View From The Top

We were picked up from our hotel at 7:45 this morning (ouch), headed north: to the Daintree. As I mentioned earlier, I had been up this way before, but eighteen years is a long time, and my recollections were relatively vague. Today was, needless to say, quite different.

The Billy Tea tour groups are small: there were twelve of us, in four family groups, on our bus, with an eccentric frenchman as guide. There was a couple from the Central Coast (north of Sydney), a trio from Los Angeles, and a family of five from England. I was really impressed with that family: three teenagers, and they were interested, engaged, and full of intelligent questions, both with regards to what we were seeing, but also other topics that came up in conversation. They got along with each other and with their parents, and interacted well with the adults. We didn’t travel as much as a family by the time I was that age, so it’s difficult to compare, but I very much doubt we would have been quite that positive. I don’t know.

Leaves

The trip was really well designed, with stops every hour or so – short stops at lookouts, and longer stops for a cruise down the Daintree River (we saw a crocodile!), for a walk through the rainforest, for lunch, and for a swim/tropical fruit tasting/billy tea and damper afternoon tea. There was a second tour bus with people doing the same trip as us, with some intermingling, but for the most part, it was just our group of twelve-plus-Frank-the-tour-guide– which was nice. It felt much more personal than yesterday’s trip, because we actually got to talk to people.

Ferns

The Daintree is, unsurprisingly, beautiful. Cape Tribulation reminds me (unsurprisingly) of Jeannie Baker’s ‘Where The Forest Meets the Sea’. We were out of mobile reception for most of the day and that, too, was really quite awesome in a way. Annnnnnd there was a stop for ice cream on the way back (did you know that wattleseed ice cream tasted like coffee?), and that was nice too.

It’s been nice being able to use my camera properly again, too. I admit, I get really lazy: I have a fancy digital SLR, and yet I use it on manual more often than not. It bothers me that I do it, but it’s just… easier. And yet, today, I found the manual setting just wasn’t good enough to deal with the different light conditions, especially when we were in the depths of the rainforest; it tended to heavily over or underexpose, leaving my photos generally useless. As a result, I basically had no choice but to start playing with settings again, and it was, I admit, really quite fun. I won’t claim I really knew what I was doing, but I was able to get a few good shots, and some others that have come out quite nicely with a little bit of post production.

Flowers

I do wish my eye sight was better, though. Even with glasses, I have a lot of trouble determining when my shots are focused, when I use manual focus; I just can’t see properly. That means I generally stick to auto focus, but sometimes the camera simply cannot cope with it, and gets confused, and then I have to suck it up and hope that my manual focus attempts come out more or less acceptably.

Sadly, I did not manage to get any good shots of the big crocodile we saw – or any of the fauna, really. Plants are easier: they mostly only move in the breeze. (mostly)

Beach Debris

It was a long day, and I’m pretty tired now. We got back to our hotel a little after 6, and almost immediately headed out for dinner– yes, we actually ate out tonight, something we’ve done surprisingly little of thanks to our room’s kitchen. We still only made it as far as the hotel’s restaurant, but that was a good choice: I had the barramundi fillet and a glass of riesling, and Rohan had a three cheese and truffle oil gnocchi with a glass of pinot grigio. We followed that up with strawberry cheesecake and a botrytis riesling for me, and a chocolate brownie and a grappa for Rohan.

I am thus, now, tired and full, and feeling pretty content.