls. You’ll be able to see the famous saltwater crocodiles with their mouths open, cooling themselves off. It’s a birder’s paradise. There are so many birds that migrate here. Daintree has the largest population of primitive flowers in the world. Of the nineteen species in the world, twelve of them are found in this forest. While you’re there, take advantage of the hour and a half-guided hike so that you can learn a lot about the aboriginal culture and the plants.
I also want to just break away from my normal adventure thing. If you are going to Australia and you are going to Melbourne, I know you’re going to be dead tired at the end of the day but you’re going to see a bus tour to see the fairy penguins. Go do that. That is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my whole life. This has nothing to do with adventure and I’m sorry for diverting, but I have to tell you if you’re going to Australia and you’re going to Melbourne, you’ve got to go see the fairy penguins. These little things are out at sea all day long and right around dusk, they start coming into shore. You’re sitting on these little benches looking out at this little cove, there’s only a certain area. They come in, and you see these little black dots in the water like little black mushrooms popping up out of the water. These dots are ebbing and flowing and it’s like they’re out there talking, “Do you think it’s safe? I don’t know. What do you think? I’m not sure if it’s safe or not. I think it might get us. I don’t know.â€
They come in a little bit, “No, it’s too scary.†They go back out again. “I want to go back in,†so they come in. “It’s way too scary,†they go back. Finally, someone says, “To heck with it, we’re going in.†Out of the sea comes thousands of these little miniature penguins. It is one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen in my entire life. If you go to Australia and you go to Melbourne, you’re going to be tired. Get on the bus. You’re going to sit on the bus for about two hours and then you will see the most striking things of your whole life. I digress, back to Cairns. If you’d like to see some platypus, not too far away is a platypus park. You go there, you can also camp there if you’d like. Another side excursion is to go to the Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Center. It’s about fifteen minutes from town. They do performance dance, music, and storytelling about the world’s oldest culture, 40,000 years old.
One final note about Cairns. In the evening, they have these fruit bats which looked like little baby foxes with bat wings. Apparently, they call them flying foxes. I didn’t know that until I was doing some research, but when it gets a little bit dusk, the skies fill with these massive bats. I guess they just eat off the fruits, and they live in about 40 different colonies in the city. The locals hate them but the tourist thinks it’s very cool. The locals think they’re noisy, and they do make some noise. I didn’t know what it was at the time. They’re smelly but I have a deviated septum, so I can’t smell anything. I’m guessing the guano can drop on people. I didn’t have that issue either. All I know was I thought it was cool.
My verdict on this vacation is as an activity level, probably a two. Maybe not even that because mainly on the raft, you’re sitting and paddling but it’s not you, it’s the water that’s doing most of the work. Snorkeling as much as you want to do, same thing with scuba diving, but it is an active vacation. It’s an extraordinary vacation. It should be on very high on anybody’s bucket list to go to Australia. It’s probably the most fascinating places I’ve ever been to. If you haven’t done so, please subscribe to the podcast. It really does help others like yourselves find the podcast. If I could also ask you to please share this podcast to somebody else, introduce other adventurers to the podcast and spread the word, I’d be so grateful. I would also like to thank all of you who have taken the time to email me to give me encouragement. It’s just been so heartwarming. I know I’m fumbling with the words and all that. I’m doing the best I can and I’m trying to learn and trying to do a good job for you. Your emails have been so encouraging to me. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Until next time, adventure on.
Important Links:
- Springtime episode – past episode
- Platypus park
- Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Center