Tom's (attempted) Ride Around Australia: No Pain No Gain

From Chillagoe the ride into Cooktown was fantastic. There were mountain ranges to cross, and after thousands of km's of flat earth, I was happy to take the challenge.
Upon entering Mareeba, I visited the engineering mob to see if they could weld my bike. Not only did they weld it, but they gave me spare parts, good advise and didn't charge me a dime. They were amazing.
I stopped in a great camp spot just outside of the township of Mt Molloy when the rain came down. I hadn't seen rain for months, so this was an unwelcome addition to my trip. So I hid in my tent all day while the rain came flooding down.
When I finally reached Cooktown the rain was coming in brief showers.
I stayed at a caravan park with gorgeous views of Mt Cook and the surrounding rain forest. I spent the next two days walking down every track I could find looking for snakes and lizards - quite unsuccessfully. I did find some amazing creatures along the way however, including echidna's, lace monitors, a small-eyed snake, wallaby's, beautiful tropical insects etc. I stumbled across a hive of paper wasps which I decided to photograph. Big mistake. They carried on with their business while I stuck my camera in their faces, until one individual wasp stung me. Suddenly they all started stinging me and I had to run a long way down the road to lose them. Ouch!
The next destination that I wished to visit was the majestic and mysterious 'Black Mountain'. Black Mountain is a strange formation where huge black boulders are stacked on top of each other to form a tall mountain. There are spaces between the rocks and eerie noises and rumbles come from deep within. Black Mountain is the site of many human disappearances, and myth therefore surrounds the curious formation. It is against the law to climb Black Mountain, but it is also home to Australia's biggest snake - the Amethystine Python - so naturally I had to climb it in search of the snake.
It was great fun scrambling up the mountain from boulder to boulder. I was very aware of the dangers and could understand why people have been hurt or gone missing. So there I was, climbing further up and up when suddenly... Ouch!!! What was that pain in my arm? It started as a dull stinging. Then the pain grew into a stabbing sensation. The pain then continued to escalate into a burning, stabbing, stinging mess. What had happened? I back-tracked to find the answer. I had brushed past the only living plant life on the rocks, which just happened to be a 'Gympie Gympie' tree, also known as a stinging tree. The toxins from this tree "deliver a cocktail of painful poisons that persist painfully for up to four months". This is what I read in an article later, and true to its word, I can still feel the dull stinging as I sit to write this weeks later. It was a doozy.
I couldn't sleep much over the next few nights as my arm swelled up and down painfully. But on the bright side, I was on the verge of the Bloomfield Track, the dirt road that snakes its way through the Daintree Rain Forest National Park, and I was extremely excited.