A day in FNQ

Yesterday we headed due south from Palm Cove into the Barron Gorge National Park. It was only about a 30 minute drive from Palm Cove to the start of the Crystal Cascades walk, along Freshwater Creek which eventually spills out into the Barron River. 

It was an easy walk for us along a wide concrete path with a very gentle climb over 1.2klm of walking track. Freshwater Creek was running fast after a season of rain and there were a few swimming holes along the way... a very enjoyable scenic walk, to the constant sound of tumbling gushing water.

The path ends at the Crystal Cascades waterfall and swimming hole (although no swimming advised today because of the volume of water flowing at this point!).

After this lovely gentle walk we thought we'd tackle the much more challenging Fairy Falls walk along the nearby Dowah Creek .....

This walk proved to be quite an adventure for us as it was a wild walk with no maintained trail and many parts of it required us to scramble over rocks and tree roots, sometimes perilously close to the steep banks of the fast running creek. We are not including pics of us on all fours inching our way over the worst parts of this track!

However, we were super careful and felt quite chuffed to make it to the very picturesque Fairy Falls (waterfall) all in one piece .....

Being so wild we didn't expect a crowd here, but of course the challenge, and the opportunity to swim in a large croc free pool makes it an appealing adventure for all the young things too, so we weren't able to enjoy the scene in solitude!

We were just as careful going back down the creek too on the return jouney.

From there we drove into Cairns, to Rusty's Markets, the indoor farmers market in Grafton Street in the city. We always enjoy a good food market and we found this one really interesting, full of exotic (to us) local fruit and vegies, and street food stalls, a feast for the senses  .....

with a very strong SE Asian influence and presence ......

Rob was pleased to find some German bratwurst - meaning our market visit was not in vain. Unfortunately we were late getting to the market so many of the small food stalls had run out of their lunch offerings, but we certainly did not have to starve on this occasion.

We were intrigued by the Rollinia (in the custard-apple family - tastes like lemon meringue pie apparently)...

Last night we met up with David and Ro at Trinity Beach (about a 10 minute drive south from Palm Cove). They were able to pull up in David's customary style now the Merc has arrived in FNQ.

As opposed to our slightly more down market hire car style ......

We started with a walk along the beach and caught a beautiful sunset from the rocky headland at the south end of the beach....

We enjoyed dinner at L'Unico, an Italian restaurant on the esplanade at Trinity Beach, sharing plates of baked brie, scallops, calamari and eggplant scallopini as we covered so many topics of conversations between us. Ro has the best stories of her amazing work with the CSIRO over the years (involving work with some of Australia's most remote communities). One story we hadn't heard about before was the three days she spent guiding Gough Whitlam!!! over the FNQ Wet Tropics Region prior to the case being made to UNESCO for its World Heritage listing (by then Gough was Australia's Ambassador to UNESCO and an elected member of the UNESCO Executive Board) amazing!!