Rain

Reasons why Northern Queensland, Australia is like holidaying in the UK

• it rains. A lot.
• Mind you, the words "Tropical Wetland Rainforest" do have a few clues in them
• 16 hours of rain so far with no break
• eating picnic lunch in the car
• things to do include: drink tea, play board games, read a book
• we could have hired a caravan in the UK if we wanted to do the above...
• you can go to a look out and see nothing because it is too cloudy and raining too hard
• you can have conversations with your fellow travellers about how you are making the best of it.
• you drink tea because it's warm and something to do.

Reasons why Northern Queensland, Australia is NOT like holidaying in the UK

• you can go out here and stand in the rain for an hour and then see a cute little platypus in the wild
• you can go out here in the rain for 3 seconds and see more frogs and toads than you have ever seen in your life before
• you can sit outside, while it's raining, under shelter because it is still 24 degrees, eating your evening meal watching bush tailed possums play in the trees
• the sea is so warm it is still tempting to go swim even in the rain
• but you can't because it is infested with stinging jelly fish
• you go to sleep here in an eco-lodge powered entirely by solar to hear possums running on the roof above you
• you then go to sleep in your rainforest "hut" which has no solid walls, just netting so you can hear* the little critters all around you...
• ... and make your husband check it out three times for snakes and so on before you climb into bed
• your barman in rainforest hostel went for a walk the other night and saw a python climb a tree to eat a large bat
• you might find huntsman spiders in your hut
• you can swim in a mountain creek with a waterfall cascading on to you...
• ... but not in the nearest beach because there might be estuarine crocodiles or sharks or more jelly fish. Possibly all three in a semi circle round the beach. Or a crocodile riding on the back of a shark, using a jellyfish as a lassoo (we noticed Aussies tend to exaggerate the dangers round here).
• you can buy kangaroo meat in the supermarket. It's cheap because it's foul.

We're being green at the moment as this is our 2nd eco-lodge place in a week. It is very cool to be in the middle of the rainforest but a bit frustrating that it's, well, raining. So we're going white water rafting tomorrow as hey, we'll be wet anyway.

Oh, HAPPY EASTER folks.

* that's the theory. All we could hear was rain. It was like being in a tent in the UK.