Daytrip to Manly Beach

On our last day in Sydney we took the ferry over to Manly Beach.

Waiting in the ferry terminal

One of our favourite touristy things to do is to take the public transit ferry for an inexpensive harbour tour.

A view of the Sydney Bridge and another ferry

We arrived at the Manly ferry terminal

And set off on the coastal walk to North Head after a stop for coffee and a little urban birding.

Leo checks out a friendly sulphur-crested cockatoo

We crossed a beach where little penguins nest, but it is closed at night to protect the birds so this as close as we got to seeing any penguins.

The North Head Sanctuary protects endangered Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub habitat, of which only 3% remains in the Sydney area.

The plants in front are grasstrees (Xanthorrhoea).

 In the photo below the brush has been burned (probably a prescribed burn) on the left of the sidewalk and the right is undisturbed.   

We saw lots of little wattlebirds.  They feed on the wattles of Banksia shrubs.

Even the drab birds are kina flashy

The orange leaves below are banksia shrubs.

I believe that is the flannel flower in the centre

We stopped at a hanging swamp, but due to drought there was no standing water.

No water to be found

There were lots of great views from the headland.

We returned to Manley for coffee and a snack and did some last minute souvenir shopping.  Manly also has a very nice beach.

And we took the ferry back to downtown Sydney.

And that was that.  Time to fly home to Canada!

Downtown Sydney, Bondi Beach to Coogee

Our cozy hotel in Sydney was located across the street from the ANZAC War Memorial and Hyde Park.  From the Memorial we could walk downtown through the park and then through the botanical garden all the way to the waterfront.

Hyde Park is full of beautiful old eucalyptus trees, but

Even when there are no crocodiles Australia is a dangerous place!

We saw several of these running commuters with their office shirts hanging off their backpacks on a hanger!

We followed the seawalk

to popular tourist spot, Mrs. Mcquarrie's seat, where the Governor's wife used to enjoy the view.

From there we headed to the famous Sydney Opera House.

I never realized the iconic sail-like roof was made of thousands of ceramic tiles:

No wonder it went over budget.

In the afternoon we took the bus out to Bondi Beach and did the 6 km oceanfront walk to Coogee.

It's a pretty fantastic beach

Bondi has a swimming pool right on the ocean.

The walk is very popular tourist attraction.  It winds past affluent suburbs and beaches

tucked between clifftops.

We did some urban birding.

Female fairy wren

New Holland honeyeater

And we ended at the Coogee pleasure palace.

Cairns to Sydney

After sleepy Daintree, Cairns seemed really busy with tourists.  Our first caravan park had no vacancies, but they sent us down the road to an older park.

We checked out the botanical garden where we saw this bee-eater.

In the evening we checked out the Esplanade along the waterfront, with some interesting sculptures.

After the sun set we headed downtown and dined out on Thai food.

Will you look at that!  Turns out we should have been looking for the cassowary at the Novatel Hotel parking garage.

In the morning we turned in our rental vehicle and flew to Sydney.

Mossman Gorge

Woke up to see the clouds lifting off the Daintree River after a night of heavy rain.  We drove south toward Cairns with a stop at Mossman Gorge, part of the Daintree National Park.

We arrived just as the park opened.  It's got a fancy visitor centre staffed by the local aboriginal community. And some very fancy boardwalks.  

We stopped at a viewpoint over the Mossman River

Where we could see jungle perch in the clear pool.

Jungle perch

The river is popular for swimming in the potholes, but there were signs advising that people not swim.  It didn't look very dangerous to us, but I guess people have drowned.

We continued through the forest with nice views

and interesting flowering trees.

Yes, those fruit are growing out of the trunk!

We got very excited when we saw the ground dug up around the trail.  Could this be the work of a cassuary?

Nope, very busy brush turkey

This flower came from the ylang ylang tree, and is a prime component of Chanel No. 5 perfume:

Yang ylang

We wound up at this beautiful clear pond.

But by now the crowds were catching up to us, so we returned to the visitor centre.

There we had Damper, which turned out to be the Australian version of bannock!

Cape Tribulation

The next morning we caught the first ferry across the Daintree River so we were the first tourists to reach Cape Tribulation that day (except for all the tourists staying on the Cape overnight).

Note warning sign

An excellent strategy as we were all alone on the first few boardwalk trails we walked.

Once we crossed the river the road followed along the coast, then wound up into the hills where we stopped for this fabulous view.

We stopped at several boardwalks that wound through the rainforest with excellent interpretive placards.

We learned that Daintree rainforest has the tallest mangroves in the world. 

They are tree-sized rather than the usual shrub size.

Mangrove seed

Eventually the other tourists caught up to us.  A group of Italians told us they had just seen a cassowary with 2 chicks.  We rushed back, but of course the cassowary curse held and they were gone!

We saw a very cool strangler fig, though

We did see a pademelon (tiny kangaroo-like marsupial) foraging in the forest. Somehow this seemed like a much more authentic experience than the ones we saw grazing on the lawn of O'Reilly's Retreat Lodge.

At the end of the road (though if you have a 4x4 you can take the rough track north to Cooktown) we checked out the beach. 

Some people were actually swimming here, but between the crocodile warning signs and

we thought perhaps not and instead took a short trail to an observation deck where supposedly you can see both turtles and crocodiles.

Today there was just a stunning view

then we drove back to the Ferry and on the other side we signed up for a crocodile tour on the Lower Daintree River.  This was a whole other tour than the birdwatching tour we had taken the previous day, with several vanloads of day tourists up from Port Douglas.

We saw a few crocs, but none as large as the previous day.  Well, except for this maneater:

And then it started to rain, hard, for the rest of the day and throughout the night.

The furthest we ventured was across the street from our lodge for a classic Australian meal:

Daintree Brahman burger with a slice of pickled beet, yum.