Today we went up north of Port Douglas to a tropical forest with a board walk and canopy tower. Then we went further to the north to a somewhat isolated beach and did some walking along the beach and some swimming in the ocean.
Access to the land area where the rainforest and beaches are is only via a river ferry crossing. Once across the river we encounter the warning of Cassawary crossings. So the day suddenly became link to seeing one of these interesting creatures. As it turned out Jon got a shot of a young one, but we never saw an adult. I have included a picture of a model in a display at the park we visitied.
On the way to the park we stopped at a couple of pull offs that provided a nice view of where the river we had crossed emptied into the Pacific.We stopped at a nature preserve park that had a pretty nice elevated trail where we could get close to some of the interesting flora and fauna and a tower platform from which we could look out over the tree canopy.
On the way back to the car from the tower we heard about snake and cassawary sightings, but all we saw was some bight blue fruit that cassawaries supposedly eat and some interesting folage, and some little forest streams but sadly no snakes.
As we got back to the car we did get to see a nice lizard that was passing through the area. 
After the tropical forest we headed up further north to a beach and spent most of the rest of the afternoon hiking, wading and swimming. 
I came across another lizard on the path back to the car. I don't want to give the impressing that Australia was crawling with lizards, but the some of the ones we saw like this one were a good thirty inches long and were interesting to see out in the wild. 
When we got back to the hotel I went out onto the balcony and got a shot of some of the many colorful birds in the area.
The next morning we headed back to Cairns and our flight back to Sydney. We stopped along the way to get a few classic ocean view pictures.
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