Discovery Festival

Hey Guys, sorry for the delay the interweb was down,

So I have just finished my two-week stay at Brads place and it was amazing. I don’t think I have ever gotten to eat so much seafood in so short a span, we had Mud Crabs and fresh fish throughout the week, along with Kangaroo one night too (tasted like steak with the consistency of venison).  While at Brads John and I had some really cool adventures. One weekend we went up to Cooktown for the Discovery Festival and stayed with Doreen, a nice Aboriginal woman who is friends with Brad. The festival marked the discovery/crash landing of Capt James Cook to Australia and his interactions with the Aboriginal people. There were some pretty cool activities for tourists to check out including an Aboriginal dance that I took part in. While at Brads we also got to go on an overnight hike to a extremely secluded beach at Cedar Bay. To get there we hiked for 3 hours through thick rainforest jungle, up and over a saddle that required ropes to help the decent, and over a mile of jagged rocks along the coast, but once we finally arrived it made it all worth it. The beach was incredible with its fresh water streams, total privacy, and all the coconuts you could eat. The next day we ate breakfast, went for a swim and then headed back to through the jungle to get to a point near the mouth of the Bloomfield River where brad would pick us up in his dingy. We hiked back over the rocks and saddle and then that’s where it got a little tricky. The trail that we were supposed to follow had been severely overgrown and terribly marked, later we found out that there really wasn’t a trail to be followed, we were just supposed to keep walking East until we hit the ocean whatever way we could. So needless to say we got a little lost, even though it was just over a kilometer to get out to the beach it took us over 2.5 hours. At one point we were walking in a swamp along Fitz Creek and I saw the largest Crocodile I had spotted yet, it must have been at least 17 feet long, at that point John and I decided that we need to get on some higher ground and out of the swamp. Shortly thereafter we made it to the beach and had a relaxing 2 hour long walk until Brad picked us up.

Over the course of our stay at Brads we took on a bunch of different jobs including cementing posts for a trailer, making stairs, weeding plants, fixing crab pots, digging holes, planting, getting loads of rocks, dirt and gravel, and creating wire frames to protect his fruit trees from wild horses. The entire process was great and Brad said that we were excellent workers getting done twice the work in half the time compared to other helpers. On Wednesday we said goodbye to Brad and were picked up at his dock to stay with Mike and Sigang who live just a little south of Brad in the Daintree Rainforest in a beautiful house only accessible by boat. Mike says he is going to take us snorkeling and spear fishing for fish and lobsters. I can’t wait to try it out. I hope all is going well for everyone back home.

Love you guys,

John