Best Easter.

Under the guise of looking at more potential wedding venues, we travelled north: first inland to Ravenshoe then up to the Daintree coast at Mossman.

Ravenshoe’s regional claim to fame is that it is Queensland’s highest town, and though it isn’t very high above sea level (Australia is not tall - have you been to its highest point, Mt Kosiusko? Grannies with walkers make it to the peak, really) Ravenshoe is a charmingly cool and greenish spot. The main local attraction is the waterfalls, which come with the promise of spotting a platypus. Needless to say, we didn’t spot a platypus. Maybe next time.

The next day, we travelled straight north and arrived at the coast near the Daintree rainforest. This is where the really spectacular rainforesty-mountains-coming-right-down-to-the-sea scenery begins. One day we will take our little Toyota corolla as far north as she can go, up to Cape Tribulation, but this time we turned around at touristy Port Douglas. It was a bit of a shock to stumble into a resort town overrun by pasty Melbournians doing on holidays exactly what they do at home: walking up and down, talking on their mobile phones and eating. It’s been ages since I saw so many bored rich people mooching around one place, and so much blatant mobile phone rudeness: Mums on phones window-shopping for resortwear while their kids literally covered themselves with ice-cream; couples in a restaurant, one talking languidly on the phone to someone else while the other picked at her dinner. Et cetera.


We were a bit intimidated by the yuppies (and I haven't even said that word in over ten years - does this mean we are officially country bumpkins now?) we pitched our tent in the campground next to the backpackers. Later in the night we were both woken by pelting-down rain (ahhh ... wet tropics) and drunken backpackers returning to their tents at dawn.

Still, it was all for the best: at home yesterday we hung the tent out to dry and thereby noticed what a properly howling wind was blowing. Perfect for kite flying! My kite (a birthday present from Hayden last year) looked gorgeous darting out over the water and it only got dunked once or twice.


Perhaps you are still wondering how the wedding venue shopping went?

Well ... nothing to announce yet. Sorry.