The Thorsborne Trail is Pretty Good

For quite a few years now Jan has been on my back to walk the Thorsborne Trail. She remembered it as a truly great experience and when I googled around I discovered various touristy sites purporting that it was one of the top 10 walks in the world and a *must do* on the bucket list. All this stuff turned me off immensely but eventually, I was talked into doing it.

We started off with an exhilarating early morning boat ride out of Cardwell that went along huge expanses of mangroves and through an intricate network of inlets to reach the starting point.

A short walk after the start point at the North of the island we emerged through rainforest to Nina bay where we ate lunch in the shade and tried to hear the ocean in a cool shell we found.

It wasn’t much further from here to our first campsite at Little Ramsay Bay. We got there early enough that there was time to have a snooze and then do a spot of fishing. We didn’t catch any fish but had a nice greeting from a turtle who literally put it’s head up in front of us so *say hello*.

Next day we set off early for Zoe bay. It was a really nice sunny but cool day for walking and we felt great as we set off

The day took us through some pretty interesting swampy country and was enough of a walk that we felt nice and hot and ready for a swim when we arrived. This was an improbably mozzie free campsite on a mudflat beside a creek mouth (yes amazingly there were hardly any mozzies or sandflies). A short walk up from the campsite we were able to cool off with a swim in the pool below Zoe falls.

Zoe bay is a huge, sand flat and in the afternoon we went on a big walk all the way to the other end and found a bunch of cool stuff on the beach including a Nautilus shell, a huge chunk of coral and lots of interesting tiny things.

In the morning we had a gorgeous spot to drink our coffee and contemplate the climbing ahead to Mulligan falls.

Along the way we had some really great views and saw some more interesting country

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And when we finally made it to Mulligan falls we had another lovely spot to swim and relax

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At this point I was ready to agree with some of the hyperbole about this walk but it was still lacking an important ingredient. Up to this point we hadn’t really had any form of suffering or hardship, and definitely no real sense of anxiety. Luckily the walk’s designers understood this requirement so they put in an interesting estuarine creek crossing at the very end. It was a nice feeling to emerge on the other side in front of the croc warning sign knowing that you hadn’t been eaten.

It was only a short walk from this little adventure to the boat pickup point and we were saying goodbye to this amazing Island. We will definitely be back