Hi guys,
This will be a little update from the weekend. How exciting!
On Saturday I took my bike to Kamerjunga, it's only 12 km from here, a beautiful village surrounded by rainforest and mountains. They have two walking tracks that starts there, Smith track and Douglas track that connects with Mc Donald track that goes all the way up to Barron fall.
I decided to do the Douglas track and continue to Barron falls.
It was my first run back after my cold.
I'm still not feeling 100%, it was hard to run my legs was feeling tired and weak and it was very hilly. I mixed up power walking and running to get there and back, it was 14 km together. I only had one banana with me because I didn't plan to take that long, But I had my new Garmin camera with me and was playing around with it and the time was running away. I was so hungry towards the end. I'm usually pretty good to bring to much nutrition if I'm out on a longer run or hike,
Barron fall is so beautiful. It is not much water in the fall now because of the dry season but I can imagine how powerful it is over the wet season.
On Sunday Jakob was off work too, and he had organised a car for us to go to Yarrabah, It is a Aboriginal community 55 km outside Cairns. A beautiful drive there with the ocean on your left side and view over to Cairns and on your right side rainforest and mountains.
Before we arrived to Yarrabah it was an amazing lookout over the village.
It was a different experience to visit Yarrabah. For everybody who never heard about Aboriginals.
They are the people who lived in Australia long time before the white people came here and took Australia from them, they struggling to fit into our lifestyle and unfortunately many of them are alcoholics, their body's cant handle alcohol in the same way as us, They get money from the government so many of them don't work either. It was a big sign before we arrived in Yarrabah about Alcohol restriction, you can only take beer and wine in there and they had restriction on how much you were allowed to take with you.
In Yarrabah you need permission to live. it is only aboriginal people living there and they are living very peaceful. It is not much there, a very old supermarket, little church, pharmacy and a school. The houses is very trashy. they don't care about style or a nice garden. Pretty much everybody runs around barefoot and kids playing everywhere.
But what I most reacted to was all the wild dogs and wild horses, Brumbies as they called in Australia. They were walking around the street in the park, yeah everywhere.
We found this handsome Brumby stallion just outside the village near the road. So cool can't believe I managed to walk up to him.
Here is more horses in the village. they seems very relaxed there. they didn't like when I tried to walk up closer to them though. they just walked away.
Yarrabah is a aboriginal word meaning Meeting place.
After Yarrabah we went to Milaa milaa waterfall at the Atherton tablelands. It was a fun drive up there.
Located 873 meter above sea level it made the drive pretty step and curvaceous. Milaa Milaa means the "Village in mist" the town is surrounded by dairy farms and a circuit of waterfalls and rainforest.
Photo from the road up to Milaa MIlaa
It is so much to explore around Cairns, I want to hike/run to the summit of Queenslands highest Mountains Mt Bartle frere. They say it takes 12 hours, but it is only 15 km so I hoping to be able to run some of it. Bartle Frere have an elevation of 1622 meters. This is definitely on the bucket list before leaving Cairns, so is diving at the great barrier reef and another hike/run to the summit of Mt sorrow at Cape tribulations. I'm just so scared of leeches if I doing the Bartle frere and Mt sorrow. Seriously they are disgusting and they sucking blood like crazy here. Maybe have to wear long socks and spray salt on the socks.
Now i'm off to bed. Me and Jakob have started to watch a tv serie from Sweden/Denmark.
Called "the bridge" it's Crime serie about the bridge between Sweden and Denmark,
It's really good!
// Gina Johansen xx