Sunday, December 30, 2018

Daintree River Lodge

And now, back to Australia . . .

From Mission Beach we drove north to Cairns, but we didn't stop as we were flying out of Cairns in a few days.  We were headed north to Daintree Rainforest National Park.  Once we escaped the suburban sprawl of Cairns we found ourselves on a winding highway running along the coast with beautiful beaches and trees in full flower bending over the road.  

We reached Daintree Village in the late afternoon and checked into our room at the Daintree River Lodge, right next to the Daintree River.



Our room was perched right over the river.


The lodge has a huge veranda



with a communal kitchen, dining area and lounge for guests,

Which came in handy because every evening we had torrential rain showers.

The owner showed us a cashew tree (not native), growing in the yard.  She says she doesn't advertise the fact because the cashew nuts are toxic till they are processed.

The nut is hanging off the end of the fleshy fruit part, which was wonderfully fragrant. I googled it and the fruit is edible, but stringy and sour so they use it for juice. 

The lodge is decorated with artifacts from the logging industry and cattle ranching.  The owners are also cattle ranchers, but the logging industry is no longer active since what is left of the forest is now protected.

The lodge is also a caravan park, but we didn't envy the campers as it was either hot and humid or raining very heavily!

The occupants in the van on the bottom of the photo were lying listlessly on their bed with all their windows open, trying to catch a breeze.

That giant tree on the left of the photo was filled with hundreds of nesting birds, mostly Figbirds and metallic starlings:

Metallic Starlings are native to Australia and not related to the European Starling


Monday, December 24, 2018

Merry Christmas!


Merry Christmas, everyone.  We have just a mini Christmas tree this year, supplemented with some special Australian-themed ornaments.

I'm just getting over a horrible cold I imported from the antipodes.  We're up in Smithers for Christmas, enjoying the snow (it looks to be a green Christmas in Williams Lake this year).  I hope to finish off my Australian blog entries in the next few days (and write my Christmas cards, sigh).

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

The Curse of the Cassowary



Not our photo

This impressive animal is the southern cassowary, endangered resident of the rainforests of Northern Queensland.  They grow up to 2 meters tall.
They are one scary individual.  They've been known to beat up and even break windshields of cars when they try to scare off their reflection!  Needless to say they come with a warning:


We decided to stay one night in Mission Beach because we'd read that cassowaries were commonly seen at the Big 4 Beachcomber Coconut Resort.  Things looked promising when we spotted these signs on the drive in.


The speed limit was reduced from 100 kph to 80 kph on a road we Canadians would feel most comfortable driving at about 60.  We slowed down and checked the verges carefully every time we came across one of these signs

Or these:



But no cassowaries to be seen.

We stopped at the Lecuala Track and walked the trail in quiet expectation.

Where are the cassowaries?

Lecualas are these beautiful Fantail palms,


endangered because their habitat has mostly disappeared due to development along the coast, with huge beautiful fronds.

Fronds are approx. 4 ft diameter

We had no luck finding cassowaries, until Leo stumbled upon this:


Of course, I had already researched this trail online, so I knew they were fakes, installed to educate and amuse children.

When we checked in at our guaranteed cassowary sighting caravan park, the receptionist was apologetic.  They hadn't seen their cassowary lately.

This could be good news, maybe they'd stopped feeding their cassowary so it wasn't coming around anymore, or it could be bad news and the bird was the victim of a car accident.

But she said we should visit the caravan park down the road in Etty Bay when we left the next morning.

There was a moment of panic when we checked into our cabin



and the air conditioner wouldn't work, but the maintenance guy assured us that it took 5 minutes to kick in.  We thought we we might expire before then as the cabin had been closed up in the heat all day, but soon all was well.  And we were just across the road from the beach

That's a stinger (jellyfish) -proof  swimming enclosure  those kids are playing in

so a breeze even came up as evening fell.  We checked the camp kitchen at dinnertime, but no still no cassowary.  We drove back down the local roads at dusk, but no luck.

The next morning we stopped at another guaranteed cassowary site, the Dreamtime Trail.  It was raining as we started.  It soon stopped, and we took down our umbrellas but the air was now so hot and humid our clothes were totally sweated through.

Desperate, sweaty and cassowary cured in the jungle

 Not only did we find no sign of the cassowary but there were no other birds around to distract us.  It became a death march to the end of the trail which came out back on the main road about 1-1/2 hours later.  We couldn't face going back on the trail, so we started walking back on the road.  By now we were so discombobulated we weren't sure which way we should go and walked back and forth on the road several times till Leo left me at the trail head and ran back in the right direction to get the car!  While waiting I discovered that the actual trail we were meant to take was across the road, a much shorter, less arduous loop trail, with actual twittering birds in the trees.  The cassowary curse!   No cassowaries on this trail either, of course.

By now it was to late in the day to bother looking for the cassowary at Etty Bay so we continued on our journey to Daintree National Park.

There were signs of the elusive cassowary all along the way:

Where the cassowary fulfills his battery needs, obvs.

Could this be where he lives?


No, but we found a pretty decent cauliflower and cheese pie and delicious custard tarts at the Goondi pie shop on this street! Things were looking up!  A few hours in the air-conditioned comfort didn't hurt either.

Thursday, December 6, 2018

We Found Paradise

On our drive to Airlie Bay we got a hot tip from the proprietor of a roadhouse where we stopped for icecream bars.  He said Magnetic Island off Townsville was our best bet.

So we drove 4 hours north through mango orchards

The big Mango, Bowen, Qld

and sugarcane fields and caught the 35 minute ferry from Townsville  (no seasickness required).



We stayed in a motel in Arcadia,


one of 4 settlements on the island, each about 5 minutes away from the next.

Connie's dream cottage in Arcadia

We liked Arcadia best because it had no large developments and because of the excellent protected swimming beach at Alma Bay a few steps from our motel.


We had roast supper at the local RSL (Returned and Services League, the Aussie Legion).  I was telling Leo it was our most nutritious meal yet in Australua, 3 vegetables!  Although it came with a fair sized slab of crackling pork rind!

We were told to go to the rocky point at the end of town to see the rock wallabies that cone down to be fed every evening.  We don't sanction the feeding of wild animals (although we maintain bird feeders ourselves) but we're not fussy when it comes to taking photographs.

This one has a joey!  See its little foot?

At least they were feeding them vegetables instead of cheesie bops.
Rock wallabies are tiny kangaroos but bigger than a pademelon.  There was some dispute about which was cuter.  Pademelons win!  In my estimation, by virtue of being tinier.

The next morning we got up at 6 am to climb up to the Forts, where we were told was our best chance to see koalas.  The locals in the know were already returning from their morning walks.  We and the rest of the tourists struggled up in the heat and humidity.  Nobody was seeing any koalas.


Good views though.

Hot and sweaty tourist trying to hide her disappointment

But on the way back we spotted

Spot the koala

not a koala, but a dead stub of a branch!

Following a shower, some rest and recuperation in the AC, a dip in Alma Bay, a few more showers, a driving tour of the settlements of Magnetic Island, including fish and chips in Horseshoe Bay (barramundi!), another shower, it was evening and we ventured outside again.  

One last chance to find a koala.  We hike up into the hills again and as the sun went down we knew we had to turn around before dark.  We walked the last 250 metres to the Spynx lookout and lo and behold

Money shot! And just as we imagined it.

As dusk fell and we returned to our motel through the residential streets we saw these improbable guys wandering about:

The Orange-footed Scrub Fowl like the brush turkey builds a mound and buries its egg in it.

The orange-footed scrub Fowl mates for life, which we humans seem to love, but they also abandon their offspring after they lay the egg, leaving them to dig their way out of the mound and negotiate their many predators alone (boo).  They toil industrious lyrics (ysy)  building their huge mounds (up to 4 m high and 15 m long!) communally (yay), sharing with several other pairs (yay). But then they may decide to build their huge mound in your yard, using up to 50 metric tons (wow) of organic material from your garden (oh no), and then squawk and screech (boo) all night (a characteristic they share with many Australian birds) fighting (boo)to protect their territory against other pairs.  It's so confusing!  We vote yay, and name the orange-footed scrub fowl the Bird of the Day!






Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Airlie Beach

Everyone told us we had to see the Whitsunday Islands, but after 2 cruises in one week and between seasickness and gravol withdrawal, we didn't feel up to another boat trip.  We'd planned to take a shuttle over to the nearest island and camp out for a night, but as it gets steadily hotter, we didn't think we would survive a day in our tent with no air conditioning.

Further, coastal Queensland is suffering through an unprecedented hotspell and drought and bushfires are breaking out all over.  Eungella National Park (reputedly a sure bet to see the elusive platypus) and Finch Hatton Gorge, two parks on our itinerary, are closed due to fires.  However, Australian fires are not like British Columbia fires.  They seem to be mainly grass fires, and though it's hazy the smoke is nothing like we experienced at home.  The main highway remains open and there's only a few rural road closures.  Evacuees are in the hundreds, not the thousands. So we keep driving north.

We stopped for lunch in Carmila, where a bushfire was burning and saw a few firefighters around.

Towns were were few and far between in this area. We stopped for an excellent bacon and egg and Wichita at this gas station in Carmila, where we met a woman who had worked in Watson Lake, Yukon in her 20s.  She quit and hitchhiked to San Diego.

We decided to stay in Airlie Beach (gateway to the Whitsundays) for a day despite not going to the islands.  When we arrived at our caravan park




we found this curious bird nesting next to our cabin.


The bush stone-curlew, also, appropriately, known as the thick knee.

The male would growl at Leo when he got too close to the nesting female.

All night long we could hear them wailing at each other.

There were a lot lots of these fancy  Plumed Whistling Ducks wandering about.


We got up the next morning at 5 in the morning to beat the heat (it was already 27 degrees) and make a short hike up Airlie Creek track.  The tracks in nearby Conroy National Park are closed due to fire hazard.


This cantelevered house was perched over Airlie Creek.


This proved to be a very birdy walk and we saw 7 new species, including several supposedly common birds we hadn't yet spotted.

First new bird of the day, the pied butcherbird

Fortunately we didn't encounter any plants answering to this description


By 9 am we were done, and retreated into our air-conditioned cabin for most of the day with a short foray out to do some shopping in downtown Airlie Beach.  It turned out to be the busiest and most touristy place we've been to, the streets were full of young weekenders in skimpy clothing.


At 4 pm we ventured out for the daily bird feeding,

We were a bit disappointed at the lack of diversity at the feeding station

and later in the evening we took a dip in the swimming pool (it was too warm for me).

Other than that the day was spent napping and catching up on this blog.




Monday, December 3, 2018

Lady Musgrave Island


That's Lady Musgrave Island from the air, not our photo, we took the boat.

It's a 2 hour boat ride across to Lady Musgrave Island.  Our cruise boat seated 120 people, luckily only about 90 people were on today's cruise so it was not too crowded.

Still fairly chipper at this point


Thanks to modern medication I did not get seasick, but Leo was not so lucky, nor were a lot of other people.

Arriving at the island


The island itself is quite small, it took us about 45 minutes to walk across it

In full safari gear (If I look grouchy it's because I was stumbling about  from gravol withdrawal)


and is home to a colony of thousands of Noddy Terns



who nest in the pisonia trees.



As the signs say




We saw numerous birds in various stages of entrapment and decay, and there was one woman on our tour who could not obey the sign and tried fruitlessly to clean a bird.

We also saw shearwater burrows, two small reef sharks temporarily trapped by the falling tide,




turtle tracks and nests and numerous other birds.

A bridled tern


After the walk we took a glass bottomed boat


over a portion of the reef where 3 species of turtles rest


 and then back to the main boat where we had 2 hours to snorkel the reef.

Some of the 400 species of coral


No photos but it was pretty amazing.  We were told there are 1500 species of fish and we must have seen them all.  We also saw green and hawk sbill turtles and one lonely purple starfish (not the one that's killing the coral).

About half our fellow passengers were a tour group from China and we returned to find many of them napping in the cabin.  The tour must have a breakneck pace to miss out on the snorkelling!  Or possibly they aren't comfortable swimming. No sharks though

The next morning as we were packing up to leave we saw this guy

A common brushtail possum


Yet to see - platypus, koala, and cassowary