Jun 23, 2011 - Aus - Day 51 - Driving on

Made our way to Tully, this area was hit hard by the February Cyclone. You can see severe damage throughout the town and our entire drive up here supplied us with views of the devastating effects of the storm. Loss of Banana crops and sugar cane plantations are abundant. The highest rainfall record was 7900mm. Cyclones regularly hit this region so you have to wonder why people stay or move in to Tully only to suffer the reoccurring storms over and over again. There is a very large Rubber boot which is the towns masterpiece. We climbed to...

Jun 22, 2011 - Aus - Day 50 - Natural Rock Slides & Jourama Falls

Woke up to a glorious sunny morning. Had an great breakfast, Jason made sunny side up eggs, fresh honey ham and toast. Decided to go and hike up to the natural rock slides. Nice little hike that leads you up a path to the lower part of the rock pools. There were two natural rock slides with only one really being good enough to go down. Man was the water cold, Jason was taking his sweet time talking himself into so I decided “when in Australia” and sat down in the cold running stream of water, pushed myself off and slid down the natural rock...

Jul 20, 2010 - hulls heads

we are on the road again and heading towards proserpine. we have friends there want to catch up with. we found this place called hulls head and tully head. it was $13 a night run by the coastal patrol. we had hot showers and water on tap. we could walk to the beach. there was the same old sign about croc and stingers. didn't put us off the place. we went fishing, didn't catch anything, got the push bike out and rode that about. we stayed 2nights and meet some lovely people. john got some ideas from a old guy about this copper thing. it...

Aug 13, 2009 - Day 23 – Townsville to Tully. – 7.9 metres of pure genius.

I honestly believe I have reached the zenith of my travelling career. After today nothing else can compete. Six continents and 37 countries, from remote regions to the world’s great cities and nothing can compare with the brilliance, the grandeur and the unlimited beauty that is the “Big Golden Gumboot!” of Tully. The story goes that the wise and learned folk in Tully (?) decided to embrace the fact that it has the highest recorded rainfall in Australia. 7.9 metres in 1950 apparently, so hence they built a gumboot of that height. Why...

Sep 15, 2008 - Paronella Park and Tully (only Tully plotted)

JOSH: Yesterday we went to a caravan park called Paronella Park. It was about a guy who made a castle for his girlfriend. But when he had finished and come back, his girlfriend had married someone else because he didn't send her a card in 11 years. Me and Mum both thought "How would a guy that smart, be that dumb?" My favourite part of the park is the Tunnel of Love because there is lots of micro-bats there. They are the smallest bats. We learnt that bats make a lot of noise in their sleep, which is weird. That night we got a tour by the...

Mar 4, 2008 - White Water Raining. I Mean Rafting

Today was White Water Rafting day on the Tully river. It was certainly the weather for it. We went to the company base, paid for anything that needed paying and had breakfast. We then set off on a coach full of people to the river. We were briefed about 3 times on safety, and we put our gear on and got into groups of 7. We pushed out raft into the water and off we went. We didn't start right at the top of the river as that was grade 6 rapids-dangerous -at that time. We paddled to the first rapids called lookout rapids- named simply because...

Sep 10, 2006 - Mission Beach

Mission beach was so gorgeous and surprisingly quiet. The amazing turquoise ocean and palm tree fringed beaches are definately not getting boring! We say how lucky we are every day, but time is definatley going too quickly!!! We chilled out here for a couple of days, then it was time for the last stint of our journey to our destination Cairns!

Aug 6, 2006 - Raften op de Tully river!

Dit was GAAF!!! Lisa had me al aangeraden om hier heen te gaan. En daar zat ik dan weer in een raft! (de tweede in deze reis) Deze keer zou het alleen een volle dag zijn zoals het hoort! Heel spectaculair met een aantal momenten van dat we bijna moesten zwemmen...wat een adrenaline-rush was dat zeg‼ Later las ik op de site van Lisa dat ze bij een gids zat die Rod heette...dat was dus ook de gids die ik had?! En dan te bedenken dat er iets van 20 boten waren.. Ohw, en ik wil jullie niet bang maken ofzo, maar er waren daar op die rivier 3...

May 3, 2006 - Mission Possible

I'm off on my tour today and the bus leaves at 8am. There's about 16 people on the bus, but only 4 of us are going on the full tour. My mission is to find out who they are. The bus driver introduces himself as "The Freak" and I'm starting to get a bit scared. Plus there's a lot of hungover people on this bus ... am I getting too old for this? We head off to Kuranda for some breakfast and I introduce myself to Jessie (who is very hungover). We get breakfast of poached eggs on toast and quiz each other with the standard questions: - how long...

Nov 3, 2005 - Mission beach

I just spent the last 2 days in Mission Beach and I have only one word to say: BORING There is absolutely nothing to do there, the beach is nice but definitely not the nicest I have ever seem... Most people come there to do sky dive but I did not do it so there was not much to do!!! We went for a walk in the rain forest but it was too hot to be enjoyable... There are salt water crocodiles around here but we were not lucky enough to see one but we saw a Cassowary which is one of the rarest bird in australia so that made our day! Sorry I...

May 6, 2005 - de laatste rijdag naar Cairns

De laatste 350 km van onze camperreis. Om 07:45 starten we de camper en gaan op pad. Buiten de stad valt de drukte mee en schieten we lekker op, een dag van de Ford een beetje op z'n staart trappen. Rond het middaguur zijn we nog zo'n 100 km van Cairns verwijderd en komen we een SugarMuseum tegen, in Innesfail. Zowel gisteren als vandaag zijn we weer vele km's door het suikerrietgebied getrokken. Dus onze pauze is dit museum. Er wordt geadviseerd om eerst de film te bekijken en pas daarna het museum zelf in te gaan, wat we dan ook doen. Een...

Mar 13, 2005 - Far North Queensland

The farther north you get in Australia it seems the bigger everything gets (i.e. hurricanes/creatures that can kill you) as well as the stranger the people become. This culminated when we reached the Johnson Crodile Farm in Far North Queensland. Let's just say we were wowed by our new Queenslander friends grasp on reality.