Australia – Queensland

Queensland, which occupies much of northeastern Australia, was the foundation of our Australian tour schedule.

While most people might plan to visit Australia in the summer (our winter) we wanted to photograph in the tropical rainforests of Queensland near Cairns, which pretty much required that we go in the Australian winter.

Our Local Guide

After much research we had decided that we would use FNQ Nature Tours (https://fnqnaturetours.com.au/) and settled on a five-day tour to the Daintree and Tablelands in Queensland.

The photos tell the story better than words, but a brief commentary is worthwhile. Our tour leader James is one of the founders of the business and as with the tours in Melbourne and Sydney, we were again reminded of the value of having talented, knowledgeable local guides. Indeed, as an aside, this has been the case with every nature tour we’ve taken, whether it’s the Galapagos, South Korea, the Ecuadorian rainforest, the Mindo area in Ecuador, Costa Rica, or Doñana National Park in Spain.

Local guides know the area and not just from a few visits or seasons, but from multiple visits in all seasons. They know where to go and what you are likely to see. We came away from the week’s tour with photos of birds and animals that we know we would never have encountered otherwise.

Two Lodges, Two Nights Each

The tour was divided into two nights at Kingfisher Park Birdwatchers Lodge and two nights at Chambers Wildlife Rainforest Lodge, but the lodges were really just the landing places for each day’s tour. Detailed itineraries are available on the FNQ website, but the key is that the days were packed with opportunities to see and photograph birds and other wildlife.

The Southern Cassowary

One story illustrates just how important having a competent guide can be.

During the tour we saw dozens of incredible birds, as well as platypus, crocodiles and wallabies, but one bird kept eluding us, the massive Southern Cassowary. One glance at a Cassowary will remove any doubt that birds are dinosaurs.

Each day James would dutifully troll known locations. We caught a brief glimpse of a young bird, but it disappeared into the bush before we could get any shots. By the last day of the tour, we were all but reconciled that there would be no Cassowary for us. But James was not about to surrender that easily.

He suggested one last detour. We circled a beach and campground where they were known to occasionally appear, but it was to no avail. Finally, he suggested we take one final loop around the area before breaking for lunch.

As we drove along the highway James spotted our dream bird resting in a field. Not only was it out in the open, but we were stunned as it rose up and slowly began to amble toward us. We could not contain our excitement as it came closer and closer, before finally slipping under a fence, trotting across the highway and disappearing into the forest.

Had we arrived just 15 minutes later we would have missed the show and had we not had a guide who knew where to look and who was committed to getting us the best experience possible, we would have gone home without our Cassowary photos.

On Our Own in Queensland

After being dropped off at our hotel after the FNQ tour we were on our own for the remainder of the trip. That meant renting a car in Cairns to drive to Port Douglas for a few days and then a drive from Port Douglas back to the Tablelands for three nights at the Canopy Treehouses.

We delayed any car rentals until the end of the trip and away from major metropolitan areas, given that Australians drive on the left side of the road. The idea was that after four weeks of riding in cars and vans we would have time to acclimate ourselves to left-side driving. It mostly worked, although what I was not expecting was that the turn signals and windshield wipers would be reversed. I consistently signaled my turns with the windshield wipers and, fortunately, the weather was mostly clear so only a minimal amount of signaling a turn when rain started.

Right turns were a bit tricky, but thanks to Carol’s coaching we had no major incidents.

Near Death Experience

Since Port Douglas is known as a gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, I had scheduled a snorkeling tour to get an up-close look at the reef. We had snorkeled in the Galapagos and in my mind, I envisioned that the Great Barrier Reef would be a similar experience – leisurely swimming among the coral as pretty tropical fish floated by. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The day started out windy and rainy as we headed out to sea in our small yacht with about 12 other passengers. When we finally arrived at our destination, I was shocked to see we were basically in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight and waves crashing around us.

The instructions were simple – jump overboard and swim toward the reef. What reef, I wondered? All I could see was water and waves. As Carol and I clung to our pool noodles and hung on to the guide’s floatie for dear life we managed to swim to what was apparently the reef, although as we were battered about in the ocean and fast taking-in water we could only glimpse at what we imagine must have been the coral underwater.

I have never had an experience where I felt the odds of dying were so high.

To be fair, my snorkeling mask had been giving me some problems for quite some time and I was a fool to use it instead of one provided by the dive company, nonetheless Carol and I were stunned by how different this was from what we had experienced in the Galapagos – clear, calm waters, a floating ring that anyone could hand onto if they felt unsure and, most importantly, a panga nearby ready to help anyone out of the water if needed or if they simply wanted to quit earlier than the rest of the swimmers.

In the following days, talking to other tourists, we learned that there were other companies that offered much more benign excursions. A reminder to thoroughly research options.

Port Douglas and Cairns

Other than that, our experience in Port Douglas was a relaxing break from the dawn to dusk activity of our nature tour. Port Douglas is small and very much a resort town. Lots of high-end shops and the absolutely beautiful Four Mile Beach – a stretch of sand that certainly does seem go on for miles along the coast.

At around 170,000 people, Cairns is about 40 times bigger than Port Douglas, although the downtown waterfront area with its shops and restaurants is compact and easily walkable. The restaurants are great in both Cairns and Port Douglas, with a wide variety of options.

But, while Port Douglas has the long sandy beach and great swimming, the Cairns promenade sits along a stretch of mudflats. When the tide is in, it presents a nice waterfront that appears deceptively inviting until the tide goes out and instead of sand, you see mud. It’s great for attracting birds – pelicans, herons, egrets and ibis pick through the flats, along with stilts and other small wading birds. Kingfishers often perch on some of the taller water plants as they hunt. But, I can’t imagine anyone attempting to swim there and in fact, swimming is not allowed.

To compensate for the lack of a beach, Cairns has a large public pool along the promenade (closed for renovations while we were there) and extensive playgrounds, including water play areas, stretching out along the promenade.

Canopy Rainforest Treehouses

From Port Douglas we headed to the Canopy Rainforest Treehouses, which are just a few miles outside the small town of Malanda. Our stay at the treehouses gave us a final opportunity to capture a few more birds and we were able to check off both a male and female Victoria’s Riflebird (although the male was not displaying for us) and a male and female Australian King Parrot, all from our porch.