Carly & Dave’s World Adventure Blog

Named ‘Tribulation’ because of the troubles Captain Cook experienced on his journey around Queensland, this cape is also famous because it is where a huge rainforest meets the sea. It is the only place where you can see two world heritage sights at once; the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef.

 You enter the Daintree National Park (Cape Trib is part of this park) via a ferry crossing over the river Daintree. Quite frankly it felt like we were entering Jurassic Park (minus the dinosaurs). We have passed many rainforests on our journey through Australia and the amount of trees we have seen is phenomenal. However, this one seemed to be the most dense and undamaged we have seen. Apparently it is 140,000,000 years old and is claimed to be the oldest in the world. There is one road going right the way through it and, thankfully, very few buildings. The area is not on the national grid for electricity and there is no mains water either. Thankfully we remembered to boil water before drinking it

 Right alongside the forest are yet more beautiful beaches. Once again, this seems untouched, except for the odd sign warning you of crocodiles (aaargh!!!!). We decided not to swim in the sea!

 We stayed in the area for 3 nights. During our time there we went on some brilliant walks through the forest by ourselves and even spotted a few freshwater turtles ambling along a creek! Walking along Cape Tribulation beach was also really lovely. We also went jungle surfing (Dave’s idea!). This involved being harnessed 25-30 metres in the air and swinging through the trees to 5 different tree houses!!! At top speed we reached 40km/h . It was great fun and enabled us to see a lot of the surroundings. We saw flying fox bats hanging from the trees and loads of birds of paradise.

 We visited a little old man in the ‘Bat House’, which was really interesting. He rescues injured bats, which I didn’t think would be cute, but they were! He also told us loads of stuff about how the rainforest is depleting and every year a team of volunteers from overseas join him to plant different types of trees to help rebuild the rainforest. He sent us on a ‘re-generation’ walk so that we could see the baby and teenage trees!

 A major highlight of our stay was a trip to the Barrier Reef with a company called Rumrunner. I have devoted the next post to this, as it wouldn’t be fair to combine these 2 fantastic heritage sights