Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest

We started off our adventures in Port Douglas with a trip out to the Great Barrier reef on the Calypso Snorkel and Dive Tour. Judy went snorkeling and I went diving and we all went to three different sites on the Opal Reef. Before this trip I patiently explained to Jude how divers are very rarely bitten because sharks don't consider them food. Of course just as we arrived in Sydney, a Navy diver was attacked by a Bull Shark in Sydney harbour and a surfer was attacked on Bondi beach. Despite all of that, she did get her nerve up and had a great time snorkeling (I only saw one small white tipped reef shark). I spent some time looking for Nemo and I found him, or at least one of his cousins.

Even friendlier than Nemo was Marvin the Marvelous Purple Wrasse who would let you pet his nose and followed us around looking for handouts. This gentle fish was about five feet long and had lots of personality. Jude was petting Marvin until she saw a four foot long barracuda with huge teeth and then decided she would keep a bit of distance between herself and extremely large fish.

We also toured around the area visiting the Barron falls shown below and also stopping at a local pub, filled with people and kids of all ages, that had a fundraiser BBQ for the Bushfire Victims. It was great sampling some of the local cuisine (BBQ bangers and fries), chatting with some of the locals and supporting a great cause.

For our last day in Port Douglas we went on a Rainforest Safaris that visited Cape Tribulation, Mossman Gorge, Cooper Creek and the Daintree river. One of the highlights was taking a small boat down the river in search of salt water crocodiles, the most dangerous and largest crocs around. Here you can see Jude has her eyes peeled looking for anything staring back at her from the mangrove trees lining the river.
Although they are hard to find during the summer, we luckily came across a 3 meter female sunning herself on a log. Both our guide and I tried to get Jude to stick her arms in the water to see if we could get a better shot of the croc's teeth with it's mouth open but she wouldn't go for it.

Travelling down another tributary we came across the dominant male for that whole territory and he was about 4.5 meters long! It's really hard to get the scale of this thing from the picture but that is all one crocodile! Those scales sticking out of the water on the right are his tail and most of his bulky body is under the water so you can't see it. This thing was longer than a compact car!

We've noticed that a lot of things are different in Australia than Canada, even though there are lots of similarities as well. You don't see "Caution - Watch for Deer" signs in Australia you see watch for Kangaroo or Emu Signs.

The highways, roads and bridges get flooded so often that the trucks come equipped with snorkels so they can travel through even deep water to get across.

In Canada we might see ant hills, gopher mounds or mole hills but in Australia you get huge termite mounds.

There are lots of big bugs like this Golden Orb Spider that was about 8 inches high. They are harmless but Jude wouldn't even let me put it on her so I could get a better picture, imagine that!

All the critters seem a bit bigger and we have bats at the cottage that are about the size of a sparrow, well we came across these fruit bats flying around that have a 1 meter wingspan and look like Canada Geese flying around.

So now it's back to Sydney for the start of our Circumnavigation of Australia Cruise which should gives us lot's more adventures to write about.