After my day in the Tablelands I took a few more days to recharge the batteries in Cairns. My friends Simon, Kris, and Freddie arrived in town from Magnetic Island and I spent most of my time hanging out with them. They rented an AirBnB and it was a good spot to chill and get away from the hostel. For some reason, at that point in time, I wasn’t feeling comfortable in the hostel environment.
Anyway, I figured that my time in Cairns was coming to an end. I started thinking about taking a trip up to Daintree National Park. It’s the oldest rain forest in the world and one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Cairns in the first place.
I floated the idea to several friends but I didn’t find a situation that I felt totally comfortable with. Simon and the gang had a car and were keen to go. But they only wanted to take day trips into the forest, basing themselves in Port Douglas, a small town two hours north of the city. I was pretty dead set on camping but they weren’t really about it. Especially Freddie.
My German friends were excited to camp but after our trip to Windin Falls and our encounter with the cassowary, things got a bit weird between us. I won’t go into detail here. I just figured out that they weren’t the type of people I wanted to share this experience with anymore. And sometimes figuring that out earlier rather than later is a blessing.
My other friend Scott wanted to take a trip up there too but wasn’t exactly sure when he was going to go. He is a bit of a free spirit and he doesn’t really like to make detailed plans ahead of time.
I didn’t want to hang around Cairns for longer than I had to so at this point I was ready to rent a car and go by myself. It was an experience I really wanted to have and I didn’t feel like missing out on camping in the Daintree because I had no one else to go with.
Scott eventually came around to the idea of making a trip up there and I couldn’t have been happier about it. At that point in time, that was my number one option and I was stoked that it worked out. He met this other American girl while camping and she had some friends that also wanted to join in so we had a group of five of us. The more the merrier. Especially on a trip like this.
The drive up the coast was beautiful. Along the ocean most of the way. Literally all you can see is rainforest, beach, or the sea. We got a late start so we didn’t really have a chance to stop off at any particular place (or really talk to each other, to be honest). Just seeing the amazing views from the car got me excited about what was to come.
Before too long we were in Daintree, a small town on the appropriately named Daintree River. Alex, one of the French guys that joined the group, was pretty pumped to complete the CREB Track, which is a 4WD track through the Upper Daintree Forest. You could see why. His car was an absolute beast. A 2001 Toyota Hilux with everything you needed to take on a track like that. Emma was also pretty keen but Scott was on the fence.
We chatted up the lady behind the counter at the information center and she told us to go talk to her husband who was down on the dock. He drove the track consistently and would help us figure out if we were crazy or not.
He took a quick look over the car and said that we’d have no problem at all. Music to our ears. Being that it was the end of the dry season, the roads were as firm as they were ever going to be. He even pushed us to make a trip up to Cape York, the northernmost point of Australia. But we didn’t take him too seriously at the time. We said our goodbyes and made our way towards the start of the track.
So we’re driving up the road and we come across this Aussie guy (Ty) driving down the opposite way as we were. We figured he was finishing up the track so we flagged him down because we were curious to get another opinion on the conditions. Turns out he hadn’t even started yet. He had drove a half kilometre in to check it out for himself. But he was on his own so he was a bit wary of taking it on without any help.
We were a group of random people who didn’t know much about each other anyway. So we invited him to join and without hesitation, he accepted the invitation. The group grew to six just like that. Too easy.
To be honest, it felt like we were in Jurassic Park or Jumanji or something. The rainforest is so thick in this part of the country. And every so often you could see mountains poking through the tree line just totally covered in green vegetation. I was almost expecting a velociraptor to jump out at us.
The track was tough but not overly difficult. I felt that the roads on Fraser Island were a lot tougher. The first day all we did was drive. A car tour of the forest basically. There weren’t any places to swim along the track so we just tried to tackle as much of it as we could the first day.
A few hours into the drive we stumbled on a nice alcove in the forest. A great place to set up camp for the night. Especially because there wasn’t much daylight left. Not long after we set up camp a few other people pulled on in. Eventually, the campsite grew by a few more cars and in total there were twelve of us.
We were all pretty exhausted from a long day of driving so nothing much happened that night. We just enjoyed each other’s company and the warmth of the fire. I got to play some ukulele for my new friends. And yeah, it was just really cool to be camping in the oldest rainforest in the world.
The next day we didn’t have a long distance to drive. We covered about 75% of the track the first day. Which was unintentional. We just didn’t know how long the track really was to be fair. So we drove most of it the first day. Within an hour or an hour and a half, we were officially done with the track. We did pull off onto a really nice lookout point before we finished it up. But besides that just driving like the day before.
At this point, we were pretty desperate to find some water to swim in. And right on cue, a few kilometers down from the end of the trail, we saw the sign for The Roaring Meg. We turned right in, hoping to find somewhere to swim and wash ourselves.
We found the spot to be more than acceptable and decided to camp there for the day even though we hadn’t done much driving.
Soon after we arrived this guy drove by in his truck and starts chatting to us. He was an Aboriginal man and the caretaker of the land. He told us we could stay but asked us to keep out of the water at the waterfall. It was a holy site for women in the area and sacred to his culture. The beach up the river was fair game which we were relieved to hear. He told us to come around his place the next morning for some coffee and a chat.
The waterfall itself was fairly impressive but it was the view of the forest that was really the showstopper. We just stayed up there for a while taking everything in. Just wondering how things had changed since the Aboriginal people were taken off the land.
When we finally got to the beach I was pleasantly surprised. I thought I was hallucinating because it was this pure white sand beach, like something you would see in the Caribbean or the Whitsunday Islands, but next to a river. I think everyone was just so happy to be able to swim. Everyone just stripped down to nothing and jumped in there. It was quite liberating.
Again a pretty uneventful night. Had some dinner and relaxed. We did have an unexpected visitor. A black and white snake just slithered on up to us when we were hanging out around the fire. Zach, the other American in the group, is super interested in wildlife and he was trying to play with it and pick it up. We found out later that it was not venomous. But Zach getting a little too close to wild animals and freaking us out would become a consistent theme on this trip!