Happy Days Part 2

from what i remember (i had quite a few of those cute little minature wine bottles on the flight), our flight to cairns was rather uneventful. after a coach transfer we arrived in port douglas around mid-evening, where we checked into our holiday apartment in true dawson style (threw our bags into our rooms and hurried off to the nearest pub for a drink). saturday was spent getting our bearings (finding the nearest bottleshops and pubs) and then followed up with a fair-dinkum-true-blue aussie barbie by the pool with a coupla coldies.

the nostril shot.

mrs ferret the business of ferrets.

the barbie. Unknowingly, turns out mrs ferret was a constant source of entertainment for the duration of the holiday. it was the evening of the barbie when she encountered her first ever gecko, but by the end of the trip we had convinced her that they were called "decko's". as there is an abundance of them in port douglas, ferret and i spent many an evening giggling like school girls, nudging eachother and kicking eachother under the table every time the word "decko" was used. mature i know.

slippery 1 and slippery 2.

unfortunately, for a majority of our time there it was quite overcast. not cold, it hovered around a perfect 25 degree temperature, but just cloudy.

croca-ma-dilius. we went on a crocodile tour boat thingy, it was amazing how the man knew where to look for them, at first i thought they had probably just planted little plastic crocodiles at certain spots for us tourists, but then one swam away and my conspiracy plan was shattered. hmmm, UNLESS they were mechanical plastic croco-ma-diles?

only a bunch of poms would travel some 10,562 miles to 'strayl-ya to sit in the apartment and eat a traditional pie + mash meal. i cannot lie though, someone asked me the other day if i could choose anything in the world, what would my last meal be? i said, my husbands' pie mash and a nice bottle of red plonk for dessert.

we hired a car for a couple of days and drove down to the tjapukai aboriginal cultural park, where we watched them do a little dance, learnt about bush food/medicine and then learnt how to throw a boomerang and a spear. ferret was the man of the moment and was the only one to catch his own boomerang. he got to keep it and i haven't heard the end of it since. i would like to point out that i could have caught mine too but i was scared of breaking a nail. boomerangs' are designed to KILL things you know.

another chunk of the day was spent being thoroughly entertained by mrs ferret on the kuranda skyrail. to do the whole journey takes about 30 minutes so considering she wanted to get off after 2 minutes, she did very well. 3o minutes is a loooooong time when you're not allowed to move, speak or barely breathe for fear of sending the gondola plummeting into the dense rainforest below or a crocodile infested swamp.

she had her eyes shut the whole time. i think mr ferret was trying to get the blood flowing back through his fingers in this shot.

we all took a sigh of relief when finally arriving in kuranda, mr ferret slowly regained feeling in his left hand, we enjoyed a lovely little pub lunch and then spent a couple of hours browsing the quaint little country shops. what we didn't know was that the route we had chosen to get back to civilisation, the kuranda railway, was just as bad height-wise as the skyrail.

it stopped at a lookout and this was the only time she looked out the window.

beautiful though.

cane toad racing. i was all set to have a crack until they said you had to kiss the revolting things. interesting fact: cane toad cricket will work too but the most humane way to kill cane toads is by either boiling or freezing them. ew.

hmpf, another interesting fact that i will never try.

pedro the koala.

what's that you say? not that interesting? believe me, i know. turns out the dawson clan are a family of weak bladders. i spent a majority of the trip either attempting to syncronise toilet breaks, trying to find a loo for someone or waiting outside the door for them muttering profanities under my breath.

on our second car hire day we drove up to cape tribulation. (mostly in deafening silence after a scuffle with ferret about something silly) it is a spectacular part of the country though.

cape trib.

crab holes.

like ferret, like son.

the dawsons.

as smooth as a....