Australia 2012 Port Douglas Queensland Kevin Bell
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Had a good no worries flight to Cairns and transferred to 'The Mantra' at Port Douglas, it is a very pleasant hotel with at least 3 pools, but a little difficult to navigate at first due to the unusual construction. Ate at 'Rattle and Hum' where you get a beeper that sounds when your food is ready. Walked around town today (Friday) and went down to the Marina to book a couple of trips to the reef.

The Aussie airlines do seem to delight in trying to unnerve you. As well as the croc picture, there's a picture of a Great White on all of the baggage carts that says 'One of these weighs 22 suitcases', I kept thinking 'we're going to need a bigger trolley'. Also, as we were taxiing down the runway the in-flight TV cut to an advert about 'sudden accident funeral plans', when I changed channels there was an interesting program about recovering the wreckage of a crashed aeroplane. It was definitely not my week to quit sniffing glue. On the other hand they play things down in the hotel. The receptionist said that it's best to keep to the netted area, because you don't want a 'troublesome sting'. The sting of a box-jelly isn't that troublesome, on account of the fact that relief in the form of death intervenes quite rapidly. The word 'troublesome' obviously has a different meaning in Australia compared to it's interpretation in the rest of the English speaking world. The 'Troublesome Brown' is the second most venemous snake in the world (the aussies also have numero uno, the Taipan), see also the 'Highly Irritating White Shark' and the 'Obstreperous Saltwater Crocodile'.

The Great Barrier Reef

Well this is the one we came to see and it does not disappoint.On Sunday I went on my own with a boat called 'Silversonic' to do three scuba dives in different parts of the Agincourt ribbon Reef  22m, 14m and about 12m and on Monday we both took the 'Quicksilver' to their fixed platform on a similar part of the outer reef where you can scuba, snorkel go in the submersible, or view from windows below the water-line.There is also fish feeding at noon which brings some quite big fellas close to the platform. In the scuba dive is different from the snorkelling, because you see one or two things at depth that you don't see snorkelling (shark, turtle), but a lot of th reef life and colour is probably better seen close to the surface due to the progressive loss of particular colours of light the further down you go. Also much of the life itself is dependent on light. I'm glad I did both. I was staggered, when I looked at the fancy watch, to find that I had managed a 7.1m free dive. I thought that it was a long way back up and felt quite in need of a breath. I shot so many pics and movie that I'm surprised that I managed to see anything (I'm thinking of going back without the camera). I will put a few pics here and a couple of small movies that have suffered from me crushing them down to .WMV because of the upload limits in the hotel.

Best free dive

Skyrail over the Rainforest and the Kuranda to Cairns Railway.

Tuesday 7th booked with Glenn's tours for this trip. Small mini-bus with local oz commentary on anything from rainfall, politics, those barrrstards in New South Wales, especially Sydney and of course crocs. The, 'na warriz about our dangerous wildlife', Aussies make a special exception when it comes to the Saltwater croc (when I hired a bike in Yarra, it was covered in cobwebs so I asked if they could be venomous spiders, the woman smiled and said 'na warriz there mate, we don't have any other kind'). However, 'old saltie' scares the pants off even the most laid-back Aussie, them and the 30 foot mountain python (it was only a youngster) that Glenn had to wrestle his dog out of one night. Skyrail gives a pretty spectacular view of the rainforest and delivers you to Kuranda where Aborigine markets flourish and tourists wanting to get their retaliation in first can have a crocodile sandwich (I didn't ask them to make it snappy, I'm sure they've heard that one before). Bought Jeff's boomerang from a genuine Aborigine, made by genuine Aborigines and he told me about it's special powers that come from the platypus engraving. I realised fairly rapidly that this was not going to come cheap, so I couldn't afford the bullroarer as well. The precariously perched mountain train to Cairns gives spectacular views and was a masterly piece of engineering, and of course collateral deaths, 37 if you don't count the Chinese and the Aborigines, which they didn't. Unlike the Aborigines, the Chinese have got their own back now, they practically own the place. Had a short stay in Cairns, which looks really good and back on the bus for more heartwarming croc stories.

Daintree Safari 9th of Feb

Taken on our own (only cstomers for the day) to see the rainforest sights in a V8 air-conditioned Landcruiser, (a specially eco-friendly one). Great day, some of the many photos taken.

10 th of Feb and penultimate day at this wonderful place. Headed back to dive on the reef with Silversonic got 3 dives of 20m, 14m and 18m viz perfect, fish were spectacular. This was the day you dream about when considering diving the reef. You will have to take my word for most of that, because although I took the camera, decided not to spend all the dives behind the lens and missing actually seein anything. Also, even though the colours are still pretty startling to the eye at depth, my camera doesn't tend to do justice to what you can see. Wow.